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They won’t be cramming into teeming cafeterias, waiting impatiently in line while a smiling cafeteria worker serves them trays sagging under the weight of rectangular pizza, cups of diced peaches and cartons of milk.
But, despite the coronavirus prompting restrictions and varied schedules across the state, kids still have to eat when school starts this fall.
Amid mostly shuttered cafeterias and reduced kitchen staffs, New Jersey schools will have to modify meal distribution, especially for the 500,000 students who rely on free and reduced-cost school meals.
The state’s guidance on school reopening reiterates the importance of food distribution, calling it a “moral imperative to ensure the seamless and continuous feeding of New Jersey’s approximate 1.4 million students during all phases of school reopening” while requiring districts to “contend with health and safety guidelines that may modify or limit the ways in which meal service(s) have traditionally been delivered.”
Consequently, the state is not requiring schools to close down cafeterias. Instead, they will be required to stagger students coming in and out to maintain social distancing and discontinue all family-style, self-service and buffet options.
Though the option is available, some districts say they are choosing to keep their cafeterias closed, anyway.
“For the schools that are going to have kids back in the school building, they are going to have to think of creative ways to support school lunch participation because a lot of schools are not going to be bringing 100 kids down to the cafeteria to eat together,” Crystal FitzSimons, Director of School and Out-of-School Time Programs for the Food Research & Action Center, told NJ Advance Media.
Most districts will turn to two options to make sure kids are fed, she said: grab-and-go meals and classroom distribution.
Grab-and-go typically entails kitchen staff preparing and packing up meals, then placing them on tables for students to pick up. At some schools where kids are learning remotely, families can swing by school buildings to grab the food. For buildings with in-person instruction, kids can snag breakfast on the way in or a lunch on the way out.
“The meals will be delivered to the homeroom, outside the door with their names on it,” Wayne Ramsey, Principal of Cove Road Elementary School in Hazlet, which will open for five half-days of in-person instruction, told NJ Advance Media. “When they exit the building, they will pick up their box and go.”
Hazlet’s superintendent said food distribution will hum along at a normal rate through their contract food vendor, Maschio’s Food Services. The company did not return a request for comment.
“It will be business as usual, because we’re going to be cooking almost for as many kids as they did when they actually had children come to the cafeteria,” Superintendent Scott Ridley told NJ Advance Media.
Alternatively, some districts will actually bring the food to the kids and have them eat in the classrooms.
In Chester, where schools began last Wednesday on a hybrid schedule, classroom assistants will bring meals to the room door. There, students who ordered a school lunch will eat at their desks while socially distanced, followed by hand-washing and desk sanitization. However, unlike Hazlet, few students are taking advantage of the option.
“The lunch orders are very, very, very infrequent, and I think part of that is people just being very nervous — they’re nervous, of course about COVID, and probably have some reservations about the kids eating lunch in school. And then, in general, sometimes people want to send their own lunches, so the deliveries have been few and far between,” Superintendent Christina Van Woert told NJ Advance Media, estimating the daily orders at less than 20, so far.
Another part of the equation is cafeteria workers, sometimes contracted through food vendors and sometimes district employees.
In Chester, Pomptonian Food Service staff will go back to work in the kitchen at Black River Middle School, preparing food before it is brought over to the district’s other two schools for distribution. The company, one of the largest school food vendors in the state, did not respond to a request for comment.
Some districts will only be bringing cafeteria staff back for reduced hours, which union leaders say could affect their insurance and benefits.
“They really stepped it up, our kids had food all spring, they’ve had food available all summer,” Patricia Paradiso, president of the Perth Amboy Teachers Federation, told NJ Advance Media. “I just want them to make sure that they keep their positions and that they’re safe.”
There are about 120,000 school cafeteria workers employed nationwide, earning just under $27,000 annually, on average.
“The kids need food, and that’s one of the main reasons why I stayed, because I love the kids, this is what I do,” Loraine Daniels, who’s worked as an East Orange schools cafeteria worker since 1983, told NJ Advance Media. “I want to make sure that the kids eat and be OK.”
As districts gear up for the fall, with reopening plans mostly solidified, meal distribution will remain a crucial moving piece requiring consistent reevaluation, especially once remote-only districts begin pivoting to in-person, experts said.
“Schools are in this unique, unprecedented situation where they really have to think about everything that they’re doing to make sure that they’re limiting the potential of spreading COVID-19. And this is one component of it,” FitzSimons said. “But access to the nutrition programs is so critical and even more critical in the upcoming school year, that making those plans and figuring it out is really important in a way that’s going to support access to meals.”
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Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Have a news tip or a story idea about New Jersey schools? Send it here.
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