At 12:10pm, eager fifth – and sixth-graders begin to form a line for school lunch. In no time, it snakes out into the corridor. Today’s menu: cheesy beef nachos and a salad bar. Gloria Alvarez, the head lunch lady, is ready for her Roosevelt Elementary’s eaters. She and an assistant portion out plate after plate, going through steamer trays of melted cheese and beef taco mix.
The kids then file past the salad bar, grabbing salad and carrot sticks. At the end, a cafeteria assistant offers the diners a few drops of Tapatio hot sauce.
“Today was easy,” Alvarez says, noting about 200 kids are out on a field trip. “I’m only feeding about 400 to 450 kids today.”
But on average school days, she’s feeding lunch to 560 or so kids and breakfast to about 250, out of a student body of 644 students. For the majority of students in Salinas City Elementary School District, going to school isn’t just about getting an education, but also getting two nutritious meals a day for little to no cost. For the next four years, eight of SCESD’s 14 schools will offer free breakfast and lunch programs – for all of their students, regardless of income.
“The need for a nutritious meal is great,” says Carlos Murta, the district’s food services director. About 78 percent of the entire district’s student body is eligible for free or reduced-price meals. Murta expects through the new free lunch program, they’ll feed some 5,800 students.
The state reimbursement per meal caps at $2.50 and SCESD’s meals cost about $3 each. Murta attriubutes that 50-cent difference to sourcing mostly local produce for the salad bars.
“We try to offer more than just a bowl of cereal,” he says.
But to provide a meal with fruits and veggies that is completely free for all students, the district has to make up the margin with its own money. A partial solution: the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision, a program that launched in 2010 and was spearheaded by former First Lady Michelle Obama, which provides full reimbursements for all student meals to schools in low-income communities.
In the coming weeks of summer break, Salinas City Elementary, along with districts countywide, including North Monterey County Unified and Monterey Peninsula Unified, are preparing for summer feeding programs.
At SCESD’s, which is free and open to anyone under age 18, nutrition staffers expect to feed about 500-600 people breakfast and lunch at four schools: Natividad, Sherwood, El Gabilan and University Park elementary schools.