Schools are struggling to get enough school lunches

By Alan Shope

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    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KMBC) — Kansas City schools are struggling to get enough school lunches.

School districts say two of the three major school food distributors have stopped serving schools. The stoppage is causing a huge backload of orders and a limited supply of meals.

“Another district just had to serve meals yesterday with no milk at all,” North Kansas City Schools Director of Food Service Jenna Knuth said.

Knuth says intervention is needed quickly. She says it doesn’t matter whether it comes from the state or federal level. The district says the days of menu selection and choices are gone. Currently, they are barely getting enough food to get through the day.

“It’s corn, it’s broccoli, it’s hamburgers everything you can think of on the menu,” Knuth said.

Many school districts are now having to buy food from wholesale distributors like Costco and Sam’s Club. They say the United States Department of Agriculture has given them more menu flexibility due to the shortage. The USDA flexibility isn’t enough to help school districts get enough food for students

“They don’t have enough warehouse people to pick up food. They don’t have enough truckers to deliver the food to us,” Knuth said.

North Kansas City has 21,000 students. They serve more than 8,000 breakfast every morning and more than 14,000 lunches daily. For single families, wholesaler food prices provide a considerable discount, but Knuth says for schools it still isn’t practical.

“If you can get 20 cases at Sam’s that seems like a lot, but we need hundreds of cases for just one day or just one meal,” Knuth said.

Some families say they’re adding more to the backpack when their kids leave for school. If supplies aren’t filled soon, school may have to turn to more unorthodox sources to feed students.

“We have actually called Pizza Hut we have a contract with them,” Knuth said.

Knuth says the cost to feed students is weighing heavily on the schools finances.

“It is absolutely breaking the budget right now, but the kids have to be fed,” Knuth said.

The Lee’s Summit School District is also reporting meal shortages on their website. They say menu changes may be necessary.

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