Did you know the Y provides 213,000 free meals for school kids in Middle Tennessee? And it’s growing – Tennessean
Principal Myra Taylor glided across the Buena Vista Elementary cafeteria doling out side hugs and compliments (“Those are some nice new glasses!”) to students while checking out their dinner trays.
“Where are your vegetables?” Taylor sang to one student. “I bet you’re gonna love those green beans.”
Nearly all 210 students take a plate of baked chicken leg, stuffing, green beans and fruit for dinner around 3 p.m. They eat the food hot in the cafeteria before they’re dismissed for the day.
The school is the latest participant in the growing free dinner program the YMCA of Middle Tennessee provides for schools in four counties.
To date, the YMCA, mostly through federal grants, provides 1,252 hot after-school meals to students daily in Nashville and in Rutherford, Sumner and Montgomery counties as part of its anti-hunger initiative.
That works out to about 213,000 meals during the school year, and another 24,574 breakfasts and lunches during the summer, YMCA executives said. The meals come from The Nashville Food Project, Gordon Food Service and the YMCA’s Camp Widjiwagan. The YMCA raises an additional $900,000 for staffing to deliver and serve the meals and to provide other services for Nashville families.
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The YMCA and the district target schools where many children have food and housing insecurities, and a few Buena Vista Elementary students said last week they’re grateful for those dinners.
“I feel like it’s really nice of the school to do that,” said fourth grader Areil Bell, 9, who lives near the North Nashville school.
“A lot of kids, they really don’t have that when we go home.”
The meals are provided to all students at the participating schools regardless of their families’ financial or housing situations.
Buena Vista is one of eight new schools the YMCA added to the program this year at the request of Metro Nashville Public Schools. That means more than 30,000 more meals are being served this school year than last, said Paige Hopkins, the YMCA’s director of anti-hunger initiatives for school-age children.
It’s too soon to tell if the third meal is making an academic or social difference to Buena Vista students, Principal Taylor said.
But she said she has seen an improvement in “the culture of the building.”
“There’s a family environment with teachers sitting at the tables and having conversations with the kids,” Taylor said.
“When we send them out, we don’t know what kind of night they’re going to have, but at least they’re fed; at least they’re not hungry.”
Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.
Published 6:00 AM EST Dec 2, 2019
