High inflation is not only squeezing family budgets across America — it is also hitting school cafeterias. The rising cost of food and ongoing disruptions to the supply chain are shrinking what’s on the menu for students across the country.
Some districts have been forced to pull back or make substitutions to deal with the spiraling cost of key ingredients. At Meade Middle School in Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, the cafeteria staff has had to improvise. They used to offer five entrees a day, but now it’s down to just one.
Elijah Lee, an eighth-grader at the school, has noticed what many students nationwide are seeing.
“We had no more condiments like ketchup and mustard and the ranch, which I loved,” he told CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane.
At some schools, there are no more hamburgers or chicken patty sandwiches due to problems and the price of buying buns and ketchup. Instead, they offer more tacos or bunless options and try to navigate a shortage of healthy options like carrot sticks.
“Our students are very savvy. They know what they eat, what they want,” said Jodi Risse, food and nutrition services supervisor for Anne Arundel County Public Schools.
She said that even the trays and plates have been in short supply.
“Plates became unavailable. We had to call those manufacturers and then develop those relationships to say, ‘How do we best get the trays we need to service our students?'” Risse said.
A new survey of school districts nationwide, conducted by the School Nutrition Association, reveals 97% of meal programs reported challenges with higher costs while 98% acknowledged problems getting some menu items.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, a tray of lunch food is costing the district, one of America’s largest, about 15% to 20% more than it did last year, said Jeanie Dawson, the district’s chief of finance and operations.
Costs of some ingredients are so volatile that many U.S. schools are making last-minute changes to the monthly menu, which used to be set in stone.
“So we are down to weekly menu planning, and our families and even our students and staff are not used to that,” Dawson said.
The district was also planning to serve vegan sauces and vegan soups because such items are actually easier to procure right now.
School lunch costs are poised to rise again on July 1, when an emergency measure enacted at the start of the pandemic expires. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has been offering schools $4.56 reimbursement for every meal served, will reduce that reimbursement to pre-pandemic levels — $3.75.
In Anne Arundel County, the school district could lose about $700,000 a month in reimbursement, Risse said.
“That’s huge,” she said. “That’s going to be a big hit for us
Lingering impacts of the pandemic are still on the menu in many school cafeterias.
“We’re still dealing with certain food item shortages,” said Fort Bend ISD Child Nutrition Executive Director Matt Antignolo.
He told us chicken products, in particular, remain challenging.
But shortages are not limited to what you can eat.
“Cutlery kits, styrofoam trays, what I would call traditional nacho boat food trays,” said Antignolo. “We haven’t seen those in months or been able to get them.”
Klein ISD’s Food Services Division put out this message this week which told families that due to continued distributor and manufacturer shortages, some menu items would not be available at all campuses.
Minnesota lawmakers approved changes to school meal programs that stops what many advocates call “lunch shaming.” And there’s hope more steps will be taken to make free school lunches permanent.
Colleen Moriarty said she’s been working for the last decade to make sure public school students are no longer embarrassed because they can’t afford their lunch bill.
“Ten years ago we heard about snapping rubber bands on kids’ wrists, collection agencies going after families…lunches being dumped in front of kids,” Moriarty said. “Or, you get to enter your code for lunch and they say ‘oh no, I’ll take that lunch from you…you can just have this cheese sandwich …or you can have this cheese sandwich and eat it in the principal’s office.’”
But a new education finance bill passed by state lawmakers changes how schools deal with students with lunch debts.
The move from state lawmakers comes after the Biden administration gave school districts nationwide the greenlight to continue offering free lunches for students until the end of the 2022 school year.
Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried announced her department had secured $93 million from the USDA to help supplement a $262 million hit endured by school districts on lost lunch revenue throughout the pandemic.
The Tuesday, July 6 announcement came after Fried claimed her calls for the Governor to redirect federal COVID relief funds towards the problem went unanswered.
She said the money will help rebuild reserves and ensure the 71 percent of Florida school children receiving free and reduced lunches in the state won’t go hungry.
“So many of our children, this is the only meal that they get a day, is at their schools. So we have to do everything possible to make sure that our children are getting fed and are getting fed nutritional meals,” said Fried.
Fried said the first of the money began flowing to school districts last week and districts opting for paper checks can expect the relief cash in the coming days.
While many families and kids were preparing for summer break, in the last week of classes, Lila Miller, a second-grader at Roland Park K-8 in Tampa, wanted to make sure all kids have something they can eat on the school lunch menu.
Miller, who became a vegetarian more than a year ago, developed a revised menu with more plant-based and meat-free options. Then, thanks to her assistant principal, she met with the school’s nutrition manager to present it.
