BURLINGTON, N.C. — Every school day, 13,000 students — 59 percent —in the Alamance-Burlington School System get free or reduced-price lunches, and breakfasts in many cases. And then it snowed.
“I know many of the families had only what was in their homes, and I knew that was not going to last,” said Pam Burney, school social worker at Andrews Elementary School.
A lot of students rely on these meals. In the summers, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program is run through schools to provide meals, too. But in the past two years, Alamance County schools have been shut down more than usual for winter weather. In February, eight snow days basically had kids out of school for two weeks. There are a lot of people locally trying to make sure kids do not go hungry, but this threw a wrench in the works.
“We’ve never had that happen before,” said Candy Reavis, who coordinates the Grove Park Alliance for Learning and Serving at Grove Park Baptist Church. GPALS sends food home with students on weekends so families will not run short of food when school is out.
At most schools, this is called a “backpack program.” School social workers working with local churches, some nonprofits and parent teacher organizations provide food for students to take home so they will not go hungry when they cannot get meals at school. There are 3,659 kids getting food through one of those or a school food pantry in Alamance-Burlington Schools.
“That’s fantastic when it’s Friday night and the storm hits on Saturday,” said Kim Crawford, executive director of Allied Churches of Alamance County, the county’s largest shelter, soup kitchen and food pantry. “The problem is when it hits on Tuesday — then what do you do?”
A BIG PART OF what school social workers do is connect families to other resources, including soup kitchens and food pantries at Allied Churches, The Salvation Army and Caring Kitchen.
Crawford said 88 school-age children were getting meals at Allied Churches in the last two weeks of February, about twice the number she saw in the first two weeks. Compared to January, when Allied Churches soup kitchen served 264 children, 442 were served in February.
Many of the families with children on free and reduced lunch also get other services, like food stamps, said Amber Doby, school social worker at Grove Park Elementary School. There are working families, though, that do not qualify for most services and end up paying market-rate rent that sometimes need extra food.
“Some of the families that struggle the most are working,” Doby said.