District delivering food to students

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  • Keyonda Gilmore, Putnam County School District’s central location route coordinator, loads a bus with food Thursday to distribute to students through the district’s feeding program.
    Keyonda Gilmore, Putnam County School District’s central location route coordinator, loads a bus with food Thursday to distribute to students through the district’s feeding program.
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Buses were filled with food instead of children Thursday morning as the Putnam County School District continued to feed its students during the coronavirus pandemic.

The school district has since Tuesday been giving students free breakfast and lunch through its feeding program. It is taking the place of meals qualifying students would have if school was in session.

“The feeding program is robust, and we will continue to have it as long as this (pandemic) continues,” said Superintendent Rick Surrency.

During the week, students have been able to pick up meals from Browning Pearce, Interlachen, Melrose and Middleton-Burney elementary schools, and Jenkins Middle School. 

In addition to providing drive-thru services, the school district also delivered food to students at Crescent City, Interlachen and Palatka bus stops.

“It’s just a matter of us helping food services get the food out to our children,” said Sharon Spell, the school district’s transportation director. “Not everybody knows about the bus stops. We sometimes have to ride around and find kids who need the food.”

According to Nicole Hawthorne, the school district’s food services director, the school district gave away approximately 5,000 meal packages this week. The meal packages include breakfast and lunch, and contained Pop-Tarts, fruits, vegetables, yogurt and milk on Thursday.

“I enjoy actually being behind the wheel because it gives me the time to be out in the community,” said Keyonda Gilmore, the school district’s central location route coordinator. “I started out as a bus driver, so it feels good to be behind the wheel again and helping kids and serving our community.”

Hawthorne said the feeding program will be expanding next week. She said there will be about 48 buses delivering food to all the elementary school bus stops in the county starting Monday. 

Spell said these buses will also contain paraprofessionals who will distribute homework to students who don’t have access to the technology to do online classes.

“We are preferring to have all of our students complete their work online for logistic reasons,” Surrency said. “We realize we won’t have 100%, but that’s what we’re trying to do.”

According to Surrency, parents will be contacted by school officials today and Saturday to see what their technological needs are. He said if parents are not contacted by Sunday, they should call their child’s school during the week between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Surrency said students will begin online courses Monday. He said any technical issues can be reported to the school district at 385-4865.

For more information, visit putnamschools.org or facebook.com/PutnamCountySchoolsFL/.