Southwest Open School is working to hep solve the food insecurity seen on the school’s campus, according to SWOS Director Casey Simpson.
The idea for this initiative was created after Simpson said school leadership noticed that in the past they have had low school lunch participation. While Montezuma-Cortez High School students have three lunch options (grab-and-go salad, grab-and-go sandwich and a hot meal), SWOS’ only option was a hot meal.
To help combat the low participation, SWOS teamed up with Charter League, a state-level organization that helps charter schools acquire grant funding.
“They supported us through grant funding in order to pioneer a school lunch program where a class at Southwest Open School got their food handler certifications and have started to make a grab-and-go salad and a grab-and-go lunch meat sandwich daily,” Simpson said. “Since we’ve implemented it, our lunch participation has increased dramatically.”
Simpson said that the district’s food service director, Sandy Van Houten, has been pivotal to this program’s launch, and individuals from CDE came to do a walk-through of the campus’s food areas and said they were “good to go.”
The school’s counselor, Danielle Clifton, is teaching the class where students are getting their food handler certification, and each day these students are making the school’s lunches.
“I think it helps the students knowing that the food they’re purchasing has been prepared by their peers,” Van Houten said.
“Students are often hungry on campus in the past, or for my 10-year tenure at SWOS, students have been directed to a counselor or the office or their teacher to grab a snack,” Simpson said.
Now, to ensure all students have enough food to stay fueled throughout the day and make sure they don’t have to hunt down snacks on campus, Simpson said they’ve instituted two snack times during the day, one at 10 a.m. and one at 2 p.m.
“We’re embarking on a program to help teach kids, one, when to eat, and two, what to eat, in an effort to help them learn these skills that they may not get at home,” Simpson said. “As adults, you can’t just eat whatever you want. You have to kind of plan your day and eat meals, so we’re working on that.”
The snacks given to students are healthy snacks such as dried fruits and meats, cheeses, fresh fruits, sugar free snacks and more.
“The students are loving that,” Simpson said. “I think yesterday we handed out 90 snacks. We’re collecting the data, and the data is showing that students are hungry.”
Now that snacks have been implemented, Simpson said they are seeing positive results in the classroom.
“Teachers are reporting that classes are much less disrupted by food needs or hunger needs. Students are getting nutrition, and it’s pretty exciting stuff,” he said.
According to Simpson, there is very little grant funding to support food needs, and many federal grants can’t be used for food.
“It’s frustrating because we viscerally know that students have a hard time learning when they’re hungry,” Simpson said.
Moving forward, Simpson said he hopes this food program helps improve attendance and student outcomes.
“The hope is that it will increase the safety and comfort of students at school which we hope is engaging and improves attendance. We hope that the students are getting a nutritious meal or meals on campus so that they are alert to learn while they are here,” Simpson said. “We want the students to be less distracted by food in the classroom or distracted by the search for food on campus.”
