Not enough vegetables and even forks: meals in US schools are faced with a catastrophic shortage of food

No vegetables, no buns, a few forks: schools are struggling to feed their students and food is scarce, reports New York Times.

Photo: Shutterstock

Schools across the country are offering less healthy lunch options as they struggle with stock depletion, delivery delays and fewer canteen workers.

School officials in Missouri travel to Sam's Club twice a week to stock up on frozen pizza and hot dogs. The Kansas School District ran out of vegetables last month. And in the St. Paul, Minnesota area, there are stocks of frozen grilled cheese sandwiches in case they run out of other food.

Schools across the country are facing shortages of basic food items like chicken, bread, apple juice and even plastic cutlery, as supply chain problems and a shortage of truck drivers complicate the simplest task of feeding students.

Officials say they are struggling to provide food for students, many of whom rely on the food they eat at school as an important and sometimes the only source of daily nutrition. Many educators say they expect supply chain problems to get worse in the coming months.

The problem arises from a confluence of events, most of which are associated with a pandemic. Labor shortages have shocked food distributors and manufacturers, who say they don't have enough people to drive trucks, retrieve food from warehouses, or work on assembly lines. The virus has exacerbated a shortage of truck drivers in the country, and companies say they are not hoping enough young drivers will apply to replace aging, retired from the workforce.

Jenna Knuth, director of food and nutrition at Northern Kansas City Schools in Missouri, is worried she won't have enough food to feed all 21 students in her area after three major food distributors said they would cut off supplies. Therefore, Ms. Knut's employees regularly go to local stores Sam's Club and Restaurant Depot, where they buy frozen pizza, potato tortillas and hot dogs.

Many of the foods they buy from wholesalers do not meet federal nutritional regulations, Ms. Knuth said, adding that while the food is not unhealthy, it contains higher levels of sodium and fat than foods the county typically buys. ...

“We’re doing the best we can,” Ms. Knuth said. She is now “begging” local distributors and suppliers to sign contracts.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Department of Agriculture has released a list of amendments to give schools more options to comply with federal nutritional regulations. On September 15, the department issued a new amendment to prevent financial penalties from school feeding programs if they fail to meet guidelines due to supply chain problems. It also increased the rate of reimbursement of food to schools.

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“We know counties are doing everything in their power to ensure that kids have healthy and nutritious food on their plate,” said Stacy Dean, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Food, Nutrition and Human Services. “We want to support and reassure these efforts. that no one gets into trouble because of unexpected difficulties. "

Beth Wallace, president of the School Nutrition Association, said the group is asking federal officials to further raise the reimbursement rate and temporarily ease requirements for certain foods to be made only in America. According to a recent poll by the association, 97% of school feeding program directors said they were concerned about supply chain disruptions.

Cindy Jones, assistant director of food services at the Olathe School District in Kansas, said schools there ran out of vegetables after a shipment was delayed. The district encouraged students to take additional fruits and vegetables instead.

When delivery trucks do arrive, they often don't carry all the food ordered by the county, Ms. Jones said, adding that the county only received about 65% of the orders.

Food prices have also skyrocketed as distributors pull back on price increases. Ms Jones said that sometimes the county doesn't know how much shipping will cost until the truck pulls up to the dock, forcing either to accept any price or risk being left without food.

“Of course we will take care of the children, but we are very concerned,” she said. “If we don't get enough reimbursement and funding to pay for these additional costs, what does the future hold?”

Supply chain disruptions have impacted more than just school meals. Coronavirus outbreaks have led to the shutdown of factories around the world. This led to delays in deliveries, rising prices and shortages of a wide range of goods, including computer chips, bicycle parts, and more.

At Liberty Public Schools in Missouri on September 13, county officials issued guidelines urging parents to send their children to school with packed lunches.

“If sending your student(s) to school with food from home is not a burden on your family, we recommend this option as a short-term request,” the note reads.

Richmond public schools in Virginia have replaced hot meals with takeaways this year due to a shortage of food service workers and concerns about the spread of the virus.

Maggie Cobb, 13, an eighth grader at Binford High School in Richmond, said she usually ate two or three times a week at school. She especially liked school pizza, hot food. But later that month, she took lunch and saw that it contained an unattractive meat sandwich. The girl decided that she could no longer count on food at school.

“It just looked gross,” she said. Her mother, Emily Cavanaugh, said she now packs Maggie's school lunches at home.

Matthew Stanley, a spokesman for Richmond Public Schools, said the district is working with its supplier to "check the quality of all meals" and is hiring more school food workers to resume hot meals.

Stacey Coppen, director of food service, said St. Paul officials began stockpiling fried cheese sandwiches and swiftly replacing them.
A few weeks ago, workers making hamburgers for lunch ran out of buns and had to switch to regular bread.

Photo: Shutterstock

“We don’t really expect to relax until late winter or early spring,” Ms. Koppen said.

The scarcity is not limited to food: due to a shortage of disposable spoons, forks and knives, some schools have begun to preserve cutlery.

In the Dallas Independent School District, schools now offer mostly breakfast snacks on Tuesdays and Thursdays to reduce the need for plastic cutlery. In a county that normally stocks cutlery for a month, stocks are currently limited to nine days. On Tuesdays, all lunches in the area are snacks only, no cutlery is offered.
Instead of salad and applesauce, students will receive carrot sticks and apple wedges. And instead of spaghetti and meatballs, they offer chicken cutlets.

"I've never seen a supply chain in such chaos, I've been doing this for 30 years," said Michael Rosenberger, the county's executive director of nutrition and child nutrition.

Labor shortages have exacerbated the problem, harming both distributors and food manufacturers.

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Suzanne Raichi, chief executive of Ginsberg's Foods in Hudson, NY, said the distributor had to abandon about 80 school districts due to a shortage of drivers and warehouse workers. Even for the schools it continues to work with, the company has had to increase delivery times.
Rich Products Corporation, a Buffalo-based manufacturer that supplies food to more than 2000 school districts, is struggling to hire workers, said Kevin Spratt, senior vice president who leads the company's K-12 team. Several of its factories have up to 50 vacancies.

A labor shortage, coupled with a shortage of ingredients and packaging materials, made it difficult for the company to fulfill its orders. The company has suspended production of about 15 of the products it normally sells to schools, although it was able to offer replacements, Spratt said.

“We don’t have enough labor to meet the demand,” Spratt said.

Labor shortages have seeped into schools as well. Andrew Mergens, senior director of student nutrition for the Anchorage school district, said the district cannot provide hot meals in seven schools because there were not enough workers to prepare and serve food. Instead, the county offers pre-packaged, pre-packaged meals for lunch.

“As you can imagine, shelf-stable meat is not the best, but it’s all we have,” Mr. Mergens said.

Even where Anchorage can offer hot meals, it has become difficult to plan and prepare menus. The situation began to put pressure on district staff: four cafeteria managers have resigned since the beginning of the school year.

“They feel undervalued,” Mr. Mergens said. “No one really understands the impact a cafeteria manager has on the day-to-day running of a school until they try it themselves.”

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