Schools continue stepping up to the plate
Headlines hit all forms of news media recently about a school in Indiana where officials partnered with a nonprofit organization that helped get leftover food destined for the cafeteria garbage can to the district’s needy children who otherwise may not have had a meal at home.
The program at the school seems to already be a success, affording the opportunity for leftover prepared food to be packaged, frozen and then sorted into backpacks and given to students who had been identified within the district as being in need.
Kudos to the forward-thinking of the school officials and the nonprofit, who saw a way to solve two problems at once — to address a costly waste in the district, but more importantly, to make a major impact for children and their families outside of the classroom.
This isn’t the first time we have heard about schools addressing this need. Districts throughout our area have been stepping up to the plate to address hunger right here in our neighborhoods over the last several years.
In the Central Greene School District in Greene County, the food service department is busy every Friday packing backpacks with nonperishable, shelf-stable food items to send home with nearly 100 identified students in the district, so that those kids will not only have hot meals during the school week, but have plenty of food over the weekend as well. We have reported about other schools in our area that operate the same program.
About 30 schools in our area are now offering free breakfast and free lunch to every student, regardless of the family’s income level, throughout the week. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a reimbursement option for schools in high poverty schools that wish to offer free meals to all children. It is a program, local school officials report, that has shown many benefits right from the start.
And most districts in our region offer a summer lunch program, where meals are prepared at several sites throughout each district, and school-aged children eat for free while adults pay a minimal fee.
All of these programs are certainly addressing a need, and we commend our school officials for working to provide these much-needed services to kids who can’t change their own circumstances. We would, however, encourage our local school officials to take things a step further, and look into a program that might help with hot meals over the weekends, like the program currently in operation in Indiana.
We realize there may be a cost involved as extra packaging, work hours and other considerations would need to be made. But it could be a very small price to pay to ensure that every child in the district goes to bed every night with a full belly and the comfort of a true sense of community.