By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
The rest of the school is silent, but the Crim Elementary School cafeteria is really cooking.
In less than two hours more than 1,000 meals are bagged up for students who under normal circumstances would be eating with friends in their school cafeterias. But now, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, they are learning – and lunching – at home.
While teachers are focused on online learning, the cafeteria and bus driving staffs are charged with feeding the students.
Last Wednesday, that meant bagging up rows of breakfasts and lunches. One part of the lunch assembly line was packing “graham slams” which are graham crackers spread with peanut butter and jelly, carrots, oranges, string cheese, and milk.
“We try to give them some variety,” said Abby Forschner, food service director for Bowling Green City Schools.
Forchner knows that students and their parents are counting on the weekday breakfasts and lunches.
“I’ve talked to a ton of parents who are in a bad way,” she said. “I add kids to the list everyday.” Students can be added to the meal list at any time by emailing aforschner@bgcs.k12.oh.us
As of last week, the school district was serving about 200 kids a day – with breakfast and lunch. Every Monday, the cafeteria crew packs meals for Monday and Tuesday. They meet again on Wednesdays, to put together meals for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
“You use what you have. The ladies here are super creative,” Forschner said of the cafeteria crew.
Forschner has been known to search other kitchens in the school district to look for food to fill out the menus.
“I go on a scavenger hunt for food,” she said.
The result is sometimes non-traditional meals, like ham fajitas or combining ingredients to make pasta salad or taco salad.
She knows children can be finicky about their food.
“We want them to be interesting – but not too interesting,” Forschner said of the menus.
The cafeteria at Crim Elementary School has also become the pickup site for families needing other items like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, toiletries, and extra food like cereal, soups and instant potatoes.
The majority of the weekday meals are delivered by bus drivers to rural areas of the school district, like Milton Center, Custar, Rudolph and Portage. Two “grab and go” locations feeding about 80 kids a day are offered at Crim Elementary and Bowling Green Middle School.
The bus drivers, normally charged with transporting students to and from school, are now delivering bags of sustenance for them.
“I never thought we’d be delivering meals,” said Toby Snow, transportation director for the school district. “We’re getting more and more every week.”
The drivers also do a few home deliveries in cases where the families have no transportation.
Snow said it feels good to see families and know the drivers are performing a valued service during the pandemic.
“They say ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ and away they go,” he said of the kids picking up meals.
On Wednesday, Bowling Green freshman Faeth Buchhop made her own delivery to the bus drivers. She showed up to Crim with eight masks for the drivers taking meals on the road.
“I don’t sew regularly,” but the pandemic has driven her to stitch masks for family, older neighbors and the bus drivers, said Faeth, who is daughter of Kenwood Elementary counselor Elise Bucchop.
Many of the bus drivers double duty as meal packers in the kitchen.
“We are a well-oiled machine,” driver Jerry Anderson said as he packed up lunches.
On Wednesday, after bagging food, Anderson passed out meals from the back of the bus outside the middle school.
“I’m already starting to get to know some of them,” he said of the parents picking up food. “People seem to be very thankful.”
“It is kind of humbling when you look at all these bags,” Anderson said. “All of these kids rely on this.”
Anderson greets every parent as if they are friends. They chat about the Easter dinners they had days before, and about the struggles of online classes.
“They are telling me how they are doing with distance learning,” Anderson said.
Jessica Swaisgood stopped by to pick up meals for her two children.
“This gets me out of the house,” she said. And the meals provide a sense of normalcy for her kids.
“It helps me to make sure they have a routine. It helps with our new normal,” Swaisgood said.
Brandie Guinn stopped by with big cardboard boxes and a plastic bin to pick up breakfasts and lunches for 16 kids in her neighborhood.
“It helps a whole lot,” she said of the food. Her only suggestion is that the meals need to be bigger, since sometimes her children eat two days worth of food at once.
