Here’s how 3 K-12 operators are feeding kids during the first few weeks of school

The new school year has started, and with it comes a new series of challenges for K-12 foodservice operators, who are working hard to feed as many students as safely as possible. FoodService Director talked with three directors across the country to find out what they’ve learned in the first few weeks of fall classes and how they see the rest of the school year going.

Be flexible 

As part of their training for the upcoming school year, Jeanne Reilly, food service director for Windham Raymond School District RSU 14 in Windham, Maine, had staff participate in a team yoga session. The exercise ended up becoming a good metaphor for how the team would need to remain flexible for the upcoming year. 

“I think it's become very thematic for our team through the past three or four weeks since we started getting together again, to be able to be very flexible and be willing to stretch,” Reilly says. 

The district has started its school year on a hybrid schedule, with alternating groups of students coming to class for in-person learning a couple days a week, and another group of students who have opted to do remote learning full time. As such, the nutrition team is serving meals to students in a variety of ways. 

“It's kind of a melting pot,” Reilly says. “Most of the students in our elementary schools are eating in the classroom. We have carts and kiosks that we're delivering food door to door at pretty much all those grade levels. At our middle schools and our high schools, it's a mix of breakfast in the classroom and lunch in the cafeterias, keeping in mind social distancing and things like that.”

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Windham Raymond School District RSU 14 in Maine is operating on a hybrid schedule, with some students alternating between in-person and virtual classes and others learning remotely full time. Photograph: Shutterstock

Students participating in remote learning full time can receive their meals through the district’s mobile meal van: Families order food online, then pick it up at five separate locations throughout the district. Hybrid learners can also receive meals from the van on the days when they’re learning at home. 

Start slow

The fall menu for most of the middle and high schoolers at RSU 14 is similar to what would be served during a traditional year since they’re eating in the cafeteria. Elementary students, however, are seeing some bigger changes to their meal options, at least for the beginning of the year. 

“We opted to start the school year with basically a sandwich style—cold meals versus hot food—to keep our delivery methods safe and efficient, and to really kind of get a feel for what the year was going to be like,” Reilly says. 

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Along with sandwiches, classroom meals include student favorites like bento boxes. Fresh produce from the school gardens is also being served as a side for all grade levels. 

Rely on social media 

At the end of summer, RSU 14 was preparing for the USDA’s summer meal waivers to expire and to switch back to serving only enrolled students and charging them for meals. After the USDA extended those waivers through December, however, nutrition staff spent the first couple weeks of the school year working to update families on the changes, which allow anyone 18 and under to receive a meal for free. 

Staff have used a multi-pronged approach to get the word out, Reilly says. One of the main ways they’re notifying families is through the district’s listserv, which allows the nutrition team to quickly send an email blast. Social media has also proved useful. 

“We are pretty heavy users of social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram, to get the word out to families,” Reilly says. “And what I really love about [social media] is I'll share a message, and then within the community, I can see how many people have re-shared that message. We share it once, but I mean, the exponential effect of social media is really fantastic. It gets the word out without only minimal effort on our part.”

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Engage students at home 

As the school year continues, Reilly is hoping to re-introduce the virtual cooking demonstrations they began last spring. The team is also looking at creating a cookbook with different school recipes so kids and their parents can recreate some of their favorite dishes at home. 

“We really want to incorporate a lot of our school lunch recipes that we've scaled down to a home size version,” Reilly says. 

Looking past the pandemic, another change she hopes will become permanent is normalizing meals in the classroom, especially breakfast. “Just having [breakfast] available at a different time, you know, maybe a little bit later, not having to rush off the bus but instead having it as [students are] settling into their morning,” she says. “I'm hoping that that continues after we hopefully get back to all students in the classroom.”

As for now, Reilly says she’s drawing inspiration from their team yoga session at the start of the year and is encouraging her staff and other K-12 operators to remain flexible and be open to whatever the school year brings. 

“Obviously we've all had to change our model overnight and over and over and over,” she says. “And here we are again, changing our model and re-strategizing, but I think the keys are to be flexible and to be willing to expand our vision.”

Form partnerships 

Flexibility and quick thinking have also been essential for the foodservice team at North Monterey County Unified School Districtin Monterey, Calif. The district will conduct remote learning until at least October, and the nutrition team has continued to provide curbside meals for students as they learn from home. 

