Thumbnail photo: DNUSD’s Nutrition Services Department fresh fish tacos to Del Norte High School students last year courtesy of the Community Food Council’s Sea-to-Market program. | Photo courtesy of Michael Hawkins
(Updated at 8:27 a.m. to correct an error. Julie Carter Bjorkstrand, Del Norte Unified School District’s director of nutrition services, will travel to Sacramento as part of the California School Nutrition Association’s legislative action committee.)
Potential changes to a federal program that offers free meals to socio-economically disadvantaged schools will impact 2.4 million Californian students, but those in Del Norte County won’t be among them, according to Julie Carter Bjorkstrand.
Bjorkstrand, Del Norte Unified School District’s director of nutrition services, also said that a $660 million cut to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food For Schools program won’t impact Del Norte schools.
“It’s actually not going to impact us because I didn’t apply for that grant,” she said. “I didn’t like the reporting. They didn’t have it fully fleshed out and so I didn’t feel all that comfortable applying for it.”
Bjorkstrand’s statement during the public comment period at the Del Norte Unified School District’s meeting Thursday came two weeks after the USDA cut its Local Food For Schools Cooperative Agreement (LFS). She said she wanted to assure parents that DNUSD will keep feeding kids “to the best of our ability every day.”
The other program Bjorkstrand referred to is the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, which has allowed DNUSD to offer free breakfast, lunch, afterschool snack and supper to its students.
The district began offering this non-pricing meal service option to families about eight years ago, Bjorkstrand told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday.
On Thursday DNUSD Jeff Harris said the school’s seamless summer food program also falls under the CEP program, adding that Nutrition Services provides “hundreds of thousands of meals [to youngsters] over the course of the year.”
When DNUSD first applied to be part of the program about seven years ago, under the USDA guidelines, 60 percent of a school district’s enrollment had to be eligible for free and reduced meals.
In 2023, that threshold changed to 25 percent to expand access to the program, according to the USDA’s website. Now, the proposal is to increase the threshold back to 60 percent, according to Bjorkstrand.
DNUSD won’t be impacted by that proposed change because 70 percent of its students qualify for free and reduced meals, she said.
“In our district not every school is at 70 percent [free and reduced meals] — some are higher and some are lower,” Bjorkstrand said. “What you can do is create groups of schools and play the math game and figure out which groups you can create to get the higher reimbursement percentage.”
On Feb. 5, K-12 Dive, an online publication focusing on trends and news in K-12 education, reported that the proposal came from the House Ways and Means Committee. Adjusting the eligibility threshold for the CEP program would cut $12 billion in school meal programs over a decade, and would impact more than 12 million children nationwide, K-12 Dive reported citing the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit anti-hunger advocacy group.
“As long as that percentage for CEP stays at 60 percent we are going to be fine and we’re going to be able to continue to utilize that program,” Bjorkstrand said.
Bjorkstrand also wanted to assure parents that though DNUSD doesn’t receive funding through the Local Food For Schools program, its Nutrition Services Department still spent more than $100,000 this school year on local foods. This includes buying organic beef from Lopez Farms, apples from Smith River Organics, blueberries from Blueberry Hill Farms and cheese from Rumiano, she said. DNUSD also purchases local fish through the Community Food Council’s Sea-to-Market Project.
Bjorkstrand said she also purchases food from Humboldt County’s Harvest Hub and from the Spork Food Hub in Davis.
“For me, buying locally is really important,” she said, “and, like I said at the Board meeting, as long as my budget can withstand these additional costs, we’re going to keep doing it.”
Bjorkstrand said she’s part of the California School Nutrition Association’s legislative action committee and plans to make a future trip to Washington D.C. Sacramento to urge legislators not to cut funding for schools and school meals.
In Humboldt County, Eureka City Schools received the largest share of USDA Local Food For Schools dollars, the Lost Coast Outpost’s Ryan Burns reported on March 17. McKinleyville Union Elementary School came in second, receiving $11,400 in LFS funding. Ten other Humboldt County school districts received less than $10,000 each, Burns reported.
The USDA earlier this month also announced that it was cutting about $420 million from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, which helps food banks, tribes and other groups purchase local foods.
