Meet the heroes feeding kids during food scarcity caused by pandemic
West Phoenix resident Rochelle Neal took it in stride when kids at her daughter’s apartment complex called her “the lunch lady.” Every weekday morning she drives to Peralta Elementary School in Maryvale, where she picks up enough breakfast and lunch to feed at least ten kids: her grandchildren, godchildren and neighborhood children. The free-meal program has been a blessing since schools closed in March, Neal said. The federally-funded Summer Food Service Program allows public school districts to give subsidized meals to anyone under 19, regardless if they’re enrolled in that school district. Districts got approval to roll out the program earlier this year because of COVID-19 closures, but the Trump administration ended it when schools restarted. ● Amid pressure from Congress, however, federal government agreed at the end of August to extend the meal program through the rest of 2020.
This back and forth has caused some confusion among families, and now Neal hopes word can get out that the free-meal program is back on.
“I’m doing this because God blessed me to have the gas to do it,” Neal said. “They need to probably announce it that anyone can pick up lunches if someone needs it in your community. Put it in a newsletter. Ask people like me who don’t have small kids to deliver for other children.”
How schools kept kids fed despite shutdowns
When school districts across Arizona shut down in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, school officials scrambled to continue providing meals while their students were home.
Shannon Reina, food services manager for Salt River Schools, told The Arizona Republic that food and supply shortages made it difficult in the beginning to create menus. Many pre-packaged items were out of stock, so her team incorporated from-scratch cooking onto the menu and used what they already had in the freezer to come up with hot breakfasts and lunches.
“We made the best out of a horrible situation,” Reina wrote in an email. “We were able to serve the community and hopefully we helped them in some way. Traditionally Native people share meals with their families, friends and loved ones as a show of love and respect, that is what I feel like we did here.”
Starting the summer meal program in March was a tremendous benefit for food insecure families during school closures, said Shannon Gleave, director of food and nutrition at Glendale Elementary School District. More than 90% of the students at Glendale Elementary qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch.
“That’s the beauty of the summer food program,” Gleave said. “You’ll see a family with a pre-school kiddo and high school kid and it’s great that we can help all of the families in one area. They don’t have to go to different schools to get the meals.”
Her district made their outreach in multiple languages, sending automated calls in English and Spanish, and working with the language department for areas where families don’t speak English or Spanish at home, Gleave added.
Both Glendale Elementary and Salt River Schools, as well as other Arizona school districts, are also using their transportation department to deliver meals to students’ homes and along bus routes.
Gleave said this has provided work for bus drivers while schools are closed. It also helps parents who don’t have the means to get to a meal distribution site, and may have otherwise needed to walk in the heat.
She hopes the federal government continues the program, as long as there are any students still online learning.
“You can’t perform academically if you are hungry,” Gleave said. “We just want to feed kids and make sure they are well nourished and ready to learn.”
‘There’s a lot of families in need’
Now that the school year has started, Arizona school districts are reopening in different ways. Some are opening inperson classes or a mix of face-to-face instruction and virtual classes. Others, like Phoenix Union High School District, will remain closed to in-person classes through the end of 2020.
On a recent Monday morning, Neal rolled up as usual outside Peralta Elementary School’s cafeteria, where a San Francisco 49ers flag hung from a red, pop-up canopy.
The flag belongs to Anna Moya, food services manager at Peralta, who appeared in good spirits despite her team’s
close loss to the Cardinals the day before.
Moya said she knows just about every person who comes up — by car, by bike, by foot — between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., the hours they distribute meals Monday through Thursday.
She and Neal chatted as a cook, Maria Ruiz, pulled out the plastic grocery bags from a chest fridge. The staff typically packages the meals at least a day in advance. Monday’s menu consisted of apple sauce, corn, milk, chocolate milk, chicken nuggets, apples and cereal. Thursdays tend to be the busiest days because that’s when the schools give out a gallon of milk to last families through the weekend. By 8:45 a.m. that Monday Peralta had distributed more than 180 meals, according to a clipboard. Last Thursday the school gave out around 560 meals, Moya said.
