A rural school district used to serve 25 meals a day in the summer. Now, they’ve quadrupled that.

From KUT News:

Smithville ISD student Shelton, 16, is spending his summer making sure other kids in his rural community have access to healthy meals while school is out. It’s his second year working for the district’s summer nutrition program.

“It was a great first job last year. Seeing the environment makes me want to help,” he said.

On a Thursday morning in July, Shelton packed bags brimming with food into coolers lined up in the kitchen at Smithville Elementary School. The humming freezers and refrigerators created a soundtrack for his work as he held up one of the bags to tick through some of the items inside.

“It has pop tarts, pretzels, little potatoes, juice, little queso dips, apple sauce,” he said.

Smithville ISD distributes summer meals to families at three different sites on Monday and Thursday. Diana Steubing, the assistant director of child nutrition, said each kid receives four days’ worth of breakfast and lunch. Staff also prep the food so it’s easy for kids to heat up by themselves if their parents are at work. Remember those little potatoes Shelton mentioned?

“These potatoes, we precooked them so they can just pop them in the microwave cause a lot of kids are home alone and they can’t use the stove or oven,” Steubing said. “So, we try to make it as healthy as possible to be able to pop in the microwave.”

The meals also include two servings of vegetables and two servings of fruit per day, often in the form of fresh slices of watermelon, apples, oranges and pears.

Smithville ISD Superintendent Cheryl Burns said it’s important for kids to have access to healthy meals over the summer so they return to school ready to learn.

“It’s really about just taking care of kids every single day of the year,” she said.

Rural districts have more flexible summer meal programs

Smithville ISD Child Nutrition Director Candy Biehle said being able to distribute meals at sites throughout the area makes it easier to reach more kids. But school districts like Smithville ISD couldn’t always distribute meals like this.

Before the pandemic, federally funded summer nutrition programs were required to provide meals in what’s technically known as a congregate setting. What that means is kids had to go to designated sites and eat the food there. Biehle said that wasn’t a good way to help hungry kids.

“In years past with congregate [settings], we would get down to 25 kids, maybe. Sometimes 10 at a site — that was it,” she said. 

That changed during the pandemic when Congress gave schools the flexibility to let families pick up meals. While many districts have now had to revert back to pre-pandemic requirements mandating kids to eat meals onsite, a recent change in federal rules gives rural districts more options for providing summer meals — like distributing meals in bulk. Biehle said that flexibility has made a world of difference.

“This year we’re in the middle of July and we’re still distributing 80 to 100 meals a day and this is huge for us,” she said. “So, they’re there, we just have to make it accessible to the children.”

Smithville ISD is also one of seven organizations and districts that received a grant from No Kid Hungry Texas this year to support efforts to get healthy meals to kids in rural areas. The group gave Smithville ISD $20,000 to support its summer nutrition program.

“We often call summer the hungriest time of the year for students, because so many students rely on school meals during the school year,” said Mia Medina, a senior program manager for No Kid Hungry Texas.

54% of Smithville ISD students qualify for free and reduced-price meals during the school year.

Medina, who grew up in a rural community in West Texas, said families in rural areas face several challenges in accessing summer meals when they have to be consumed at designated sites. For one thing, parents may have to drive farther to get their child to that site, which can mean spending more on gas. A rural school district might also lack the staff to operate enough sites to meet the community’s needs.

“The rural non-congregate program really allows for…these school districts and nonprofit organizations to offer grab-and-go, to offer bulk meals,” she said. “So if you have three kids you can go once a week and pick up all the meals that you need and not have to be disrupted at work or potentially get in trouble at work.”

Medina said that when all school districts had more flexibility in providing summer meals during the pandemic, the data showed that more kids were eating them.

“It was a lot more convenient, you could do drive-thru, there was even home delivery options,” she said. “There was even a district in San Antonio who strapped a speaker to a school bus and played the ice cream truck song so that kids would come out of their home and pick up their meal.”

Biehle said Smithville ISD has used the grant money from No Kid Hungry Texas in a variety of ways, like getting better containers so fresh produce isn’t smushed and promoting the program.

“We’ve used it for advertising with the signs on the vans and things so [when] people see it coming they know it’s us,” she said.

Families say the summer nutrition program is a big help

The advertising seems to be helping. Shortly after Smithville ISD staff and student workers got to the first distribution site, cars began lining up to pick up the food. One of the first people to arrive was Virginia Rose and her granddaughters, Jaydah and Jaycee. Rose said she likes that the meals are healthy and help the family make sure the kids are getting nutritious food even when they’re busy.

“When I get home I’ll set it up for my daughter and put it — this is the meal for this day [and] this day,” she said. “So, whoever can just grab it and heat it up and just give it to them and stuff so they can have their little lunch and then take a nap.”

Rose said being able to pick up the meals in bulk is a big plus because there aren’t many grocery store options nearby.

“The only thing in Smithville is like Brookshires, but you don’t want to run to town every time you turn around…being out in the country and everything,” she said.

As Rose pulled away, the line of cars at the distribution site had already grown. Another person patiently waiting to pick up meals was Isaac Martinez, who brought his two kids.

His daughter will be in kindergarten and his son will be in third grade when the new school year starts. Martinez said the food from the district helps supplement other groceries he buys.

“It helps a lot, especially for them — they’re always hungry,” he said.

His daughter, Ivanka, shyly shared one of her favorite foods: pizza. Luckily for her, that was one of the items included in the meals being distributed that day.

The district’s last two meals-to-go pickups of the summer are July 22 and July 25. The new school year begins on August 14.

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