Around the Table

School’s out, food is ready

By Hannah Herner

When some kids are out of school, they’re not getting school lunches that they might depend on. Metro Nashville Public Schools and other community organizations look to fill that gap this summer.

MNPS implemented an emergency food box program for families after the March 3 tornado hit. When COVID-19 caused schools to close, they kept it going. Now, they’ve decided to extend it through the summer, and add on an additional bagged lunch meal program for kids.

This summer is different from any in the past, says Alison McArthur, director of MNPS’s Community Achieves program. She says even before the tornado and COVID-19 hit Nashville in succession, there were 100,000 food insecure people in Davidson County.

“It is different than it’s ever been,” McArthur says. “There is more need in Nashville for food than there’s ever been. On a regular week or month in Nashville, there’s a lot of food insecurity. But you take now, all of the kids are home from school and that’s an extra burden on a lot of families. Also, all of the extra people that have lost jobs that never saw themselves being food insecure now need help with food.”

The food box program gives families a box of produce, meat and dry goods provided by Second Harvest food bank once a week at designated sites around the city like schools and community centers.

The meals program provides bagged breakfasts and lunches for any child under 18. This program is funded by the Summer Food Service Program, and is normally used for serving kids at summer school, summer camp, and sports practices. With all of that canceled, MNPS will distribute those meals anyway at school sites and along bus routes. Neither of the programs require that a child be enrolled at a MNPS school to receive food.

Even families who cannot get to one of the sites or the bus stops can arrange to have meals delivered to them.

The Summer Food Service Program is a statewide program reimbursed by federal dollars that served 3 million meals to Tennessee kids last year. Davidson County is host to more than 200 sponsor sites. Normally kids congregate to eat these meals, but this year, they’ll be picking them up and taking them home.

“The need is always there,” says Sky Arnold, press secretary for Tennessee Department of Human Services. “The goal of the program, when you look at it across the state — there are families that depend on the meals the kids get at school. And what happens to those kids when the school year is over? That’s really where this program comes in, it fills the gap during those summer months.”

Community Achieves is a MNPS initiative in 34 schools. Each school has a coordinator that brings in programming around college and career readiness, family engagement, health and wellness, and social services.

“In a normal year the reason we spend so much time collecting food and distributing food is because if you’re hungry, you can’t think about anything else,” McArthur says.

In the fall, Community Achieves coordinators hope to get back to the mentoring programs and bringing in extra enrichment to schools. It’s unclear what that will look like with COVID-19 precautions clouding the future, but MNPS and the sponsoring sites start by meeting the basic need for food, so kids have the best chance at success.