Wood County schools: Food scarcity, geographic distancing pose challenges

For schools providing meal service to their students during this coronavirus pandemic shutdown, there are several challenges.
Eastwood Local Schools has a unique kind of challenge — the district is spread out over a larger geographic area than many other districts.
As a result, food is being distributed to five locations — the high school office, the former Pemberville Elementary gymnasium, Troy Villa clubhouse, Zion Lutheran Church in Luckey and St. John’s Lutheran Church in Stony Ridge.
Food is provided on Mondays and Thursdays from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at each location. At Troy Villa and the church locations, a bus is parked in the parking lot.
“We were way over 100 kids on one day. Since our district is so spread out, we try to be in all areas of the district,” Assistant Treasurer Laurie Ruch said.
All meals are grab-and-go, and the district follows federal school breakfast and lunch regulations. Breakfast consists of a toaster pastry or cereal box, a grain, juice and a milk. Lunch consists of a sandwich, fruit, vegetable and milk.
        Students will get three breakfast meals and three lunch meals with six milks on Monday. On Thursday, students will get two breakfast and two lunch meals with four milks. In addition, each family will be provided spaghetti noodles and sauce, a loaf of bread, and a jar of peanut butter.
        These additional items will be paid for through the generosity of the Eastwood Family Fund. These funds were raised by Eastwood alumni and residents before Thanksgiving, said Superintendent Brent Welker.
         “If you are sending younger kids, please make sure they can carry everything. Parents are encouraged to accompany their child to help with transport. Again, these extra items may be heavier for smaller children, so parents may want to come with their child,” Welker said in a district-wide email.
        “For the safety of everyone involved, please do not send children or accompany them if you have a fever or are under any quarantine for exposure to someone suspected of COVID-19. Let us know, and we will work to get things somehow delivered to you. We do not want anyone to go hungry, but we have to protect our staff as well,” Welker said.
        The district was on spring break last week, so meal service will pick again on Monday, says Ruch, who oversees the program along with food service director Karen Brown.
 “It’s important for our kids to have healthy meals while we are on this break. We don’t know how long it is going to last; we don’t know how many parents have been laid off that really could use this food, so we’re trying everything we can.”
The program is seeing one issue develop — some products are becoming scarce.
“We have food service personnel, we have bus drivers — the food service prepares it and gets it ready and we send one cook and one bus driver to each location,” Ruch said. “It’s going well so I hope we can keep doing it. We are having a little problem getting product now. A lot of places are out of some items, but so far so good.”
Welker announced another change starting this week — the district will start using school vans instead of buses, and tables will be set out for children to pick up their lunches. Welker stresses the importance of social distancing and staying six feet from others.
If you have a child with any type of allergy, contact Ruch and a substitution will be made. If you cannot make these serving times and would like a meal delivered to your house, contact Ruch at 419-833-6411 or lruch@eastwoodschools.org.
 
Lake
Lake’s meal service just got underway Wednesday. For children ages 1-18 meals are free of charge and will continue during the school closure. The program runs in the main campus parking lot every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Children must remain in the car, and a food service staff member will approach the vehicle to count how many children, putting the appropriate number of bags containing breakfasts and lunches. If a family needs supplemental food for children, there is a cart next to the Boost Bus in the outer elementary parking lot to get one bag for every three children in the household.
“We’re letting people who qualify to pick up food; it’s kind of similar to a restaurant’s curbside service,” Superintendent Jim Witt said. “We’re having people go out and put food out there, so we keep our social distancing, but we think it’s really important that our kids get fed during this time.”
Witt says Lake is using food service people and volunteers from the Lake Township Firebelles help put the packages together. “They do just a tremendous amount of work for our district and we’re really thankful for their help,” Witt said.
Lake Township Firebelles have been supporting the Fire Department and Community for 73 years, providing a monthly mobile food pantry and maintaining the yearly Feed Our Neighbors Food Baskets program, which last year reached more than 80 families in the area, among other projects. 
For questions about Lake’s program, email Chris Wilson at cwilson@lakeschools.org.