Orcutt Union School District served a little fewer than 100,000 meals from March to June and packed between 1,600 to 1,900 meals a day. But Director of Child Nutrition Bethany “Chef B” Markee thinks those numbers will be much lower during this school year, unless the state changes things.
“Yesterday was our first day, and the numbers were much less, so there definitely was a decline,” Markee said on Aug. 14. “And we’re waiting for the waiver, and I don’t think it is going to come.”
The waivers in question temporarily suspended some requirements for the free- and reduced-lunch program, which serves low-income students. Although several waivers were issued by the federal and state government regarding school lunches, Markee thinks there are a couple that made a huge difference. Those include waiving a requirement that meals get picked up at the school site the student attends and allowing schools to serve meals for free to all students, regardless of their eligibility for the free- and reduced-lunch program.
While other local school districts, such as the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, have so many students who qualify for the free- and reduced-meals program that they offer it to all of their students, Orcutt Union schools don’t. Markee said 80 percent of students qualify for the program at Olga Reed Elementary School in Los Alamos and 20 percent qualify at Orcutt Academy High School in Orcutt, with the remaining eight school sites coming in at 50 percent or less of students. But Markee said those numbers changed at the start of the pandemic because parents lost jobs.
“Right now, they’re requiring families to go to the specific school site they’re enrolled in, and that’s what’s hard for these families, because they’re not in the same financial system they were before the pandemic,” she said. “I have a lot of parents who call, and it’s super heartfelt, and they can’t get to the site.
Many families have students enrolled at two different school sites, Markee said, so they would need to go to maybe an elementary school and a junior high to pick up food for their student. When the pandemic hit, Markee said, they had families coming through to pick up lunches that had never participated in the free- and reduced-lunch program.
“They need it more than ever, and I think people that never needed it have been humbled and have needed it, and they’re just super kind and super grateful,” she said.
With 10 school sites in the Orcutt Union School District, Markee and her team served at four from March to June. She said serving more meals was definitely an adjustment, but everyone pulled together to make it happen.
And the work they did gained recognition from the Chef Ann Foundation, a national organization focused on ensuring that schools serve fresh, healthy food. On Aug. 5, she received the spotlight in the foundation and Danone North America’s Hero Highlights, a blog that tells uplifting stories of school food workers and how they’re tackling food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve just seen such kindness and such teamwork, and you just kind of hunker down and you just kind of have each others’ back,” she said. “You come up with these kind of rogue out-of-the-box things to make things easier. I just am very impressed with the teamwork in my department and legitimately with the district administration.”
She said administrators are super supportive of her goals for the kitchen and the push to try to put as much food as possible into the hands of students who need it.
Before the pandemic, the kitchen was focused on transitioning to more from-scratch meals to students—every school site had a salad bar, and they served hot food for lunch. But with lunches switching to to-go, some of the food has reverted back to pre-packaged prepared foods, such as frozen burritos (with heating instructions) and sandwiches.
However, Markee has stayed focused on trying to make sure the food they serve is as healthy as possible. Markee works with food vendors to find the most healthy and safe pre-packaged foods she can in an attempt to keep it healthy and interesting for the students. At the moment, she said, there’s the potential of bringing in some pre-packaged salads and rice bowls.
“All of us are struggling with the vegetable group. We make a few salads here and there; we can get bagged carrots,” she said of how school districts are trying to meet national and state nutrition guidelines. “But there isn’t a lot of pre-packaged vegetable stuff, so we’ve got a waiver on that.”
One of her primary goals, Markee said, is to teach students how to eat their vegetables and make them “yummy,” but that effort is on temporary hold.
In the five years that Markee has been with the Orcutt schools, she has worked to couple food education with the meals she serves students, she said. In addition to teaching an after-school culinary arts program, she tries to teach students about whole produce and where it comes from.
After working as a chef for 20-plus years, she started working at Solvang schools with a grant from the Orfalea Foundation. The goal was to make healthier meals for students and serve more from-scratch food. Things really hit home for Markee one day when she cooked up a lunch that included roasted potatoes, which none of the kids seemed to be eating.
She walked out into the cafeteria and asked them why.
“One little guy goes, ‘What is it?’ And I go, ‘It’s a potato.’ He goes, ‘A potato?’” she said.
She asked him if he knew what a french fry was, and he nodded.
“Yes, well this is a potato, but it’s a square,” she told him.
Then she ran to the kitchen and grabbed a potato to show them. The students wondered why it was so dirty, Markee said.
“And I walked back to the kitchen that day, and it was the longest walk of my life,” she said. “And I thought, you now know what these children don’t know, and it’s your job for the rest of your life to teach them.”
Markee took those thoughts to Orcutt with her.
When students were on campus, Markee said, she worked with Veggie Rescue in Santa Ynez—an organization that collects fresh fruits, veggies, and prepared food from local farms, farmers markets, backyards, and businesses and delivers it to nonprofits and schools feeding community members in need.
“Before the pandemic, we would get thousands of pounds of it for free that would just go right to the kids,” she said. “You have these kids running across the parking lot for carrots, and I’m like, ‘OK, now we’re doing something.’”
Editor Camillia Lanham will run toward fresh veggies. Send food tips to clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 20-27, 2020.
