<\/p>\n
Hunger doesn\u2019t take a summer break. When the final bell rings to end the school year, schools with large free- and reduced-price meal populations become part of the hunger safety net. They operate summer food programs that serve thousands of free breakfasts and lunches to children under 18. While the meals are free to students, there\u2019s a cost for schools that offer them. Managing that cost requires attention to data and operational best practices.<\/p>\n
School districts where greater than 50 percent of students receive free or reduced-price meals are eligible to participate in the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). These schools are reimbursed for the cost of meals by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the program. Unless a school district secures grant money or creates a partnership with another organization, those reimbursement dollars must cover administrative, labor, transportation and other operational costs.<\/p>\n
At Marietta City Schools north of Atlanta, Foodservice Director Cindy Kanarek-Culver relies on data to run two school serving sites that also operate as prep centers for 40 other summer food locations countywide. With a staff of 20, Marietta provides 2,000 meals a day during the summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI use data to tell me what foods young people like, and then I create a one-week cycle menu instead of a two-week menu,\u201d she says. That helps her limit the variety of food she must have on hand to create cold meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and hot meals on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Because she\u2019s serving foods she knows students enjoy and since youngsters don\u2019t come for a meal every day, the repetition doesn\u2019t have a negative impact on meal count.<\/p>\n
After a few years of running the summer program, Kanarek-Culver has collected enough data about food amounts needed to budget some of her federal allotment on summer produce.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to make sure children have the same opportunity to get fresh food during the summer as during the school year, so we reserve some of our dollars to buy fresh produce,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Marietta also reduces food costs by requiring the 40 non-school sites to pick up food at the prep locations. This requires Marietta to train someone from the off-site locations in regulatory feeding requirements and food-handling practices, but it\u2019s a big money-saver when it comes to administrative, labor and transportation costs.<\/p>\n
The participating camps, community centers, churches and YMCA sites are each provided a food thermometer, shown how to use it, and provided food logs to track distribution. The district uses insulated totes to keep foods at safe temperatures. It\u2019s a setup the off-site locations have come to appreciate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had partners switch to programs that deliver food, but they come back when they find out other sources freeze the meals before sending them out to the sites,\u201d Kanarek-Culver says. \u201cWe\u2019re able to provide freshness and variety that\u2019s very successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cabarrus County Schools near Charlotte, North Carolina, also utilizes food pickup for some of the 42 sites it serves, but it also has a mobile food bus that has helped the program grow to nearly 70,000 meals a summer. Data helps School Nutrition Program Director Daughn Baker manage the growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe track everything on spreadsheets, counting the number of meals recorded by each site manager,\u201d Baker says. \u201cWe look at those numbers when someone wants to be part of the program, and we can put together a pretty good guestimate based on a similar-sized site.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staffing is another area where schools look to data for cost management. At Grand Rapids Public Schools in Michigan, Nutrition Center Supervisor Jennifer Laninga oversees 16 school sites and 16 non-school sites each summer. She has used participation data recorded over the past 10 years to determine the number of foodservice staffers she needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe serve one-third of the number of meals in the summer compared to the academic year,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd since we only staff the 16 school sites where hot breakfasts and lunches are served, I can do the work with a staff of about 35\u2014during the school year we have about 200 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staffing is one of the hurdles that the non-school feeding sites must address. Laninga says everyone wants to make sure hungry students get fed, but they\u2019re not prepared for the administrative time that comes with it.<\/p>\n
At Cabarrus, School Nutrition Supervisor Carrie Bostic says she hires a current manager to be the summer program manager at the central cafeteria. This manager handles all of the administrative paperwork, and that allows Bostic to hire 20-30 employees to manage a kitchen that produces food for all but a couple of summer reading camps and school-specific programs.<\/p>\n