Districts prepare for summer meals

Mobile sites new to Fayetteville; Rogers plans to feed 1,400 per day

School districts in Northwest Arkansas hope to provide meals to more children this summer.

The Fayetteville School District will experiment with a mobile site for lunches and snacks at the Yvonne Richardson Community Center, said Ally Mrachek, the district’s child nutrition director. The idea is to try to provide food at another location where children congregate during the summer.

Meals served in summer food programs offered by school districts are available to any child under the age of 18 for free. Fayetteville’s main site will be at Owl Creek Elementary School.

Bentonville, Rogers and Springdale school districts also will have programs.

Mrachek hopes the mobile site service will feel like a picnic with meals like barbecue chicken, corn chip chili pie and chicken and waffles, she said. Adults will

be able to buy the meals and snacks.

“It’s a consistent nutritious meal,” Mrachek said. “Having meals throughout the summer helps keep kids playing really hard.”

Rogers started a mobile program about five years ago and has offered assistance to other school districts in taking meals to children, said Margie Bowers, child nutrition director. The mobile sites are offered in addition to meals at some school campuses. All sites are open to any child under 18, including those who do not attend Rogers schools or live outside the city.

“We knew we were missing a lot of kids that couldn’t get to the sites,” Bowers said.

Bowers had purchased a truck and some equipment for sealing hot meals for a district prekindergarten center and for meeting needs of other campuses. It made sense to use the equipment for the summer program and to take food to pockets of Rogers where high numbers of children who receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year live, she said.

The meals in the summer program have gone from about 400 a day to more than 1,000 per day, with about 700 meals served at mobile sites, she said. Bowers plans to provide 1,400 meals per day this summer. Children receive snack packs on Friday for the weekend through a partnership with the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank and Samaritan House.

Rogers’ Child Nutrition Department is a recent recipient of a national “Turnip the Beet” bronze award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for its summer meal program.

Rogers will provide lunches at 11 sites and breakfast at two sites this summer, Bowers said. New this year is the parking lot of Blossom Way Trailhead and Northside Elementary School. Jones Elementary School in Rogers is an alternate site for meals that were provided last summer at The Annex. The location changed because of construction at The Annex.

Children must be present to receive a meal, Bowers said. Meals are sealed in a hot tray that can be heated in a microwave. Cold fruit is wrapped, and meals include cold milk.

Bentonville will provide free breakfasts and lunches at the same location as last summer. The morning menu includes breakfast pizza, pancakes, and scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. The lunch menu includes beef soft tacos, spaghetti, popcorn chicken and pizza.

Meals will be available at Mary Mae Jones Elementary June 5-July 28, said Caley Cobb, assistant food service director for Aramark for Bentonville School District. Meals are free for children who are 18 years old and younger. Parents can purchase breakfast for $2.30 and lunch for $3.70.

“We look forward to a great turnout for this year’s program and are excited to be apart of meeting our community’s nutritional needs,” Cobb said.

Springdale School District will have five schools offering summer meals, beginning June 5, to any child who comes, Carol Godfrey, child nutrition director, said. Springdale has offered summer meals for nearly all of the 19 years Godfrey has been with the district.

Godfrey focuses on serving hot meals, she said. The menu on occasion will feature a turkey sandwich, but other entrees planned include taco salad, macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, chicken nuggets and hamburgers. The number of children eating can vary so Godfrey plans meals that are quick to prepare in case more children show up than expected.

“We know that so many of our students have food insecurity,” Godfrey said. “They may have access to chips or sodas or cookies, but they don’t have access to really healthy food they need over the summer. This is a good thing to keep our children fueled up over the summer.”

Meals will be available from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on weekdays at Bayyari, Parson Hills and George elementary schools through Aug. 4, Godfrey said. Elmdale replaces Westwood as a meal site also through Aug. 4. Meals will be offered at Jones through July 7. Meals will not be served July 4.

Every child is served a free meal, but the Springdale school sites do not sell meals to adults, she said.

The sites will serve groups of children who are brought by organizations or churches offering summer programs, she said.

The number of meals served has dropped in recent years, but Godfrey thinks the reason is because more organizations in Northwest Arkansas also participate in summer meal programs through a program coordinated by the Arkansas Department of Human Services, she said.

“We’re seeing more opportunities for kids not to go hungry in the summer,” Godfrey said.