Child hunger, which is more prevalent than many can imagine, is not something most of us think of first when we hear that bad weather forces school closings.
Yet, while many children are happy for a few days off, other children are left to wonder how they are going to get a decent meal. For them, a day off school is nothing to look forward to.
Some caring folks in Ludlow understood this all too well when snow and brutal temperatures closed schools there for a whole week. In a district where most students are on the free or reduced-price lunch program — an indication of economic status — a week away from school translates into hunger and poor nutrition.
By Friday, when staffs could finally make it to school, three staff members and the Ludlow police patrolman who serves as the school resource officer decided to take some action.
NKyTribune Senior Reporter Greg Paeth discovered that school resource officer Scott Nottingham and Cathy Pedro, the family resource and youth service center coordinator for the district, shared a common goal: They had to get some food to needy kids in the district.
“I was walking out of my office to talk with him and he was coming to my office to talk,” Pedro told Paeth. They received help from two more volunteers. Kristen Goodpaster, who teaches special education in the middle school, and Kristy Collins, a high school English teacher.
Pedro said she came up with a list of 20 homes where she thought the families might most need help, then loaded what are known as “power packs” of food into Nottingham’s cruiser and a van owned by one of the teachers.
The power packs are designed to provide some nutrition over the weekend for needy students. The program is similar to “backpack” programs many schools have today to address child hunger. Pedro said the district’s food packs are put together by the Freestore Foodbank, a non-profit agency with a long history of helping the poor.
The agency’s website says the power packs are designed specifically to provide weekend nourishment for children who are “food insecure” and may not know where their next meal will be coming from.
The food packs include items such as canned pasta, juice packs, pudding, oatmeal bars, pretzels, crackers, and dried fruit, Pedro said.
“If this is the only thing you’ve got to eat, this will get you through the weekend,” Nottingham said.
In addition to the power packs, Pedro said Nottingham purchased packages of macaroni and cheese that were delivered to all of the homes.
Nottingham said Pedro scrutinized the list of needy families to make sure that deliveries were made to people who truly needed help.
“We looked for people who might be saying ‘I can buy food or pay the electric bill.’ These are the ones we really wanted to get to,” Nottingham said.
Pedro said the school system typically sends home about 40 power packs each Friday to help students cope with hunger over the weekend. Nearly 70 percent of the children in the district qualify for free or reduced price meals under guidelines that have been established by the federal government.
“The families were very appreciative,” Pedro said.
The kindness and understanding of the needs and realities of their students by these caring educators and a caring police officer is a valuable lesson to the rest of us — and an opportunity to be more informed about a pervasive problem.
48 millions Americans — including 16.2 million children — live in households lacking the means to get enough nutritious good on a regular basis;
Food insecurity exists in 17.2 million households in American, 3.9 million of them are households with children;
A food-secure household spends 27 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and composition;
1 of every 5 children in the U.S. live in households without consistent access to adequate food;
21 million children rely on free or reduce-price lunches for their nutritional needs;
3 of 5 K-8 teachers say they regularly see students come to school hungry.
These are not the statistics for children and families half-way across the globe; these are the statistics for your neighbors and the kids in your community’s neighborhood schools.
Gives you a new perspective on closed schools and “free” lunches, doesn’t it?