District tests all-year supper program

Bristol City Schools in Virginia is hosting a pilot of a year-round afterschool hot meal program at one of its elementary school sites. Called the Virginia 365 Project, the program, funded by a federal grant, is designed to provide three meals a day to each child during the school year plus food for weekends and school breaks and additional resources for low-income households to purchase food during the summer months. The goal is to see if access to healthy meals year-round can increase school attendance and test scores.

The Bristol district’s pilot site is Highland View Elementary, a pre-K-to-5 school with less than 200 pupils, making it a manageable location for testing out the initiative. Launched in spring 2016, the program at Highland provides students with a full hot meal, including entrée, veggie and fruit sides, milk and even an extra whole-grain snack such as chips, following the end of the school day.

“It’s a pretty robust meal, with the entrée like the ones we serve for lunch, which is more than is required under CACFP (Child & Adult Care Food Program),” the federal initiative that administers school supper programs, says Kathy Hicks, school nutrition programs director for the district.

The meals at Highland were originally served in the cafeteria after the end of the school day without altering afternoon bus schedules by adding instructional time in the morning thanks to a new breakfast in the classroom program. However, this past year, when even more instructional time was mandated, the afterschool meal program became in effect a supper in the classroom program.

“To get needed extra instructional time, we changed the way the [after-school] meal was delivered,” Hicks says. That was done by having kitchen staff prepare and pack up the meals in totes, which are then taken up to the dozen or so classrooms—up two flights of stairs, Hicks marvels—by parent volunteers.

“This way, kids have plenty of time to eat while the teacher is doing their normal end-of-day stuff that they do anyway,” before they head out to the cars and buses to go home, Hicks says. Participation is 100 percent: “We make sure that everybody who is in the building at that time gets a meal,” she emphasizes.

School staff found out just how much the afterschool meal meant to the children soon after the program launched as kids started getting nervous about whether the meal would actually get served each afternoon, Hicks recalls. “I realized they're stressing out at the thought of not getting [the] third meal, because they're so used to that inconsistency at home,” one teacher, Allie Kistner, reported in an interview with No Kid Hungry. 

The menu includes an entrée that is easy to eat quickly with little fuss—for example, nothing that needs to be cut, such as Salisbury steak—plus hot veggies like green beans or corn, sides like baked fries or tater tots, fresh fruit like a banana, cut apple slices or grapes and a carton of milk. Hicks says that while it’s not required, she often adds a snack item like whole-grain Doritos to the meal kit.

Supplies like forks, spoons and napkins are kept in the classrooms for quick access, as are packets of condiments, which minimizes waste.

The kids are trained to clean up after themselves and toss waste in the trash.

“It usually means one extra bagful of garbage that the janitorial staff picks up,” Hicks notes. She adds that the costs are easily borne.

“I have one employee who works 5.5 hours prepping all the food, and then one other employee who is the manager and oversees everything, and who only does an hour a day to help serve it out. So it’s only 6.5 hours of labor that is more than covered by the reimbursement.”

Three other Bristol Schools sites serve cold after-school super snacks that also work out to being full meals in excess of CACFP requirements. These are served in conjunction with after-school activities, so only serve a fraction of the school population, and generally involve ham and cheese subs or PB&J sandwiches with fresh fruit and veggies and milk, plus the extra whole-grain snack.