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Too many children go hungry in Mountain View during the summer, and it’s time to do something about it. That’s what Debbie Austin, the director of food services for the Mountain View Whisman School District, vowed when she saw that hundreds of kids were missing out on meals.
Austin headed the district’s food services department last summer, which provides breakfast and lunch to anyone age 18 and under, no questions asked. The food sites at Stevenson Elementary, Theuerkauf Elementary and Trinity Methodist Church, along with delivered meals, were largely a success in that they provided a total of 39,185 meals. But when she drove around the city, she noticed hundreds of kids at Rengstorff Park, at the library and in apartment parking lots who weren’t participating in the food program.
“We’ve got a large population of kids in our city who are hidden, who are homeless and who don’t have access to food during the summer,” Austin said. “I saw those kids playing in the park, but they weren’t eating.”
Summer food programs play an important role in making sure kids — particularly from lower-income families — don’t go hungry between the last day of school in June and the beginning of the next school year in August. Schools provide reliable meals at breakfast and lunch for all students, regardless of their family’s ability to pay, but that nutritional backstop vanishes during the summer months.
The name “seamless” summer had a hint of irony last year, being as the program only spanned six of the 10 weeks of summer vacation. On top of that, the number of places students could get a free meal plummeted once school let out for summer break: only Stevenson and Theuerkauf were designated as food sites, and those schools are located on the same campus.
Things will be very different this year, Austin said. Crittenden will be open to anyone seeking breakfast or lunch for an eight-week period during the summer, from June 12 through Aug. 4. On top of that, the district will be working with Second Harvest Food Bank to launch a mobile food truck that will regularly deliver lunches to Rengstorff Park, Klein Park and the Mountain View Public Library throughout the summer.
Rengstorff and Klein parks are ideal locations because they tend to attract hundreds of kids every day, and they are both within close proximity to a high number of children who qualify for free and reduced lunches, making it the next best place for picking up meals when Castro Elementary is closed, Austin said. Rengstorff Park is also near the dozens of RVs parked along Crisanto Avenue that have become makeshift homes for the homeless, some of whom are children.
Meals prepared by the district also will be picked up by the Mountain View Police Department, YMCA of Silicon Valley and Mountain View’s parks and recreation department and distributed at summer camps and youth programs.
Theuerkauf will be a designated food site again this year, but its schedule is mostly unchanged from last year. It will serve breakfast and lunch for a similar six-week duration from June 12 through July 21. But the district will continue to serve meals to kids at Theuerkauf’s YMCA camp through the start of the school year, Austin said at a May 18 board meeting.
“I’m blessed in that we have staff that are willing to work, to forgo their vacations, to feed the children this summer,” she said.
In a report by the research group California Food Policy Advocates last year, a vast majority of kids from low-income families reportedly missed out on important meals during the summer months because they lose access to subsidized meals provided by their local school. Of the 2 million California students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals, which is determined by family income, only an estimated 300,000 picked up free meals during July.
Last year there were 115 locations in Santa Clara County designated as summer food sites, which is slim compared to the total number of schools that normally serve breakfast and lunch during the school year. These programs typically last anywhere from four to six weeks.
Mountain View Whisman is planning to team up with Stanford Children’s Health to see how well the mobile feeding program works this year, and whether delivering meals to popular parks and hubs around the city can overcome food insecurity during the summer. The specific details of the study haven’t been worked out yet, Austin said, but it will likely track how many meals are served and how well the district can boost the caloric intake for needy families.
Expanding the district’s summer food program isn’t expected to cost anything. The federal government provides compensation to school districts for summer food programs, meaning the expanded version of this year’s Seamless Summer will be fully reimbursed — provided staff keep a close tally of the meals served.
“You have to keep very good records,” Austin said. “By law we’re supposed to have a balanced budget. It’s very difficult, and most school districts don’t.”
The goal for this summer is to serve 50,000 meals to kids throughout the city, an ambitious 27.5 percent increase over last year. It’s difficult to gauge how many kids will come looking for a meal at each site, Austin said, but the important thing is that the district boost availability as best it can.
“I believe we need to feed those who can’t feed themselves,” she said.
The School District is on track. Keep making positive ideas happen and don’t let up!
It is nice to see our tax money being spent on a worthwhile cause.
Website:
https://mvwsd.org/news-a-hot-topics/1221-free-summer-meals-at-schools-and-on-the-move
No matter where your political spectrum is, we can all agree that no children should go hungry. It’s sad that many kids in our own community are hungry during summer.
If you can, please donate to the program’s partner, Second Harvest.
Wouldn’t it be better to target those who receive free meals during the school year? I somehow think not many of them will hang out st the library or in the park during the summer.
Having something akin to meals on wheels would be better, no?
Otherwise kids like mine will eat the free food, while the needy kids go hungry as many of them stay on their apartments/RVs plopped by the screens as adults work.
This is awesome. I’ll send me boys down every morning and at a noon to pick up free meals no questions asked. I’ll save a ton of money for my new BMW and my TGIF bar tabs.
I would love to be a part of this movement and I commend the staff who are committed to blessing others with providing food for nourishment.