Schools find ways to provide meals to needy students
Despite some initial problems and concerns, school districts in the region are finding reliable and sometimes creative ways to feed students forced to stay home, a service particularly needed in areas with high poverty.
When Gov. Tom Wolf shut down schools statewide this month because of COVID-19, districts began to replace free and reduced-price lunches and sometimes breakfasts for children qualified based on family income. In some urban areas and old industrial towns in Western Pennsylvania, 100% of the students qualify.
In the Wilkinsburg School District, all of the approximately 600 enrolled students meet the eligibility threshold, according to Superintendent Linda J. Iverson.
The school district has set up services at South Avenue Methodist Church and Community Forge on Franklin Avenue where students can pick up brown-bag breakfasts (9-11 a.m.) and lunches (noon-2 p.m.).
“Wilkinsburg, like all school districts, is handling this situation day by day and is steadfast in its commitment to make meals available to students,” Ms. Iverson said.
The New Kensington-Arnold School District, where all 1,975 students qualify, is handing out to-go bags with breakfast and lunch items from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays at seven locations for all students 18 and younger. The district asked parents and older students to fill out a survey to indicate continued participation in the meal program to improve efficiency and waste as little food as possible.
And the Oil City Area School District in Venango County, where more than 90% of the students are eligible, said anyone from 1 to 18 years old could receive a bagged meal that would include lunch for that day as well as breakfast for the next day. The meals are available from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Seventh Street Elementary School or at the high school.
Steel Valley, one of the school districts with 100% reduced-price lunch eligibility, gave students backpacks of free food on a Friday to get them through the weekend and said it will continue to serve meals to students on weekdays during the shutdown.
“The need was already enormous,” said Carolyn Vega, a senior manager at No Kid Hungry, a national organization dedicated to ending child hunger. “It’s just getting even worse now.”
One in seven children in the U.S. “lives with hunger,” according to data available on the group’s website. No Kid Hungry has also found that 22 million children throughout the country rely on schools to provide them with free or reduced-price lunches.
On a level closer to home, 90,000 children in 12 southwestern Pennsylvania counties dealt with food insecurity in 2017, according to Feeding America’s “Map the Meal Gap” project. Allegheny County alone was home to 40,000 kids who didn’t know how they would obtain their next meal.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education tracks the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals at individual schools across the state. The 2019-20 data for Western Pennsylvania reveals that while there are a few suburban schools with large eligible populations, the largest concentration of such students attends schools in urban areas and fading industrial towns.
According to the data, more than a dozen Allegheny County school districts have student bodies that are 100% eligible for free and reducedprice lunches. Among them are the Pittsburgh Public, Woodland Hills, McKeesport Area, Sto-Rox and Clairton City school districts. Several local charter schools, including Manchester Academic Charter School and the Propel Charter Schools, also reach the 100% eligibility level.
While those figures do not mean 100% of eligible students actually enroll in subsidized meal programs, the numbers provide a window into the economic stability of the families sending them to school each day.
Nearly all school districts in Western Pennsylvania were offering at least one daily grab-and-go meal to students by the second week of the shutdown. There were 1,600 sites serving meals across the state by Wednesday, according to Vonda Ramp, the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s director of Child Nutrition Programs.
Some bumps
There have been some bumps along the way.
Many of the schools with the highest count of eligible students are in Pittsburgh. Those schools are working to continue feeding students, but potential COVID-19 exposures have already forced the district to close Pittsburgh Brashear and Pittsburgh Langley and move their operations to other sites.
The mere possibility of someone who serves food to children contracting COVID-19 could shut down an entire operation almost immediately. West Allegheny School District was forced to close McKee Elementary School at one point because one of its janitors was diagnosed with acute bronchitis and couldn’t gain access to a COVID-19 test.
Baldwin-Whitehall delayed rolling out its program until March 23 over several concerns.
“[O]ur concern is bringing in our workforce,” Superintendent Randal Lutz said before the distributions were set. “We want to serve our kids, but our food service department is comprised of our most vulnerable population. A lot of them are over the age of 60. If we bring folks together to prepare the food, what risks does that create?”
Mr. Lutz also noted other obstacles that stalled the Baldwin-Whitehall district’s grab-and-go plan announcement, including a lack of preprepared food and the difficulties of transporting the meals — and volunteers — to dissemination facilities.
According to Ms. Vega, of
No Kid Hungry, the logistics of serving nontraditional meals have similarly strained school resources across the country. Her group announced March 18 that it would distribute $1 million in emergency grants to help school districts and community nonprofit groups address financial barriers.
“We know some school districts are running into staffing issues if their employees have children at home whom they have to care for now, or if they’re part of a high-risk population. Money to support additional staffing would be helpful to them,” Ms. Vega said.
“Equipment and supplies can sometimes have high startup costs.
“A lot of schools may be shifting to different ways of preparing and serving food than what they’re used to doing. A traditional cafeteria service line with a hot bar and three different vegetable options isn’t really going to work well in a situation where you’re trying to keep people distant and you are making meals for people to take home.”
Baldwin-Whitehall now takes bags to parents’ cars and tells families walking to sites to follow strict social distancing guidelines.
“I think it’s important because we do have a number of kiddos in our district that rely on these lunches and breakfasts for some of their main staples for food,” said Ashley Miller, a member of the Painter Elementary PTA in the Baldwin-Whitehall district. “... So I think just being able to ensure that these kids have at least breakfast and lunch each day is important for every parent.”
Some schools successfully distributing lunches are still providing only one meal per day. For those in extra need, businesses such as Hall of Fame Pizzeria in Clairton have stepped up to provide children with free nourishment until schools are back in session.
The Rochester way
Rochester Area School District in Beaver County, where all 680 students are eligible for free or reducedprice lunches, decided the situation presented an opportunity for a drop-off and a pick-me-up. Meals were delivered to students’ houses by a school van, followed by a parade of teachers in their cars honking and waving to the children.
Sarah Adams and her son Jeremiah, who is in kindergarten, stood in their sweatpants on the side of Virginia Avenue to wait for the white school van to pull up and deliver free meals. She originally heard about the event from a Facebook post and from her son’s teachers, who called her earlier in the week. She instantly thought it was a wonderful idea.
“It helps a lot. Just with everything going on, it’s one less thing I have to stress about,” Ms. Adams said. “I wish there was a bit more, but I mean, it was nice that they wanted to say hi to us. And they knew who [my children] were!
“Some areas don’t do this at all,” Ms. Adams said. “I don’t want to say we’re a poor community, but it’s nice to see a community like this can actually work together and do something for each other.”
As a long line of beeping cars decorated in neon pink and blue posters drove past, Jeremiah’s smile doubled in size. “Hiii!!” he said, shouting at the teachers waving in their cars.
Still, for many families with little to no access to food, a brown-bag lunch may not go far enough.
The number of children who now qualify for free or reduced-price school meals is likely higher than existing estimates due to the economic impact COVID-19 is having on families across the country.
This past week Pennsylvania and other states reported huge jumps in applications for unemployment benefits due to the pandemic.
“This is a time where a lot of individuals, not just lowincome, but a lot of us are concerned about continuing to be paid,” said Laura Stephany of nonprofit Allies for Children who estimates 60% of children in Allegheny County already qualify for free meals.
“This is just an issue that we’re really going to need to come together to provide the support for families in need at this time.”