Supply Chain Cracks Cause School Lunch Issues in PCSD
The COVID-19 pandemic made the world reinvent schooling. Even when in-person school was back in session, districts everywhere were presented with a myriad of obstacles to overcome in order to make it function again. One key issue was the fuel that kids needed to get through the day.
School lunch programs suffered mightily as they operated during the pandemic. According to a survey from the School Nutrition Association, 97% of school nutrition directors nationwide “are concerned about continued pandemic supply chain disruptions, with 65% citing this as a serious concern.”
The Poughkeepsie City School District is among the districts dealing with supply chain problems. The pandemic has greatly affected their product distributors, and therefore, their menus. “The supply issue has led to having to change the menu numerous times after being printed and sorted out,” said Allison Jackson-Stephenson, the district’s Director of Food Services.
Some vendors, she explained, can’t provide the full quantity of items that the district ordered, which leaves some schools short of the supply of popular items such as chicken nuggets. In these instances, “you have to improvise and give them something totally different,” Jackson-Stephenson said. For a menu plan that doesn’t offer the same lunch main course twice in a week, finding these replacements can be a challenge.
Shamel Tolbert has been a cook manager since 2016, first at Poughkeepsie High School before being moved to Poughkeepsie Middle School for this school year. “You can’t get your usual food that you usually want to get. They’re all out of things,” he said. “Today, I called two vendors — out of chicken, out of burgers, out of the main course stuff that kids really like…It’s kind of frustrating and kind of hard.”
Andre Nunes, a cook manager at the high school, explained that issues with the supply chain run deep. “Everybody’s having a problem with staffing, and that trickles down to us,” he said. Problems with deliveries, unavailable items and having to find new vendors have been continuous problems without solutions, other than to just work around them by being as creative as possible.
“I try not to rely so much on distributors; I just use what they can give me and be creative with it,” Nunes said. For one package of ground beef, he says, he’ll use it for meat sauce, baked ziti, burgers, lasagna, nachos, burritos and more.
In one recent instance, Nunes recalls having to figure out how to use the new shipment of ground beef. He and a few other cooks used the 450 pounds of raw beef to make meatloaf, an item they previously had not served. Although Nunes’ job is mostly to oversee kitchen operations and manage his kitchen’s inventory, he’ll do some cooking from time to time.
A waiver instituted by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) allowed districts to circumvent normal nutritional guidelines for this school year. “FNS recognizes that given current supply chain disruptions that are a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, state agencies and [school food authorities] need additional support and flexibility to continue to serve meals to children during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the waiver said.
“What your guidelines would normally be, you have to end up buying outside of that scope because things are not available to you,” Jackson-Stephenson said. The cereal that the school sells, for example, contains eight grams of sugar per serving. New York state guidelines typically allow no more than six.
Although the food service staff has been scrambling, the students have still been able to enjoy school lunches. The PCSD is enrolled in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an FNS program that allows schools in low-income areas to serve breakfast and lunch to students free of charge.
“All students enrolled at Poughkeepsie City School District are eligible to receive a healthy breakfast and lunch at school at no charge to your household each day of the 2021–2022 school year. No further action is required of you,” wrote Jackson-Stephenson in a letter to parents. “Your child(ren) will be able to participate in these meal programs without having to pay a fee or submit an application.”
Until distributor-and-shipment-related problems are fixed, the district’s food service workers will have to hone in on their creativity to provide meals for students. “Out of adversity, something great can form,” said Nunes.
The crunch of the pandemic brought them new, sour challenges to overcome. They responded with a creative brainstorm, putting those lemons to use by making them into lemonade, lemon meringue pie, garnishes for salmon and chicken and much more.