Miller hopes this will help reduce the school’s carbon footprint and help the environment.
“If the world gets too hot, we won’t be able to exist on Planet Earth,” she said.
She also is an animal rights activist.
“I don’t want to hurt the animals,” she said.
Now, thanks to Miller, Roland Park K-8 agreed to bring back “Meatless Mondays” starting this fall.
For Teacher Appreciation week, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden made their way to Yorktown (Va.) Elementary School and visited with some fifth graders. The school visit was part of the White House’s Getting America Back on Track: American Family Plan Tour, a push for returning to in-person learning for all kids.
Prior to the visit, Yorktown’s Sodexo foodservice team didn’t have a lot of advanced notice but were tasked with setting up a hospitality tent with water and grab-and-go snacks for the media who would be attending and keeping lunch that day on track as well, a duty Sodexo GM Michelle Lee Knotts considers her top priority, no matter how exciting the special guests.
“It was pure excitement,” Knotts says of the moment she heard about the President’s visit, “and then, of course, my mind changes to food: He’s coming to an elementary school where I need to make sure the kids are fed at the same time…what in the world was that going to look like?”
After spending a busy weekend getting logistics set up, portions of the building were identified and some of the production was done off site. “We had to be very tight-lipped” about the planning, “as we were putting things into place, I wasn’t telling the staff about the visit. We had to keep it as quiet as possible,” Knotts says. “I couldn’t believe how much goes into planning when the President is coming!”
On the day of the visit, Air Force One arrived in Newport News, where the Bidens met Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Virginia First Lady Pamela Northam then headed to the school, where the principal and other school leaders were waiting, along with Congresswoman Elaine Luria and her daughter, Violette.
The Bidens got to hang out on a fifth-grade class, where the First Lady asked a few students, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (One of the answers was chef!)
The lunch service for the day went off without a hitch, and some of the foodservice staff stood outside and waved to the Bidens—who shouted hellos and thank yous—as they left the school parking lot in “the Beast,” a special armored car.
After the visit, Biden tweeted: “Jill and I visited a classroom today where students are back together with their classmates and teachers. We know what being in school together means for those kids—it’s why we worked so hard to safely reopen the majority of K-8 schools in our first 100 days.”
For her part, Knotts says, “We were truly happy to be a small part of this event; while I was not expecting to meet the President, I was there to take care of our children, because that’s what I’m here to do.”
Republished with permission from Food Management magazine
The National Council of Farm Cooperatives said the executive order President Biden signed Monday to enforce and strengthen “Buy American” provisions should lead to oversight of Agriculture Department school meals purchases.
“The president is taking action to reset the U.S. government’s longstanding approach to domestic preferences to create an approach that will remain durable for years to come and grow quality, union jobs,” the White House said in a fact sheet about the executive order.
“The president’s executive order establishes the goals and standards necessary to use federal purchasing, and other forms of federal assistance with domestic preference requirements, as a way to proactively invest in American industry so it can continue to lead in the global marketplace.”
The White House noted that the executive order refers to “domestic preferences related to federal procurement, federal grants, and other forms of federal assistance. Buy American and Buy America refers to the specific statutes that go by those names,” adding that a director of Made in America will be appointed in the White House Office of Management and Budget to oversee implementation of the order.
NCFC noted that it and its members have expressed deep concern in recent years over a marked increase in the amount of foreign-produced food served under the school lunch and breakfast programs “when comparable American-grown products are readily available and competitively priced, something that is contrary to the intent of the Buy American provisions.”
The White House fact sheet did not make specific mention of school food purchases.
“On behalf of America’s farmer co-ops and their member-owners, I would like to thank President Biden for signaling his strong support for ‘Buy American’ provisions as a way to ensure good jobs and prosperous local economies across the country,” said Chuck Conner, president and CEO of NCFC.
“At the same time, the previous administration started by making a similar show of support for these provisions, but failed to put substance and action behind its words. Hopefully, by appointing a new director of Made In America within the White House, this administration will be more active in enforcing existing requirements in the law and in working with Congress to strengthen these provisions.”
NCFC said that examples of schools buying foreign foods are:
– 81% of apple juice served in U.S. schools is imported;
– 50-60% of the fish served in schools are caught by Russian ships and processed in China;
National School Lunch week shines the spotlight on the programs and nutritious food that’s served up every day all year long at schools across the country.
“We have the opportunity in the state of Alabama to reach approximately three quarters of a million children on a daily basis for meals,” said June Barrett, Alabama Child Nutrition Program Coordinator for the state Department of Education. Nationally, the School Lunch Program serves nearly 30 million students every school day.
