DPS Food and Nutrition Services employees Gloria Chavira and Jana Brown wait in a school bus to distribute meals at George Washington High School. photo by Ava Ward.
Despite the challenges of social distancing, Denver Public Schools’ Food and Nutrition Services are determined to deliver the food that students need to thrive.
It was a bitterly cold day at George Washington High School on Tuesday, January 26th, and the campus was deserted except for two individuals: Jana Brown and Gloria Chavira, two devoted DPS Food and Nutrition Services employees who were braving the winter storm to distribute breakfast and lunch to children in need. Similar food distributions were taking place simultaneously across Denver Public Schools, with dozens of DPS employees enduring the chilly winds and below-freezing temperatures in order to deliver meals to the community. The district’s new food distribution system is but one of the many ways that the DPS Food and Nutrition Services department has adapted to the age of the coronavirus.
“It feels like a lifetime ago, last March, when we were told that we were going to launch virtual learning,” recalled Theresa Peña, DPS Food and Nutrition Services’ Coordinator of Outreach and Engagement. “That Friday, we had to pivot to how we were going to feed students that Monday, and we weren’t going to be able to feed them in school.” In response, the department launched a fleet of curbside sites—distribution locations at schools where families could pick up meals—and delivery buses—yellow school buses that transported meals to various locations across the city. “One of the things we did that we had never done before was launch a partnership with DPS transportation,” stated Peña. “We were going to apartment complexes; we were going to recreation centers; we were going to some park locations, trying to get the food a little bit closer to where families were.”
Normally, the Food and Nutrition Services department’s primary form of feeding DPS students is through schools: breakfast and lunch are served every school day, and for families that struggle with food insecurity, these meals are a lifeline. When schools were forced to close in accordance with social distancing protocols, it was important for the district to make sure that lifeline did not disappear. “The number two reason that families were calling 311 for assistance was for food access,” Peña informed, referring to the City of Denver’s special telephone number that provides access to non-emergency municipal services. “In March, people lost their jobs. They weren’t getting paid; then, suddenly, you had kids at home eating that didn’t normally have to be eating at home. If you had a limited income or you were not working, that was a real financial hardship.”
It was clear that the pandemic had thrown tremendous obstacles into the lives of low-income families. “We knew that if kids weren’t eating, adults aren’t either,” Peña explained. Fortunately, Food and Nutrition Services was able to partner with the DPS Foundation to offer free breakfast and lunch to adults from the time of school closures in March to the start of the 2020-2021 school year. “Being able to feed adults through the end of the summer was a really powerful thing for us.” In addition, DPS received waivers from the United States Department of Agriculture allowing them to serve free lunch and breakfast meals to all children under the age of eighteen for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year. Normally, families would be required to fill out a school meal application in order to qualify for free or reduced lunch, and only school-age children would have access to free meals. With the new waivers, Food and Nutrition Services has been able to feed any and all children who wish to pick up meals from the drop-off and distribution sites, regardless of their household income or place of residence.
DPS normally feeds around 45,000 children a day. When remote learning began, that figure dropped to less than 10,000 children a day. “We were really anxious to know what families were doing, so we did focus groups last spring and then again early this fall,” stated Peña. The spring focus groups revealed that many families were disappointed with the lack of variety in the meals provided. In response, Peña’s team began to incorporate new recipes into their two-week meal rotation. “We started adding some of our scratch-made products; we had spaghetti and meatballs, meat lasagna, meatloaf. . . We definitely got feedback that the menu as of this school year has been a lot better. Kids are excited to get some of their favorites that they would normally get if they were in school, and we were excited to get to do some of the scratch cooking that our staff likes to do.” Another obstacle families reported during the focus groups was a lack of accessibility to the food distribution and drop-off sites. “If you don’t live at least within a mile of these locations, that’s hard. About 10 to 15% of the Denver population doesn’t have access to their own personal car, and RTD has had severe cuts, so that has certainly been another limitation,” Peña expressed. Luckily, the non-profit Denver Metro Emergency Food Network (DMEFN) helped solve this conundrum. They partnered with DPS to drop off boxes containing seven days worth of dinners and snacks on the doorsteps of qualifying families.
DMEFN is not the only organization that has stepped in to help feed Denver’s children. Food for Thought, a non-profit dedicated to filling the weekend hunger gap, passed out their PowerSacks (bags containing enough food to feed a family of four for two days) at the DPS food distribution sites every Friday during the school year. When DPS Food and Nutrition Services shut down for the last two weeks of December, the local organization Revolution Foods provided seven days’ worth of breakfast and lunch to families in need. “These are all innovations that we have had to be creative about. COVID relief makes us do business differently in order to make sure our kids have access to food,” Peña commented. Even non-food related organizations have used the Food and Nutrition Services’ new distribution system to help families. The Denver Public Library sent staff to the distribution sites to hand out books with children’s meals. In May, the non-profit CherryArts handed out art kits alongside Food for Thought’s PowerSacks in an effort to foster children’s creativity during these challenging times. “It was really heartwarming to see the number of both for- and non-profits that just wanted to support DPS students and families in giving things away that made life a bit more bearable,” reflected Peña.
Though many Denver schools are starting to return to in-person instruction, DPS Food and Nutrition Services will continue to offer curbside pick-up locations for families who have chosen to continue learning remotely. Even after the pandemic has come to an end, the department hopes to continue to explore how to feed families outside of school buildings. The challenges posed by the coronavirus have forced the district to take a crash course in adapting quickly, and with the support of the lessons learned during this unconventional school year, DPS Food and Nutrition Services is sure to come out of the pandemic faster, smarter, and tastier than ever.
