School districts, community groups work together to ensure low-income kids get meals

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The need to feed low-income kids in the Yakima Valley is increasing every year, even as budget cuts make it harder for schools to meet that demand.

For districts working to fill the summer hunger gap, collaboration with community organizations is becoming a crucial part of getting meals out to needy kids.

"In very small towns, largely in Eastern Washington, it is still largely just school districts," said Claire Lane, the food security manager at WithinReach, a nonprofit nutrition organization that provides outreach for the state.

"We're relying on schools who have really had to cut back, and we know that across the board last year, all kinds of agencies were serving fewer meals and for fewer days," she said.

In Yakima County, there are 40 sites serving meals to anywhere from 40 to 120 kids each. Six of those sites are sponsored by community organizations, while another eight are sponsored by school districts but managed by community groups.

The meals themselves are covered by federal dollars. But the county's 34 school-district sites are affected by state budget cuts when schools have to shorten or drop their summer school programs due to lack of money.

By pairing the meals program with summer school, school districts have the administration and transportation costs already covered, but when summer school ends -- this week for most Yakima schools -- so do the meals.

And despite the need continuing to grow, the number of meals served during summer months has actually gone down.

According to reports by the Partnership to End Childhood Hunger, only about 8 percent of Washington's more than 400,000 eligible students received free meals in summer 2008. In 2009 and 2010, the number of meals served decreased as eligible students increased.

Sponsoring a site includes preparing the meals and providing the personnel as well as completing state-required paperwork. To be eligible, schools must have at least 50 percent of their students on free or reduced lunch.

Washington Middle School is a good example of a campus where the need is strong.

This summer, the school -- where 98 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch -- has served breakfast and lunch to about 90 kids a day, mostly to those enrolled in summer classes and their siblings.

Last summer, Yakima School District officials didn't think the district could be a sponsor because there weren't enough students in its much-reduced summer school program to make it cost-effective.

That's where a community effort came in.

A group representing 14 community organizations, including Yakima Parks and Recreation and the Southeast Yakima Community Center, met to evaluate the number of kids in their summer programs.

Once they proved that the need was there, the district was able to remain a sponsor and provided meals for 12 sites: six at summer school sites and six at sites managed by community groups.

For Linda Stone of the Children's Alliance, that kind of responsiveness from local groups is "just terrific."

"Yakima's the kind of community where if you can sort of point out what a change might mean to kids, then folks will put their heads together and come up with a solution," Stone said.

The Children's Alliance is encouraging more community groups to join the effort. Yakima County saw two new community sponsors this year.

What's becoming more common is for school districts to sponsor sites that are managed by community groups, Lane said.

In Yakima, the school district provides meals and handles the paperwork for sites that are run by Yakima Parks and Recreation, the Southeast Yakima Community Center and Bethel AME Church.

In Toppenish and Sunnyside, those school districts also provide meals for community-managed sites.

The program is reimbursed at a flat meals-served rate after sponsors turn in food receipts.

The Yakima School District doesn't pay anything for summer meals, said Cassie Davidson, the Yakima School District's program coordinator for food services.

Most of the district's 19 sites run the program from June 20 to July 21 or 29.

Much of the Yakima Valley has a high concentration of students on free or reduced lunch, which means that feeding sites should be numerous and easily accessible. But in small towns, access can be a big problem.

"Transportation is a huge barrier, especially in rural communities," Lane said. For that reason, part of WithinReach's job is helping sponsors think of creative ways to help their students.

In White Swan, the Yakama Christian Mission site is about two miles out of town, so every morning employees pick up 40 to 50 kids who live too far to walk to Mt. Adams Middle School's site.

"If we didn't pick them up, they probably wouldn't be able to get into a program at all and have anything," said Belinda Bell, program director at the mission.

The mission's meals are part of a free day camp they hold during the summer.

Stakeholders hope the program continues to grow.

"You just want to do whatever you can for those kids," Davidson said.

* Molly Rosbach can be reached at 509-577-7628 or mrosbach@yakimaherald.com.

The Summer Food Service Program was established by Congress in 1975 to provide free meals to kids. The USDA manages the program nationwide; in Washington, it's run by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

As of October 2010, 73 schools in Yakima County served free or reduced lunch to at least half their students. Twenty-one schools served free or reduced lunch to 90 percent or more of their students.

According to numbers from OSPI, 35,121 kids in Yakima County were eligible for free or reduced lunch in 2009.