“If a child is hungry, they cannot learn. And I think that that’s probably the biggest message that we need to provide to parents and to the community in general,” Barrett explains about the importance of the School Lunch Program. “Because if a child did not come to school, having eaten breakfast, did not have an opportunity to eat lunch, then they would not be able to sit in the chairs and learn from the teachers or listen to what the teachers are trying to present to them.”
The coronavirus pandemic has added some major challenges to the mission of making sure every child is fed.
“Some of the challenges our local Child Nutrition directors face were actually making contact with the children once the schools were released in March,” Barrett said. “We did provide meals, we had curbside pickup. We thought out of the box as much as you could possibly think out of the box and provide meals to children. And it’s been very, very valuable. We’ve partnered also with our Department of Transportation, and meals were actually delivered by bus drivers through certain communities. We’ve had all sorts of opportunities to encourage children to dine with us. We have the fresh fruits and vegetable program and USDA allowed us to extend that to the to the children who were at home learning during virtual learning processes. So we’ve really tried as diligently and served as many children as we could serve meals and food while they were away from the school grounds.”
The theme for this year’s National School Lunch week is “Now Playing” and it’s “centered around Hollywood themed processes,” Barrett explained. “So anything that could be done on a movie theater basis, fun and having tickets to go through lunch line, you know, go through the meal process or special things that could connect. Now Playing in the theater role with the National School Lunch Program would just be something that would add to the perspective of receiving a meal and having fun, and that’s what National School Lunch week is, just really all centered around having fun with children.”
Washington, DC – During National School Lunch Week, we celebrate our Nation’s commitment to providing nutritious food to millions of students, and we recognize the many dedicated food service professionals and administrators who help carry out this mission. In a typical year, the National School Lunch Program provides meals to nearly 30 million schoolchildren every day across the country. These meals enable students in need to eat nutritious meals, which helps them achieve academic success and reach their full potential.
The National School Lunch Program succeeds because of the strong partnerships between the Federal Government and State governments, food service professionals, and local school leaders. Our Nation’s farmers, ranchers, and producers are also essential to providing the food our children eat. Since this program was established in 1946, the collaboration between these key players has been vital to its success, and their cooperation has never been more crucial than during this pivotal time in our Nation’s history.
In recent months, it has become increasingly evident just how many families depend on the meals provided at school. As thousands of schools transitioned to remote learning in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act to ensure schools could continue serving children the meals they need. My Administration also launched the innovative public-private partnership “Meals to You,” which delivered more than 40 million nutritious meals to children in rural areas while schools were closed. In the battle with this invisible enemy, resilience and flexibility have been critical to keeping our children safe and fed, and we are thankful for the extra efforts that have been made to achieve this goal.
Throughout the last few months, my Administration has recognized that our children’s well-being depends so much on their access to schools. I have encouraged all schools to safely reopen, and we want to ensure that they are as prepared as ever to provide healthy meals to all students. In June, my Administration invested in the health of students by awarding more than $12.1 million — a record amount — in Farm to School Grants. These funds will help bring clean, fresh, and locally‑grown foods into schools and communities as they reopen, and will help foster economic opportunity for America’s farmers as we continue our economic comeback. Additionally, on October 9, my Administration extended flexibilities and waived requirements to continue operating the summer meals program and the seamless summer option at no cost until the end of the school year. This program allows any child under 18 to get a free meal at a meal distribution site, and allows parents and guardians to pick up meals for their children. We are proud of these measures and others that we have taken to help ensure that all students have access to nutritious food.
To emphasize the importance of the National School Lunch Program, the Congress, by joint resolution of October 9, 1962 (Public Law 87–780), has designated the week beginning on the second Sunday in October each year as “National School Lunch Week,” and has requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this week.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 11 through October 17, 2020, as National School Lunch Week. I call upon all Americans to join the countless individuals who administer the National School Lunch Program in activities that support and promote awareness of the health and well-being of our Nation’s children.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools nutrition leaders introduced a meal bundle program that will enable students to get meals even as the district opens in fully-remote learning.
With CMS Eats at Home, families can preorder meal bundles to be delivered once weekly or for pick up at one of 40 CMS sites.
Bundles include five breakfasts and five lunches. Families will begin receiving meals the week of Sept. 1.
Families will be able to preorder using the district’s existing PayPAMS system. Families who are not registered for PayPAMS can register at https://paypams.com/.
Meal bundle deliveries for the week of Sept. 1 must be ordered by Aug. 18 and order for pick up by Aug. 26.
The program is free for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students enrolled in Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) schools. All other families can purchase meal bundles for $15 per week.
Families must complete the 2020-2021 family meal application to see if they qualify for meal benefits. The online application can be completed by clicking here.
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