Schools have been closed for two months. Unemployment has risen to the worst level in 90 years. And new estimates show that 1 in 4 children in America could face hunger this year because of the coronavirus, erasing years of steady progress.
From the very first hours of this crisis, school cafeteria staff everywhere mobilized to turn their usual daily meals into drive-thru operations and delivery services.
“I am definitely doing everything I can to be brave,” said Christine Clarahan, a school nutrition director in Indiana. “We're just trying anything we can do to help feed these kids.”
We spoke not long ago to a school cafeteria worker from Oklahoma. Each day, she and her co-workers make the meals they’ve always made for the students, then pack them carefully in paper bags and stand in the school parking lot to hand them out - a week’s worth of meals at a time - to parents as they drive up.
One little boy, just 6 or 7, recognized her, and broke into an excited smile. He tapped his mom on the shoulder, pointing her out. “They love to see us, to see their lunch ladies,” she said. It was a small moment, but a moment of human connection and stability for him.
"We want to let them know we are here for them,” said Mary Williams, who works at a nonprofit in rural Mississippi. “We want to make sure they’re still getting things they need until school opens back up.”
America is a place of enormous inequality, where the neighborhood in which a child is born is a far greater predictor of the life they’ll lead than how smart or talented or hard-working they are.
But though we don’t do enough to ensure that life is fair for every child, there is at least that bag lunch. The bag that says to a child: even if your dad lost his job, or your mom can’t afford groceries this week, we will not let you go hungry.
Because the great strength of America is not innovation or risk-taking, but community: the groceries delivered by volunteers, the retired nurses working long shifts, the neighborhood phone trees. It’s the thousands of jobs and acts of kindness carried out each day without complaint, for the greater good. It’s that bag lunch, and the hand that gives it.
There are hundreds of thousands of cafeteria workers, school nutrition directors, bus drivers and volunteers standing in parking lots this morning, packing bag lunches. When they hand out those bags, they are taking care of America’s children.
Today, please join us in saying thank you to all of them.
