Packing it in

MK8 has been diligently preparing and delivering 300 meals per week to homebound student for the last several weeks while schools remain closed due to the COVID-19 virus. With only a few more days before the end of classes for this year, lockers and cubbies have been cleared out by staff and personal items bagged, labeled and sent home with the meals by the bus drivers in rural areas and picked up by the town students.

According to Principal Teresa Brown, the cafeteria prepares six meals a week to be delivered to each student who may not have a meal otherwise. This is not an easy effort as 80% (385 kids) ride buses.

Brown says that the school has been “at the mercy of what we can get in.”

“Last week we ordered [hundreds] of pizzas and received 100 and another week, we ordered Crustables and got 20,” she says.

She explains that the kitchen keeps frozen supplies and, when the orders were short, the cooks got busy covering the shortfall to ensure each youngster gets fed that day.

As this unusual school year ends, Brown reflects on the “new normal” she anticipates for next year.

“Hopefully, we’re back to normal, but the masks I ordered just came in so if we have to wear masks at school, I’ll have them. That may be the new normal,” she says, laughing as she envisions a kindergartner wearing a mask. “That will be interesting.”

Brown commends teachers as they maneuver the new way of teaching they have had to learn.

“This is taking probably twice as much workload for the teachers to do; learning a new platform [and] making sure the kids are understanding,” she says, commending the parents as well for their fortitude and efforts to work with the new school day.