“It's definitely been a learning process,” says Director of Child Nutrition Sarah Doherty. “And we're having to be creative and flexible and making changes on the fly.” 

In preparation for the new school year, the district added a couple new features, such as touchless scanners to allow nutrition staff to quickly ID enrolled students. “It's a safer method, and it's also a quicker method of getting cars through our lines,” says Doherty. 

Bridgeton Public Schools in Bridgeton, N.J., has had success with offering meal pickup later in the day so that parents can stop by after work. Photograph: Shutterstock

While the nutrition team relied heavily on pre-packaged foods at the start of the pandemic, they have now begun to introduce other items that they can package themselves. “Tamales, pupusas, spaghetti, mac and cheese are some of the newer items that we've added that we're able to purchase in bulk and portion out,” says Doherty. 

Partnerships with a local bakery and community members have also allowed the team to add freshly baked bagels, muffins and whole-grain conchas, as well as bulk produce. 

The district is also keeping up with nutrition education while students are remote, working with a local partner to provide nutrition materials that connect to what’s on the menu that day.

“A couple weeks ago, one of the fruits that we gave was a whole cantaloupe,” says Doherty. “So in every meal bag, we put in a nutrition newsletter about cantaloupe, with the health benefits, the importance of eating it, and we also gave some recipes for them so they can get creative with the food that we're giving them because the produce we give to them is in bulk so it kind of allows them the flexibility to do what they want with it.”

Spread the word 

Similar to RSU14, Monterey County Unified has been using multiple channels to spread the word about meal waiver extensions. “We did district all-calls; we put it on our district app, which sends messages to families; we put it on our Facebook and we handed out flyers at meal distribution,” says Doherty.

One way the district is trying to increase participation is by pairing meal pickup with homework pickup so parents and kids only have to visit meal sites once a week to get everything they need. Some weeks, the district is also able to hand out USDA farm-to-family food boxes, which also boosts participation.  

“Every week, we've seen an increase, which has been great,” says Doherty. “We saw a huge increase this past Monday. So the word is definitely getting out. It just takes time.”

Plan ahead

In preparation for students’ potential in-person return later this semester, the nutrition staff is working on a feeding plan. The district has been running childcare for essential services at some of its schools, so the team has been able to test things out with those small groups of students.

“We've been able to kind of see what works and what doesn't work though feeding kids that are on our campuses,” Doherty says.

While they are still in the planning stage, Doherty knows for certain that menu items will be individually wrapped and will preferably be served outside or in another safe space to allow students to get up and be active. 

“I think, for me, the most important thing if we bring kids back to the school year is finding a way to make sure that they're able to get up and move around,” she says. “You know, having them come and get their meals from us; I think there's definitely a lot of benefits to that.”

Keep up with scratch-made 

At Bridgeton Public Schools in Bridgeton, N.J., school officials were planning to start the year with hybrid learning, allowing 25% of the student body to come in one day a week. However, the district wasn’t able to get certified by the state to open up earlier this month so students will be remote until Oct. 13. 

When it switches over to a hybrid schedule, students attending in-person classes will receive their meals in the classroom. Those students will then take home meals at the end of the day to eat when they’re learning from home. 

Another group of students have opted for fully remote learning and will continue to receive their meals through curbside pickup. Earlier in the pandemic, the district began operating some of its pickup sites later in the day to allow parents to stop by after work, something the team is continuing in the new school year. 

“The big success has been in having [meal pickup] open from 5 to 7,” says Food Service Director Warren DeShields.

Meals served in the classroom will all be individually wrapped to ensure safety, and the nutrition team is able to use its own packing machine to wrap most of its meals in house. “Not everything is individually wrapped by us, but probably about 80% of what we do is on our machine, and we're using recipes that are semi-scratch or scratch,” says DeShields. 

Chicken and waffles and mini pepper jack grilled chicken sliders are just some of the favorite dishes being served this fall. 

Maintain relationships 

Throughout the pandemic, DeShieldsand his team have relied on their peers at other school districts to share best practices and ideas. Those relationships will continue be essential as the school year continues. 

“Having those like minds next to you that are going through the same thing that you're going through and being able to bounce ideas and network is tremendous,” says DeShields. 

He recommends that other operators follow suit, taking the time to reach out to each other and joining organizations such as the School Nutrition Association to learn as much as they can. 

“Be a sponge and soak it up,” he says. “Get as much information as possible and be creative.”