In addition to its universal meals program during the school year, California has several programs that provide food assistance to low-income children when school is out—including meals and SUN Bucks EBT cards, which launched last year. How does summer assistance work, and why is it important? We talked with Barbara Jellison, director of food services for the West Contra Costa Unified School District, about the role played by summer meals programs in her community.
Tell us about the summer nutrition programs in your school district.
We have 54 schools, we encompass five cities [El Cerrito, Hercules, Pinole, Richmond, and San Pablo] and a few unincorporated areas. Overall, around 65% of our kids are low income. I’ve been with the district for 25 years and they had a strong summer food program for 10 years prior to my coming on board. We run over 70 locations.
Our summer schools are key meals sites. All of our cities have large recreation programs; rec centers are summer sites for their students and also community kids. They serve breakfast and lunch to anyone age 18 and under, which is great for families; their younger ones can have breakfast with us and then lunch when the families come back to pick up their campers. They can’t do that during the regular school year.
We have two mobile kitchens. We’re mapping out our summer routes now; we’re going to service three parks with each mobile kitchen from 10:30 to 1:30. It’s nice to see families out having fun and we see a lot of kids at those parks. Also, our district has a central kitchen that provides meals for all 54 of our school and afterschool programs. In the summer, we do meals out in front of our facility.
We also have farm-to-school grants focused on local organic produce. We do a lot of marketing and information on that for families and kids. Especially during the summer—a beautiful time of year when it comes to organic produce. Being able to serve it all summer to kids is really great.
We’re also able to employ a lot of our staff who would be out during the summer. So the program not only feeds kids but helps people work year round.
What outreach do you do to make families aware of their options during the summer?
We have a strong social media presence. I have a communications person who does a great job on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. Internal district programs also do outreach to parents about our programs, and the California Department of Education nutrition services does a good job of marketing and sending out information.
We also connect with our recreation programs in our cities, to give them information, and then provide lists of sites. We’ve gone mostly paperless, but a lot of these families need that paper list. We also have a banner machine; we create our own banners and post them in various areas with the locations of the closest programs.
What changes have you seen in recent years?
SUN Bucks is definitely benefiting families. I do not oversee the program, but we help families connect with appropriate people about their cards.
This summer we have 12 schools providing meals. A few summers ago, over 40 of our schools had some sort of summer learning program. Over the past couple of years, the budget has been hit hard. So we’re trying to do more outreach to our cities.
Pandemic eligibility criteria were lower—sites could be located in areas with 25% or more of children eligible for the school meals program. Unfortunately, 30% of our areas don’t meet the current criteria [50%].
But we still encourage all families to come to our locations. We advertise in the schools and recreation centers where we provide summer meals; we also provide information to all our schools and afterschool programs to make it clear that even though there might not be a site in their neighborhood, any child 18 years old or younger can come have meals with us during the summer.
What should policymakers know to help your district reach more children in need?
Supplying non-congregate meals during the pandemic showed that having that option is beneficial for both families and staff. It’s hard sometimes to have families eat on site—it’s not always the safest. I can see why families would like to pick up meals and then eat them at home.
It would be nice to have grants that allow adults have meals with their kids. I know we’re a child nutrition program, but if the kids are in need, I’m pretty sure the parents are in the same situation. At a couple of parks that we go to, the food banks provide produce; it is huge for parents to have something to eat.
My other ask would be to keep the area eligibility percentages low so we can serve more people who are struggling. Two out of our five cities do not meet eligibility criteria; It’s difficult to explain why one area qualifies and another doesn’t qualify. You have people in need in all communities, I think.
What hopes do you have for your summer meals programs moving forward?
We’re always looking to expand, and to improve our meals. Our district is focused on hitting the 100% mark when it comes to organic meals. Right now I would say that 50% to 60% of our meals are organic.
I would also like to reconnect with faith-based organizations. We have a lot of churches and mosques with summer programs; they would like to receive meals.
Summer meals is an invaluable program for kids. Before I started working for food services I didn’t realize how many needs it meets. I’d like to see summer camps invest their resources in having kids learn and have fun and have us provide them with healthy meals.
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