Another Maryvale resident Audrey Barrera drove up that day with news to share with staff: Four of her grandchildren from Oroville, California, would be joining her two grandchildren already living in Phoenix.
All four of her visiting grandchildren have health conditions, such as asthma, and were suffering under the wildfire air pollution, she said. She told The Republic she’s grateful for the summer meal program because it removes barriers for her family.
Many of the people Moya has spoken to have lost their jobs in the pandemic, she said. These meals are especially important now that extra unemployment payments ended, Moya added. Approximately 400,000 Arizonans who are jobless and collecting benefits receive up to the state maximum of $240 a week.
“We do the best we can because I know there’s a lot of families in need,” Moya said. “There’s a lot of families not working, a lot of families maybe this is the only food that they’re having, for the students and the kids. So we try to help them out as much as we can.”
Why funding is tied to meal distribution
The number of people who picked up meals dropped drastically, however, when schools switched for about a month to the National Lunch Service Program, or NLSP, at the beginning of August, food managers said. Unlike under the summer program, schools are only allowed to provide free meals to students who are registered in their districts.
This excluded children who are too young to attend school, and forced parents to go to multiple pick-up spots if they have an elementary school child and high school teenager going to different districts, school employees said. Distributors also had to verify the student’s enrollment for every meal, they added.
Diane Gruman, director of food services for the Cartwright School District, described her feelings as “absolute panic.” The drop in participation signaled that not only were children missing out on meals, but funding would also drop.
The food services department gets funded through school lunches and that money covers labor, food costs, equipment and utilities, Gruman explained. For districts like hers, where more than 90% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, the federal government
pays the district a set dollar amount for every meal it delivers to a student or child. This is one of the reasons why schools keep count of how many free meals they give.
For a typical August, Cartwright would have been reimbursed for around 1.5 to 1.6 million dollars, Gruman estimated. But last month, while students were still in distance learning, the district was only reimbursed for about $181,000, which is far below last month’s payroll, she said.
“If we aren’t handing out meals, we don’t get money,” Gruman said. “What did I think rolling into August? This is a disaster. I’m still kinda panicked. The vast majority of food service staff live in this neighborhood. They are the moms, aunts, grandmas of our students. We really do not want to lay off any of our staff.”
Gruman said she’s relying on money in the reserve to maintain staff while trying to increase participation. After telling families all summer the 18-andunder, free meal program would end when the school year started, it’s challenging to get the new information out, she said.
“We want the community to be employed so they can pay taxes. That’s where the school district’s money comes from. And of course we want children fed healthy meals. It all intertwines,” Gruman said.
Reina wrote that despite advertising on social media and the Salt River Schools website, parents are still coming in and saying they didn’t know they can pick up meals for any children, no matter where they go to school.
“I think that one month of NSLP con
fused everyone. The social media is helpful but word of mouth seems to be bringing everyone in,” Reina said.
‘A lot of people are too proud to ask for help’
After picking up her meals at Peralta, Neal typically makes four stops in west Phoenix to drop off the meals before returning home, she said.
Now that schools aren’t checking for enrollment, Neal said she’ll go back to asking other parents in her neighborhood, such as her daughter’s apartment complex, if they need someone to pick up food for them.
She’s heard how frustrating it’s been for her children and other parents to prepare meals and take care of other duties while watching over multiple children’s online learning, especially when kindergartners need an adult to sit with them and guide them. Add technological issues, someone who has a hard time logging in — she hears a new issue just about every day, Neal said.
She hopes other people in the community can help take the load off these families by doing something as simple as picking up and dropping off food for people that live down their street or in their apartment complex.
“A lot of people are too proud to ask for help,” Neal said. “They sit at home trying to cook and deal with kids on a tablet. That’s stressful. If more people out there in the community were willing to help, it would make it so much easier.”