From scratch: School staff created meals to-go program on the fly

July 3, 2020  |  By Sidney Bewlay | Community News Service

On Sunday, March 22, the Harwood Unified Union School District closed due to COVID-19 but teaching, learning and more continued remotely through June 12 when the school year officially ended. 

But while teachers and students continued to work from home communicating over email and the internet, some school staff continued to show up regularly to the Harwood Union High School cafeteria. 

Staff worked hard and had fun too, even holding a Star Wars-themed lunch on May 4th. Photo courtesy of HUUSD Schools Food & Nutrition.

For 12 weeks, a dozen or so members of the Food and Nutrition program staff showed up with masks and gloves to make hundreds of breakfasts and lunches to go.

By the time the school year ended, they had packed up 59,290 meals for hundreds of kids in the school district’s six towns.

“Every single one of those had a fruit, a vegetable, and a milk,” said Program Co-director Paul Morris.  

Morris and partner Co-director Erika Dolan recently sat down with Waterbury Roundabout to look back on this spring’s extraordinary operation that continued to serve thousands of meals to school students in the district during the unprecedented time of remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As soon as schools had closed for in-person learning, Dolan and Morris had the paperwork in place and the approval for a to-go meal program that eventually would stretch into mid-June. 

This allowed the staff to get up and running immediately with food for hundreds of kids up to the age of 18 within the district. The program opened to youth regardless of whether they were enrolled in the public school system or not. 

The operation set out to distribute meals three days a week with each student receiving  up to two breakfasts and two lunches on Monday and Wednesday, and one breakfast and one lunch on Friday. 

In order to come up with a plan, Dolan and Morris checked out online forums with larger school districts such as school systems in Massachusetts to get ideas of what had been working (and not working) with meal distribution elsewhere. This helped them design their food distribution model. 

That’s how they decided to centralize meal production in the kitchen at Harwood Union High School. 

“It was very hard to put everyone together in the same kitchen to begin with. Many of our staff have never worked together,” Dolan recalled. “It was just different. You know, everyone needed to get used to it. When you add in also the pandemic and the fear and the chaotic moment that everyone is experiencing to the fact that everything is changing in your job.” 

Dolan described the first two days as a challenge, but one that everyone involved was able to overcome.

The staff adjusted quickly to working together. Having just one production kitchen made it easy to establish and follow new safety measures. Daily routines and checklists were posted on white boards to remind staff of each step to take to follow the new protocols. 

Morris said everyone had more than just food on their minds as they went to work each day. “There were so many rules changing daily that a lot of our energy in the beginning went into that to make sure that we were in compliance with those guidelines and to keep our staff safe and to keep, you know, the families that were serving safe too,” he said. 

Making all of the meals in one place meant that all of the local, fresh produce was delivered to the high school cafeteria. “We had an absolute ton of food,” Morris said. 

Food staff actually had to refuse some donations from the community.  Some contributions came in handy though -- pretzels, bread and applesauce -- from local companies who saw their business drop off due to the pandemic and reduced traffic during the stay home order.

Lawson’s Finest Liquids brewery stepped up to assist with transportation using one of their trucks and the New England Dairy Council donated 45 cooler bags. 

In addition to the staff preparing meals, three to four bus drivers assisted in transporting the meals to distribution points at elementary schools in the district. School staff including principals helped unload and meet families when they came to pick up meals.

Students and their families wrote notes thanking staff for their hard work. Photo courtesy of HUUSD Schools Food & Nutrition.

A school nurse helped coordinate the effort which involved weekly messages to families using online forms to order the next week’s meals. Dolan, Morris and staff worked on menus that relied on easily packable ingredients. 

Still, the school lunch program that’s known for its creative and varied menus kept things interesting even when the meals were traveling by school bus in little containers for students to enjoy at home. 

The program’s Facebook page kept close tabs on the operation posting photos of kitchen staff in assembly mode packing hundreds of salads with dressing, taco to-be-assembled, and even handmade pizzas and strombolis. Breakfast items included muffins and sweet breads. Fresh fruits and vegetables rounded out each selection.   

Looking ahead to fall, schools across Vermont are aiming to reopen by late August for the new school year and to welcome students and teachers back into school buildings. Many routines will be different to follow public health guidelines, so school meals likely will be served somewhat differently than before COVID-19. 

Morris and Nolan say they are ready to adapt to whatever the new protocols are and to serve meals again however they need to be served. 

“Obviously, it's still a wild card what school’s gonna look like when we come back. So, whatever scenario happens, we will be figuring out a way to feed the students,” Morris said.

Over the summer, the lunch program continues for all youngsters under age 18 in the school district. This summer it is operating from the Waterbury Congregational Church for Waterbury and Duxbury residents. Separate deliveries are being arranged in the Mad River Valley. 

Meals are prepared by the Barre School District Food Service and distributed by volunteers locally on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Information on the program is online on the school’s website huusd.org.

Watch: HUUSD Food & Nutrition Co-Directors Paul Morris & Erika Dolan discuss the school lunch program

Video production by Sidney Bewlay

Community News Service is a collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.