School food program begins summer shift

Renovation work at Lincoln Middle School and the rapidly approaching summer months has resulted in changes to Sweetwater County School District No. 2’s food program.

Food is now available from Truman, Washington, Monroe, Jackson and Harrison elementary schools, as well as Green River High School.

The program allows children and teens a chance to receive breakfast and lunch meals after schools were closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the weeks following the school closures, the program expanded to send meals on buses to areas where children would have difficulty traveling to a distribution point. Leah Kenison, director of the district’s food service program, said she was forced to discontinue using the buses.

“The weather is getting warmer,” she said. “We had a bus bring back 50 corn dogs that had thawed, we had to throw them out.”

While the bus service will go away, the Jamestown bus will deliver meals until May 21.

Another factor playing into the distribution change is construction work at Lincoln Middle School. After work on the upstairs remodel of the building started, Kenison said she lost access to the LMS kitchen, the largest food preparation space the department had.

As the remainder of the traditional school year winds down, Kenison said she’s shifting the program into its summer operation schedule. With that, her employee numbers drop from 20 workers down to eight during the summer.

The program has been quite popular with parents and kids. Kenison said the program prepares and distributes 2,500-3,000 meals a day, with Friday meals including food for the weekend as well.