By Gerri Miller
Elmore/Autauga News Staff Writer
Over a million served (many years ago) used to be part of the branding for a famous hamburger chain but now an Elmore County child feeding program has taken over that distinction.
The Elmore County Child Nutrition program has served more than 1.3 million meals since March 17th, said Program Director Cayce Davis. The program started serving the meals to children after Gov. Kay Ivey made the announcement that schools would be closing. Elmore County schools were closed on the 16th due to COVID-19 concerns.
That number will grow this coming week, when the program again distributes meals at various locations. On Thursday, June 11, food will again be distributed. It was originally scheduled for June 8, but due to weather concerns the distribution was changed to June 11.
“We knew how many kids rely on their meals from the schools,” Davis said. “Our first question was how were they going to receive these meals.”
Davis said she pulled together a team from the County’s 14 cafeterias to make it happen. “We were concerned about making sure kids got fed as well as keeping our employees and our funding going,” she said. Funding for school feeding programs is based on the number of children served. Reimbursement comes from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Without the program, some children who rely on their schools for their breakfast and lunch might go hungry. “Over half of our kids are on free or reduced lunch,” said Elmore County School Superintendent Richard Dennis.
Dennis updated the Elmore County Board of Education on the status of the program on Tuesday.
The team pulled together an army of volunteers who were both school employees and others from the community. They set up food pick up points at Coosada Elementary, Wetumpka Middle School, Holtville High School, Eclectic Middle School and Redland Elementary School.
Davis said more than 50 of the 100 lunchroom staff have chosen to volunteer their time working to feed students at the various sites.
“When this happened none of these employees were required to come to work, but over 50 worked the entire time,” she said.
Davis said when it was determined they would also need outside help to make the program run smoothly, the Elmore County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) stepped up to the plate. EMA recruited and organized volunteers through multiple churches and other organizations.
“It’s been an entire community effort,” Davis said. “She said the logistics of serving meals like this was something we had never done before.”
Davis said at first the plan was to serve meals three times a week and they did just that briefly. “By the third serving day, I realized that it wasn’t physically possible for us to do this three days a week.”
The physical demands forced the team to come up with a new plan. A USDA waiver allowed school systems to served multiple meals. So, they moved to serving only on Mondays, with bags packed for enough breakfast and lunches to last one week.
By March 30th, the team converted the delivery process. Food for each child included a gallon of milks, three pounds of fruit, a shelf-stable bag of food as well as a bag of frozen food. Cars line up hours ahead of the time for the line to open and drive through the drop off process. The only request is that each food bundle be for a child 18 years old or younger.
On Monday morning, Davis and her team at Wetumpka Middle started working by 6:30 a.m. to move moving food prepared inside the lunchroom to staging areas under the tents. By 9 a.m., a steady stream of cars came through the line with trunks up and ready for packing. A piece of colored paper with a number told volunteers how many food bundles were to be packed in each trunk.
The line was steady and efficient, with cars stopping at a station for milk and frozen meals. Another stop yielded fresh fruit and non-perishable foods.
The program has served children from surrounding counties. This was especially important when Autauga County temporarily suspended its food distribution program during the health crisis.
Like Autauga County, many schools systems stopped serving meals because of public health concerns. The decision left many families without food or having to rely on food banks for everything
Packing food starts a full week ahead of each Monday distribution. It takes a lot of manpower to pack enough bags for 9,000 children each week. In addition to the five pickup points, eight buses are also sent to neighborhoods across the county that have been identified as having students with transportation issues.
Enough food is packed on the buses to serve between 120 and 200 meals each. Davis said bus drivers and other transportation worker helped identify the stops where many children would be served.
Davis said volunteers at first spent hours individually wrapping items, but it became apparent that her team had to look for ways to decrease labor. She asked her produce guy about getting fruit in bulk and has since gotten fresh apples, oranges, and grapes.
“The food that was served at school was not the kind we could use anymore,” she said. “We had to move a lot of food around. It was physically demanding.”
Dennis said he appreciates the volunteer efforts of the community and plans for the program to continue through the summer.
“It has been incredible,” Dennis said. “This has helped us get the food out and aid and support the school system by reducing the impact of our sales tax loss during this time.”
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