Dist. One gearing up for updating its meal count

While desert scorpions are known for their sharp stingers, the kind of scorpions at the District One board meeting Monday evening “stung” the audience with their sharp wit and creativity.

Sunrise Elementary Scorpions iTeamKids and Odyssey of the Mind teams demonstrated the sharpness of their minds for parents and board members. The iTeamKids presented a video and the OTM team solved a spontaneous problem in a mock competition.

Child Nutrition Director Lisa Thrower, in her second year as director, updated the board on the program.

District One has been offering free breakfast to its students for more than 15 years, Thrower noted, and that meal is eaten by about 4,000 kids each day.

The district will be seeking to update its status with the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) next year, Thrower said, and the department needs cooperation from principals and parents in getting applications filled out and returned to the schools.

Of the district’s 17 schools, only 7 are considered “Provision 2” schools, Thrower said, noting that Gila Vista Junior High, Woodard and Palmcroft could probably meet the requirements for the status.

Provision 2 is a four-year status from the NSLP, according to the program’s guidelines. The first year of the status, referred to as a base year, is when the school makes its eligibility determination, based on the meal counts by type and the number of applications returned. If eligible for the status, the school may serve all meals at no charge for a four-year period.

“We are going to do a base year next year. We have not conducted a base year since 2007-2008,” she said. “So you can see it’s been 10 years since we ran a base.”

Thrower cautioned that while the free and reduced lunch rate may go up, it may also go down, due to shifting family demographics.

Thrower also showed off pictures of work done over the holiday break on updating freezer storage at several schools, including Alice Byrne, Woodard and Palmcroft.

Board member Barbara Foote, who was nominated to serve another year as board clerk, asked if the applications would be available in Spanish and in other formats. Thrower noted that they would and that applications would also be available online.

Board President Karen Griffin asked if the department had a statement issue, alluding to balances for unpaid meals.

Thrower noted that the department does track unpaid balances, but students are not shamed or prevented from eating. She noted that her department handles those cases on an individual basis.

Superintendent Jamie Sheldahl apprised the board of two intergovernmental agreements, one with the community college district and the other with the city of Yuma. The pact with Arizona Western College would establish a preschool classroom at the college’s childhood learning lab for special needs preschoolers. The other pact governs the building and maintaining of a retention basin for the proposed Dorothy Hall School near Avenue 6E and 44th Street. Both were passed.

Sheldahl noted that the growth the district is seeing is in the eastern and the southern areas of its boundaries. Suzanne Alka updated the board on the principal cohort program, which brings together assistant principals and new principals in their first three years. The district board also approved accepting donations for $10,073.61, bringing its year to date total to $58,991.46 cents.