School Foodservice Director Appreciation

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As we all know, COVID has shaken up every aspect of our lives over the past year. Being in a School Foodservice rotation during COVID has created many more educational points than being in a School Foodservice rotation without COVID. Schools have had to adjust their schedules and many schools are only having half of the kids in the building per day, if any. 

At the school district that I am in right now, they are going by a hybrid schedule. This means that the kids are split into two groups that swap days being in-person and being online. As you can imagine, this is difficult for the parents to keep track of and navigate with child-care. For a lot of kids, school is a place that provides stability and ensures meals. Once the kids were no longer going to be in school every day, the focus had to immediately shift to develop a plan that would provide meals for the kids even when they were not in school. There were many obstacles along the way and each plan among different school district has its weakness, however, kids are getting fed and that is the ultimate goal.

I could write a ten-page paper and still not cover all the difficulties that COVID has presented to School Foodservice, but the issue that I found to be the most unexpected was that my preceptor had to change the menu multiple times due to COVID and for different reasons. The meals that were on the menu were too difficult to package up and pass out in small paper bags, so he had to change the menu to accommodate for that. Along with that menu change though, he started to receive complaints that the first group of kids wasn’t getting popcorn chicken, but the second group of kids was. (popcorn chicken is a big hit at the elementary school) This led to yet another menu change to make sure that the popular menu items were available to each group throughout the month.

The purpose of sharing these issues that I have observed and learned about through my School Foodservice rotation is to bring light to the things that go on behind the scenes to make sure that the kids have as much stability as possible. Life is difficult for a lot of people right now and School Foodservice directors are doing all that they can to make it easier for the families to handle the school schedule and stay fed.

-BC

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