UPDATE: The FISH Food Banks of Pierce County/Communities in Schools sandwich lunch is not taking place today.
One of the effects of the Tacoma teachers’ strike this week might have been felt in kids’ tummies, since more than half of the city’s public school children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and breakfast – a widely accepted measure of poverty.
A school district lawyer argued Wednesday that one of the reasons a judge should end the strike is because about 18,000 students were hungry and food was spoiling.
As a judge ordered teachers back to work today, it was unknown how many children might have missed meals. Local food bank operators said they hadn’t seen a surge in demand because schools hadn’t been closed very long.
“Since it’s only been a couple of days, I think people will (try to) just ride it out,” said Kevin Glackin-Coley, director of the St. Leo Food Connection.
At the Tacoma Rescue Mission, the biggest stress on resources during the strike wasn’t food, said human resources director Elis Taylor. It was on the staff, who had to engage about 140 children.
Their parents’ responsibilities – things like going to work, looking for work and receiving drug treatment – are harder, if not impossible, in the company of children, Taylor said.
Adrien Sims, 9, was one of the kids at the mission Wednesday, and he said he’d rather be in school. His mother, Crystal Sims, made him do school work anyway – quizzing him on spelling words and ensuring he was reading.
She said she had no opinion on the issues around the strike but said any problems could have been resolved before the school year began.
“They should have worked this out on their own time, not the kids’ time,” she said.
The school district had no food, childcare or other programs available for families during the walkout. A spokesman said Wednesday that opening cafeterias to feed children wouldn’t be practical.
“We have no program to bring them to school for. We have no teachers to teach them, we have no bus drivers to bring them here, we have no staff to oversee them, we have no food service workers to serve them,” said district spokesman Dan Voelpel.
Though food service workers and bus drivers aren’t on strike, they work only when school’s in session, Voelpel said. “It would be an unbudgeted expense to pay an entire district force of bus drivers and food service workers to bring kids to school for a meal, then take them home,” he said.
The district Wednesday began to explore donating unused food to local food banks.
Organizations that help feed low-income children, such as summer lunches at nearly 100 sites in Tacoma, were largely unable to do anything during the two-day strike. They lack the subsidized funding and workforce to feed thousands of kids this time of year.
But a few groups were getting ready to help on the third day. FISH Food Banks of Pierce County was working with nonprofit Communities in Schools to put on a sandwich lunch today, if needed, at Lincoln High School.
“When schools are closed for any reason at all, (some) kids don’t get breakfast and lunch,” said Terry LeRud, CIS program manager. “We’re at a point where we can stop, reach out to our community partners, and say ‘there’s a need, let’s see if we can fill it.’ ”
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