Schools receive new guidelines for meals

The Hot Springs County School Board was treated to an explanation of new federal food service guidelines from District Food Service Coordinator Hannah Brooks on Aug. 19, after she covered the success of the district’s summer food service program.

Brooks reported district food service staff handed out 11,937 breakfasts and lunches each over 58 weekdays, averaging 205 breakfasts and lunches per day this summer, using the same recipes and variety of hot and cold dishes as during the school year, earning “fantastic” feedback from parents and students.

Brooks praised “the ladies that decided to come in and work the summer schedule, which they normally don’t do,” to help feed the community this summer, before moving on to the recently revised USDA guidelines for school meal programs.

This coming school year will see the state of Wyoming serve under the Seamless Summer Option (SSO), which replaces the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), although Brooks noted that both offer the same increased rate of reimbursement per meal as last year.

Brooks explained that SSO was adopted because it hews closer to the previous National School Lunch Program guidelines (NSLP) than SFSP, which “kind of had a more broad meal pattern and program,” whereas the state and federal governments now want to ensure “we’re truly offering all the components our students need for nutrition.”

SSO made changes to the milk, sodium and grain requirements, as well as rules for serving second entrees, but milk, sodium and grain requirements have fluctuated enough over the years that Brooks said those are “not really anything new to us lunch ladies.”The big change is that seconds will no longer be available for purchase, even as Brooks pointed out that “only a small percentage of our students” actually ate seconds in previous years.

“District policy is that students must have a positive meal balance to purchase seconds, and seconds were only offered at lunch and not breakfast, which is a standard practice in school lunch programs,” Brooks said.

“The perception may be that we’re taking something away from our students, but many of our families in our district could not afford to put extra funds on their student accounts and maintain a positive meal account balance.”

Brooks clarified that second meals can be served, but must be free to all students, which Brooks acknowledged “could potentially cause a financial burden on our program,” since only “a very, very small amount” of those second meals would be reimbursed, while the district’s food service program would bear the costs of the rest of those second meals.

We most likely will not be able to offer seconds to everyone,” Brooks said, adding that “significant” food cost increases this year, related to the pandemic, plus food shortages, have resulted in changes such as chicken nuggets going from a per-case case price of $18 to $31, “and we all know how popular chicken nuggets are at school.”

According to Brooks, “the good news” is that the daily variety of fruits and vegetables in the school health bars remains free to all students, who are allowed to take what they can eat.

“We have to be cautious with added expenses in the coming school year,” Brooks said. “We need to stay focused on being successful at what we’ve always done, which is feeding our students one nutritious lunch, with a variety of foods to boost their nutritional intake, and improve their educational outcomes.”

School Board Vice Chairman Sherman Skelton asked if the food that goes unused from the backpack food program could be used for a pantry or food cupboard for seconds or snacks, but Brooks elaborated that all three school buildings already provide an additional snack program, with enough funds to offer a complimentary snack of fresh fruits and vegetables every Monday through Thursday.

“I’m still very optimistic about the benefits of a free meal at school,” Brooks said. “It allows us to truly decrease our food insecurities and addresses our school meal inequities.”