Petaluma City Schools Serve 30K Meals Amid Coronavirus Closure

PETALUMA, CA — Despite the coronavirus pandemic keeping Petaluma and millions of other California K-12 students hunkered down at home with computer screens replacing blackboards, there’s one schoolhouse ritual that remains the same albeit with substantial modifications: the school breakfast and lunch program.

No longer does student chatter echo in school cafeterias. In the age of coronavirus, Grab & Go meals distributed in drive-thru or walk-up feeding lines have replaced the parade of school children filing into lunchrooms. It’s the new face of brown bagging.

It’s forced many districts to completely revamp the way they feed students.

An important part of America’s K-12 education system, the federal National Student Lunch Program has been a school district staple since its creation in 1946 to provide students with a free or reduced-priced nutritionally balanced meal for those who qualified. An experimental school breakfast program was launched in 1966 and made a permanent federal entitlement program in 1975. After-school snacks were included later.

In California the program is administered by the state Department of Education and operated on a reimbursement basis with most funding coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food & Nutrition Service and supplemented from the state’s general fund. Federal reimbursements are paid for all meals while California’s share is paid only for free and reduced-price meals. School districts submit monthly claims for payment by the state. During the first half of the school year just ended the federal government provided a nationwide total of $6.3 billion in funding for the School Lunch Program and $2.8 billion for the Breakfast Program.

Open to all students enrolled in public and non-profit private schools, districts receive a combination of federal reimbursements and payments by the state. Students receive free or reduced-price meals if they qualify under a complex set of regulations that assess socioeconomic status, family income and other factors. According to the most recent statistics compiled by the state education department, during the 2018-19 school year there were some 3.5 million students who qualified for free or reduced-price meals.

Petaluma City Schools had a 2018-2019 total enrollment of 7,821, with 2,553 students who qualified for free or reduced meals.

Before schools closed in March, Petaluma City Schools served 19,739 breakfasts and 35,439 lunches in January, and 20,130 breakfasts and 35,762 lunches in February.

However, faced with a public health emergency putting millions of California parents out of work and leaving the economy in a shambles, school districts that moved instruction online were suddenly faced with a new feeding format for students that were still technically “in school.” One problem was how to cover the cost of providing free meals to all students, including those whose meals did not qualify for reimbursement.

That concern was eliminated after schools closed in March when state and federal officials granted waivers to operate Grab & Go meal distributions and permitting school districts to serve all children regardless of whether they qualified for free meals or not.

Petaluma City Schools told Patch it distributed 7,114 breakfasts and 7,114 lunches in April; in May, 8,121 breakfasts and 8,121 lunches were distributed to district students. Distributions were made twice weekly for a total of five breakfasts and five lunches for each student.

Last week the Agriculture Department extended the waiver nationwide for the remainder of the summer, leaving many school officials to decide whether they will continue service until the new school year begins.

Reimbursement rates are based upon the type of meal. During the school year ending this month, the combined state and federal rate for the School Breakfast Program ranged from $1.54 for each reduced-price meal to $1.84 for each free meal served. For the School Lunch Program, combined reimbursement rates ranged from $3.01 to $3.50 for each meal. After school snacks were subsidized at 25-cents apiece. Breakfasts, lunches and snacks provided to students who paid full price were reimbursed at rates from 8-cents to 41-cents.

Reimbursements for meals provided through the Summer Food Program this year will range from $2.33 to $4.15 with snack subsidies averaging 97-cents.

No summer meal program was being offered by Petaluma City Schools at the time of publication.

Most districts have yet to assess the financial impact of their meal distribution programs on already-strained budgets. The additional cost of food and packaging materials resulted in unexpected expenses that included salaries and benefits for food service staff.

Despite reimbursement for all meals several districts have reported significant losses of revenue previously generated by a la carte meal sales when schools were open. Districts are also expecting substantial reductions in reimbursement amounts due to the fact that the number of meals distributed since March have been lower than meals served when schools were in operation.

— By Bob Porterfield and Patch local editor Maggie Fusek