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Tulsa Public Schools’ Child Nutrition Services provides free meals for students during the summer months.
Christion King, 5, eats lunch at McKinley Elementary School as part of Tulsa Public Schools’ summer meal program.
Cookies baking in the oven. Chicken sizzling in the deep fryer. Barbecue hissing on the grill. The sounds and smells of our favorite foods tell us that mealtime is near, and we often follow our noses on an aromatic path to the treats we can smell but can’t see.
But meals don’t always come as such powerful beacons. In fact, some meals prove so elusive that many people go hungry.
Tulsa Public Schools’ (TPS) Child Nutrition Services provides free meals at more than 75 local sites throughout the summer to anyone under age 18. But many children don’t know these meals are available.
Corbin Anderson, program and marketing manager for Child Nutrition Services, says the summer meal program feeds approximately 7,000 children a day at 37 elementary, middle and high schools. But TPS feeds 28,000 children every day during the school year as part of its free and reduced-price lunch program. That distinct gap concerns Anderson, whose main goal is to raise awareness of these free meals among those who need them.
“The criteria are really simple,” Anderson says. “They have to be 18 and under. They don’t have to show ID or anything.”
This means a hungry child doesn’t have to be enrolled in a Tulsa Public School to receive a meal, nor is a teenager who attends Nathan Hale prohibited from eating at East Central.
Getting a nutritious meal also gives young people the extra incentive to give up part of their summers to stay on track in school.
Barbara Penrose, principal of Cooper Elementary School, says her school provides summer school for reading and math skills. She says free meals at summer school ensure that students maintain healthy diets as well as their academic success between school years.
“Keeping up with those academic skills prepares kids for another year of school,” she says.
In addition to the 37 Tulsa Public Schools that provide these meals, students can also go to the YMCA, YWCA, numerous apartment complexes and churches, Head Start programs or John 3:16 Mission to eat, thanks to the federally funded TPS summer meal program.
TPS Child Nutrition also provides “Breakfast in the Classroom” to any school reporting 80 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, though Anderson estimates that the percentage is closer to 90 among the 42 participating schools.
The goal with breakfast in the classroom is similar to the summer food program — to ensure children don’t go hungry and to provide them with the nutrition necessary to perform well. Anderson says the Harvard School of Public Health, in conjunction with a Harvard Medical School study, showed that free breakfast in the classroom correlated with a noticeable improvement in attendance and academic performance.
Gilcrease Elementary Principal Phyllis Lovett says breakfast in the classroom is better than breakfast in the cafeteria because it allows students to bond with their teachers and begin the day on a positive note.
