Lunch Time: USDA funds public schools around the country to provide free meals for students

Shawnee Mission Food Services Department is providing 14 free breakfast and lunch meals for all students weekly, whether enrolled in remote or in-person schooling, at all 47 Shawnee Mission schools.

At East, the food hand-out occurs Friday mornings from 7-9 a.m. in front of the counseling center. 

The school lunches include everything a student would generally receive in their normal lunch — an entree and about two sides — but does not include separately purchased items like chips and cookies. 

According to Food Services Director Nancy Coughenour, SMSD has been providing 620 meals per week to East for its students, as well as roughly 57,200 individual meals each week to the entire district. 

All kitchens in the districts are open with the kitchen staff working to prepare the meals to send home. According to East kitchen staff director Linda Bricker, the meals take about 30-32 hours a week for the kitchen to prepare. 

All entrees are frozen in one bag, with dry foods and fresh sides packed in a separate bag to be refrigerated so they don’t go bad during the week. Students can take these frozen meals home and microwave them, pairing them with their refrigerated sides. 

Every student who attends will leave Friday morning with the same amount of food, if not more, than they would typically get from the school cafeteria in one week. Students don’t have to have been part of the free meals program in previous school years  — any student can take these home for no cost. The only thing the students or guardians need is their student ID number to confirm they’re an SMSD student. 

“It’s pizza and chicken nuggets and hamburgers and chicken sandwiches and corndogs — all the stuff that we serve on a regular basis,” Food Services Director Nancy Coughenour said. “They also have fruits and vegetables and milk, all that.” 

The meals also include breakfast items such as french toast, pancakes, biscuits and fruit. Any meal that would typically be served in the school will be provided frozen on Friday mornings.

Students can pick up their meals at whichever Shawnee Mission School is most convenient for their family without a sign-up or application. For East, the kitchen manager and kitchen staff stand outside the counseling office, handing out the meals they have prepared and froze. Any student or their guardian can pick up the food from the preferred school. Meals for multiple students within the same family can all be picked up at once to provide convenience for families. 

“I believe the meals are serving as a source of great relief for many families. In a time of so much unpredictability, having a consistent source of healthy food is very important,” Family and Student Services director John McKinney said. “Moreover, it gives families and school staff an opportunity to see each other, if only for a few minutes, and hopefully brings some semblance of normalcy during this unprecedented time.”

If families’ schedules don’t line up with the pickup times, the school social workers make a case-by-case plan for how to get the meals to them. East social workers Emily MacNaughton and Elizabeth Kennedy typically step in if an East family has an issue to ensure they can get their meals if they can’t make it during the specific pick-up window. 

“Sometimes a parent’s work schedule might interfere, so that presents a little bit of a challenge, but we have not had to do a lot of that,” MacNaughton said. “I think parents have been really fortunate that it works with their schedule.” 

The same applies if a student’s schedule doesn’t line up. At the high school level, many students are coming to get their food for the week without a parent. If they have an interference like getting to class on time or not having transportation, the social workers will step in to organize a way to get the food to them. 

The funding for the meals has been provided by the United States Department of Agriculture to all public schools across the country. They haven’t released a specific funding limit, but they estimate the funds will run out around Christmas, according to Coughenour. When this happens, the meals will no longer be free, unless the family is already on the school’s confidential list due to their family income, and Food Services will then develop a new plan regarding getting the meals out to students.