'No hunger,' say school teams as volunteers help deliver lunches to families

An Ervin Elementary School bus driver in Hickman Mills waits as teams of staffers and volunteers (below) load meals to be delivered to children at bus stops since schools are closed during the pandemic.

Fleets of school buses in Kansas City began retracing neighborhood routes this week, not to pick children up for classes, but to deliver them meals.

One small cafeteria team with the Hickman Mills School District in Ervin Elementary School packaged up 600 meals in bags Tuesday, sorted them into boxes and sent them off with community volunteers paired with bus drivers to meet children and parents at their neighborhood stops.

“No hunger,” Ervin cafeteria staffer Shanta Reams said, reading the words off the caps she and manager Essence McPherson wore. The teams are working every day on what would have been school days, she said, because “no child is to be hungry.”

Many school districts — especially those with high numbers of children in families that qualify for free or reduced-price lunches — mobilized food distribution plans, including Hickman Mills, Kansas City, Center, Grandview and Fort Osage.

Area schools are out at least until April 24 and possibly longer as Kansas City and the nation tries to slow down the advance of the coronavirus.

“We’ll be doing it every day until we can get back in school,” McPherson said.

UPDATE: Beginning March 30 Hickman Mills is ending bus stop delivery and is providing grab-and-go meals at school sites. Families with children in the district will be able to pick up two to three days of meals at a time.

Many districts were setting up sites at many of its schools where students could come pick up meals to go, and also providing a delivery operation to help families that can not travel to the sites.

Hickman Mills delivered 1,500 meals Tuesday, spokeswoman Marissa Cleaver Wamble said, and the district is prepared to deliver as many as 6,000 a day as the need for meals grows.

Get your LINC COVID-19 updates here.

According to The Star, the Kansas City Public Schools has distributed 30,000 meals since Thursday, but some at some sites in the city the distribution was starting slowly. The need is expected to grow as the shut-down, and the increasing economic hardships, continue.

Grandview, which is making meals available to all children in its community, updated its distribution schedule to run between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. daily. The list of school sites distributing meals is here.