When schools went virtual in the spring, food service directors leapt into action and, within days, redesigned their programs from top to bottom, packing buses with bagged breakfasts and lunches to deliver meals daily directly to hundreds of families.
This week, they’ll pivot all over again.
Students return to class on Tuesday, and while reopening plans run the gamut, the vast majority rely on a mix of in-person and remote learning. That means schools not only deliver meals to those physically in school, but also to the thousands learning from home on any given day.
“Like with every other aspect of getting schools and child care up and running this fall, school meals are in flux,” said Anore Horton, executive director of the statewide nonprofit Hunger Free Vermont.
Even for kids learning in the building, it won’t be simple, since students cannot crowd into cafeterias to sit at long tables side-by-side with dozens of other kids to eat. As for the students logging in via Zoom, schools can no longer rely on buses to transport food to their doors. To pull that off, nutrition programs had deputized bus drivers, paraeducators, and other staff to prepare, package, and deliver meals. But bus drivers will once again be transporting kids, and instructional aides will be back in the classroom.
In Burlington, preK-2 students onsite will have their meals delivered to their classrooms, where children will eat their food at their socially distanced desks, according to assistant food service director Heather Torrey. Older students will mostly pick up their food in the cafeteria (they will be released on a staggered schedule) and then eat back in class.
As for those attending school from home, Torrey said the district is mulling both bulk food distribution sites and some form of home delivery. But she admits freely the district is still figuring that out. “I imagine this evolving rapidly,” she said.
And Torrey, who is also the outgoing president of the School Nutrition Association of Vermont, said one concern looms over every food director in the state: supply chain shortages.
“So we have our plan — and we think our plan is awesome. But say, for example, our takeout containers get back-ordered,” she said.
In the Addison Northwest and Mount Abraham Union school districts, Kathy Alexander, who runs their joint food service program, jokes that she is, at this point, “numb to logistical problems.”
“In March, it was like getting hit by a truck and having to just regroup so fast and everything was coming at us. And now we’re a little bit like, that’s how we operate,” she said. “I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.”
Nevertheless, Alexander says she and her staff are thrilled they’ll get to see kids again. In the districts she serves, elementary-age children will grab their breakfasts as they enter the building and eat the meals in their homerooms; lunch will be carted directly into classrooms. In staggered cohorts, high school students will pick up pre-packaged meals from kiosks and return to class to eat.
For kids learning remotely, the district plans a once-weekly pickup for students and parents to pick up multiple days worth of food. But Alexander said it’s likely the schedule could change, and home delivery might happen for certain families.
“I think that school meal programs are going to be making adjustments in real time as schools reopen,” Horton said.
The financial and regulatory framework that school meal programs are operating under is also subject to change. Last Monday, anti-hunger advocates cheered when the USDA, under pressure from lawmakers, announced it would extend a series of waivers that let schools feed all kids for free using a variety of pandemic-era distribution methods.
As late as mid-August, the Trump administration was insisting it would not extend the waivers, and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue warned this week that they could still sunset before the year ends if funding runs out.
Horton emphasized it was “very good news” that the USDA ultimately did reverse course. But she said the announcement’s late arrival and the fact that the waivers could end with little notice made it hard for schools to plan ahead.
For her part, Alexander says she hopes the temporary waivers will serve as proof of concept for universal free meals, a policy long-sought by advocates and many education officials. But she admits she’s nervous about the federal government again changing its mind.
“It’s hard to even imagine what that email would look like. When it says: ‘We ran out of money.’ So I’m kind of not thinking about right now,” she said.
The surprise news also came with little technical guidance from the USDA, and schools now have a slew of unanswered questions about how the waivers interact with the complex bureaucracy surrounding the federal lunch program. In Burlington, for example, Torrey said she’s unsure if using the waivers will mean the district cannot apply for another program that would have guaranteed free meals to all kids for at least the next four years.