“We will not let kids go hungry.” Martha Williams spoke those words of determination and they were immediately echoed by Dr. Micheal Gwatney.
But keeping that pledge is no easy task.
Williams is the nutrition director for Fannin County Schools and Gwatney is the school superintendent. Last week they talked about the roadblocks now faced to provide students with meals in the 2023 school year.
The school system received a letter in January from its current food provider, U.S. Foods, that it would not be renewing its contract. Williams said that letter cited driver shortages, fuel costs, and labor shortages at the company’s warehouse.
But the nutrition director believes, and the school superintendent agrees, the root of the problem goes deeper since U.S. Foods trucks are still seen making regular deliveries to area restaurants.
“No one wants a whole wheat donut,” Williams said, referring to the strict nutrition standards that come with the United States Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program. Those standards demand 80 percent whole grain meals next school year.
Gwatney used a similar analogy when he discussed the problem with U.S. Congressman Andrew Clyde only two days earlier. The superintendent called the standards, “unrealistic,” since they force schools to serve foods “nobody would buy off the shelf.”
Providing the foods demanded by the program, which also dictate very specific portions must be purchased, greatly reduces the profit margin for suppliers, making school contracts unrealistic for them as they face the economic challenges outlined by the U.S. Food’s letter.
Ever since receiving the letter, Williams has spearheaded the local fight to find the food to provide the half a million meals Fannin students consume every year.
She joined with nutrition directors in Dawson, Lumpkin, Stephens, Gilmer and Pickens counties to form a Mountain Area Group of six counties to bid a contract for food supplies to all six. The hope was the combined buying power would attract a supplier. It did not. No supplier responded to the bid.
A group of six counties led by White County received the same results.
Now, a bid is out in a combined effort by Fannin, Gilmer and Pickens counties to find a supplier. The hope is the Highway 515 corridor will provide an attractive supply route that will overcome some of the challenges.
The bidding period runs out at the end of the school year, but so far no one has responded.
If there is no response, Williams says she will send out a bid request solely seeking a supplier for Fannin County.
“I’m desperate. I’m looking for answers,” Williams said. Fannin students have never missed a meal and the system has “not served a meal that hasn’t met USDA standards,” Williams said.
This has been in part due to federal government waivers that have allowed food substitutions, but those waivers expire June 30, leaving systems no alternative but to follow guidelines if they are to continue to participate in the federal nutrition program.
And pulling out of the program would mean less money to pay for the meals, more expensive meals, and the end result would be higher costs to students.
The problem is faced by not just Fannin County and the other North Georgia counties mentioned, but rural counties all over the state.
Williams pointed to South Georgia where schools cannot get milk through their suppliers. To meet USDA standards, systems are forced to go to grocery stores, greatly increasing costs and limiting the shelf life of the supplies.
The school nutrition director said she had talked with suppliers and “it’s not that folks don’t want to help us.”
Possibly the most irritating part of the whole situation was summed up by Gwatney when he said, “A sweep of the pen could fix this...we need some federal leadership.”
Besides Gwatney’s words to Clyde last week, both U.S. senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff, have been contacted about the problem.
A representative from Warnock’s office was scheduled to meet with school leaders Thursday, May 12, in Blue Ridge. Osoff had not responded.