Schools across the country are suffering from supply chain shortages.
Two counties in our area are seeing those effects, especially when it comes to providing school meals to local students.
“We’ve never been as fearful as we are today,” Nassau County Schools Director of Food and Nutrition Services Lauren Jones said.
This is new territory for Nassau County Schools.
Local cafeterias are struggling to put out food on the line for hungry students due to supply chain issues. Officials said they’re usually good on fruits and vegetables, but they say they usually run out of meat and grains.
Just this week they said they ran out of hamburger buns.
“We were told just a couple days before they were supposed to be here that we couldn’t have it. Thankfully, a local vendor provided. We said we needed 9,000 buns in a day and they made it happen,” Jones said.
Similar issues in St. Johns County caused school leaders to take it one step further.
Starting December 1, the district will return to normal food operations, meaning only qualified students will receive free breakfast and lunch, instead of all students.
“We’re having a difficult time getting the products that we need and it seems really pending on the trucking industry and then manufacturing,” St. Johns County Schools Director of Food and Nutrition Services Sean Prevatt said.
Action News Jax asked Prevatt why schools couldn’t continue the free meal program even though it’s federally funded.
He said it’s a waiver a school can opt in or out of. They are choosing to opt out of it come December because of supply chain shortages.
“We wanted to provide that service if we could, but since the supply chain has gotten to the point where it is now, we just don’t feel it’s sustainable,” Prevatt said.
Officials pointed out they’re not removing free food from everybody. Families are encouraged to fill out a family lunch application if they feel they qualify for free/reduced lunch.
Applications are located at https://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us/food/free/.
Even so, Eric Van Allen at the St. Johns Food Pantry said families who don’t qualify for free meals may still hurt from this change.
“We have quite a few people that are in here that come here weekly just to get supplemental food for themselves and everything. And I think that’s going to hurt them a little bit more to where we might have to give them a little more food to help them through to cover the lack of school lunches,” Van Allen said.
Nassau school leaders hope they don’t reach that point.
Free meals are still available, but officials said the way things are progressing, it doesn’t look good.
“At some point, some school districts have to do it because you’ve got to be able to cut somewhere where you can have enough food for the kids who really, really need it,” Jones said.
Action News Jax also reached out to Duval County Schools to see if it had any plans to revoke the free meal program.
Officials said schools will continue to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students.
We also received this statement through DCPS by Jane Buttermore, the Vice President of Operations for its foodservice vendor, Chartwells K12:
“While the labor and product challenges affect the entire nation, Chartwells K12 works with Duval County Public Schools Nutrition Department to ensure we continue to offer healthy and inviting meals to our student customers.
The national staffing shortage has had some impact on our food service program; however, Chartwells K12 has hired nearly 300 new employees since the beginning of the school year, with a total staff of around 1,100. We continue to have openings in our cafeterias even with the new hire success. We have initiated incentives and bonuses for our current and new hires to maintain staff. Our two full-time recruiters are focused on hiring efforts daily through virtual and in-person job fairs and looking for creative ways to attract great employees to work in our cafes. For more information about working with us, visit duvaldiningjobs.com.
Product shortages are impacting our menu; however, we work daily with our partners to make adjustments that meet all qualifications of the USDA National School Lunch Program. Chartwells K12 works with many vendors to ensure we are reaching our many suppliers to find products
Additionally, we work with the DCPS Nutrition Department to slightly adjust the number of choices on our menus and reduce some offerings to ensure our cafeteria employees are focused on feeding time. We continue to offer a minimum of three entrée choices each day in elementary schools, five entrée choices in middle schools, and six in high schools. All schools continue to offer an assortment of fresh fruit and vegetables daily.
The district’s Food Service department worked with the USDA and elected the Covid-19: Child Nutrition Response #90 waiver. This waiver allows for the temporary requirement of meeting certain targets for sodium and whole grain products to be waived. Even though we have this waiver, we continue to meet all targets. This waiver allows us to make adjustments in the future if the product availability becomes worse.
We recognize the important role that meals play in the lives and success of the students we serve. Amidst the ongoing national challenges of staffing and product supply, we will continue to work to ensure we meet the needs of our students. Our dedicated staff of school foodservice heroes work tirelessly to do everything we can to proactively address issues before they arise and minimize any impact to the students’ café experience.”