MONTHLY GROWTH
now thinking about using themmore creatively. Year twoof freemeals For the team at Vista Ridge and the others around the dis- trict, the 2021-22 school year also brought with it a new challenge: free meals. In October 2020, LISD announced that through a waiver with the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture, every child in the district would be eligible for one free meal per day for breakfast or lunch. But with many students still learn- ing virtually, the total served was still well short of the pre- vious year’s e orts. “I used to run the kitchen with 16 people, and when we came back [in 2020] I think I had nine people, but we would loan people to other schools every day, so I was down to four or ve,” Saunders said. “But we also went from serv- ing 2,200 total meals ... to like 300 or 400 a day last year.” But when the USDA extended the free meal waiver through the 2021-22 school
year, it meant that Saunders’ team once again was respon- sible for serving close to its pre-pandemic numbers but with half of the sta . Districtwide, LISD averaged nearly 19,000 daily meals in the months leading up to the pandemic in March 2020. Through January of the 2021- 22 school year, that daily num- ber is 28,494, an increase of about 50%, according to LISD. The cafeteria at Vista Ridge is laid out like a mall food court complete with color- ful signs to denote di erent o erings such as Luigi’s Eat- ery or Ballpark Classics. These stations formerly had trays of carefully laid out options to entice students. Saunders and her team have streamlined the work to focus on ensuring every student who wants a hot and fresh meal gets one. Some of the e ciencies are subtle and built around limit- ing trips to restock in themidst of a lunch rush or extending shifts to prep for the following day’s service. Others are more obvious.
With a waiver granted in October 2020 by the USDA, the Leander ISD Child Nutrition Services department saw an immediate uptick in meals served that carried over in the 2021-22 school year in record numbers.
35,000
30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 5,000 10,000
0
2019-20
2020-21
2021-22
SOURCE: LEANDER ISD COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
reached out to our volunteers and our community and our sta .” During the 2019-20 school year, the LISD nutrition department served 3.4million meals for breakfast and lunch, but that number dropped to 2.3 million in 2020-21 when many students remained vir- tual. In the current school year, however, the district is on pace for its highest num- bers, having already served
3.1 million meals through January. “When you take the sta - ing issue on top of [the fact that] we’re serving more meals now than we ever have, that’s incredible,” West said. “You’re talking about eight people serving 1,500 kids.” School districts nationwide have long utilized volunteers as crossing guards or to help teachers make copies or prep arts and crafts. But LISD was
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“That’s really when we saw it get to a point where some of our cafeterias were oper- ating at 50% sta capacity,” said John West, LISD’s senior director of support services and sta and employee rela- tions. “When we, as a district, start looking at not being able to serve food or clean the cafeteria or ll in for substi- tute teachers, that’s when we
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