Fairfield schools to return to ‘pre-pandemic’ food service

FAIRFIELD — All meals will be free to students this school year just as they were last year since the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to reimburse school districts for another year of meals.

Fairfield schools Food and Nutrition Services Director Stephanie Hawkins said parents do not need to fill out an application for free and reduced price school meals/milk, but applications will be available because parents may need them to receive other benefits such as the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program.

The P-EBT is a USDA program that provides food benefits to prekindergarten through 12th-grade children who temporarily lost access to free or reduced price school meals because of school schedule changes and COVID-related closures.

Hawkins said she encourages families to fill out the free and reduced price meal application because many of the school’s program-funding are linked to the number of applications in the district.

Students in the Fairfield school district can expect a return to mostly “normal” meals this year. For instance, the district did away with salad bars for the middle and high school last year, but Hawkins said those are coming back this fall.

“We know that our students eat more fruits and vegetables with access to our fruit and vegetable bars, and this has always been our goal,” Hawkins said. “At this time, there are no regulations that would require us to not have them, so we are moving forward to allow our students to have multiple options each day for fruits and vegetables.”

Hawkins said the district will have hand sanitizers in its building at the beginning of each service line, and will monitor the safety of the fruit and vegetable bars, making changes as necessary.

Hawkins said the district’s cooks will continue to package certain food items, but for the most part the district’s food service will return to their pre-pandemic model.

“Each of our food service staff are trained in food safety and are diligent in serving the children of our district nutritious food, safely, each day,” she said.

Hawkins said she expects students to eat in the cafeterias this year. During most of last school year, students ate in their homerooms, or sometimes classes alternated eating in the cafeteria to avoid having a large number of students in the cafeteria at once.

The school district’s cooks prepared take-home meals for 18 months, starting in late March 2020. Every Monday, parents could pick up a bag of five breakfasts and five lunches for their child to eat that week.

The program was available not just to Fairfield students but to any child in the county between the ages of 2 and 18. After a year and a half, that program came to an end on Aug. 2. The district ended its take-home meal program because all students will have in-person classes this fall, and online classes will not be an option.