Penn Hills School District officials hope to offer students more food options such as special themed meals as well as cafeteria use next school year.
They are one step closer to doing so as the school board unanimously voted Wednesday night to approved a new one-year, $2.23 million food service contract.
Proposal documents indicate 281,600 breakfasts and about 394,600 lunches would be served. The proposal was attached to the online agenda via BoardDocs.
The Nutrition Group has been the district’s food service provider for at least the past five years.
Its 40-plus workers have provided free meals to the district’s 3,200 students throughout the pandemic. That includes take-home packages for hybrid learners and lunches and dinners delivered at bus stops via transportation partnerships to students learning online.
“We thought it was really important to continue the relationship,” Superintendent Nancy Hines said about the Nutrition Group. “Certainly the pandemic has affected operations. We know that with fewer kids on site, and certainly with the start of the year when most were on-site two days a week, they are not able to buy extra food items beyond the standard school lunch.
“To offer these other options in terms of having food for virtual students, that’s more labor intensive to be able to do that. There’s some impact in there. … We’re going to do the best we can to maintain operations and finish in the black, but that’s to be determined.”
Most students have returned to four-day in-person learning.
Meals are still served in classrooms.
“We really have tried to safeguard against bringing large groups together in our schools,” Hines said. “We’ve also tried to safeguard against any unnecessary travel in our schools. As a result, the kids have been eating in there classrooms. That requires special packaging. It’s not a matter of putting food on a tray and handing it across a counter to a student. They still have to be mindful of food allergies and other situations that might affect meal selection.”
Food services director Tammi Davis said she plans on welcoming students back into the cafeterias next school year, likely in small groups on a rotating schedule.
“We’re trying to make sure we pick up the excitement for the meals,” Davis said. “We plan on having some more in-school activities for them or special events to have kids excited about the meals. We might have a theme day.”
Themes may include a Disney day at the elementary school where children can dress up as their favorite character and have foods like “princess peas” and pretzel sticks topped with icing and sprinkles to make magic wands.
Davis said she would like to decorate the cafeterias among other ideas with approval from district leaders. There likely will be assigned seats to help with any contact tracing.
“It might not be a full return (to the cafeterias),” Davis said. “It may be a rotation so all the kids aren’t down at the same time. That’s something I have to discuss with administration and the principals and see how they want to do it and what works best for their buildings. Food service is flexible. Whatever they need we’ll accommodate for that.”
Students may also be returning to five-day in-person learning next school year starting in August.
Hines said she does not anticipate any changes to food service or the education model prior to the end of the current year, June 11.
Michael DiVittorio is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Michael at 412-871-2367, mdivittorio@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Penn Hills students may get specialty meals, eat in the cafeteria next school year - TribLIVE
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