A federal program that provides universal free meals to students could be coming to Philomath. Superintendent of Schools Susan Halliday said the school district’s eligibility for the funding has cleared the first hurdle.
“We are working on an application for consideration to provide free meals to all students,” Halliday said during the June 20 School Board meeting. “It’s a federal program that we made a first cut with and with the approval, it’s something that stays with districts for four years. So it is not just a one-year decision and then you have to worry the next year about, ‘we have to start paying again.’”
Halliday said the district learned some valuable insight during the COVID crisis when it comes to nutrition.
“We don’t have to worry about people not paying, we don’t have to worry about students not eating — because we know from COVID that the number of students eating went up when the food was free,” she said. “Full stomachs help with brain readiness and everything else for school so we’re kind of hoping that this will come through for us.”
This past fall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was expanding its Community Eligibility Provision program nationwide to help decrease childhood hunger and improve student health. The program helps by lowering family food costs, increasing food security and reducing the social stigma for students who are eating free or reduced-price meals. Plus, it encourages more kids to eat breakfast and lunch.
“We’re hopeful that some of those things will come through,” Halliday said. “It would be a great coup and a gift to us to be able to have all of our students eat breakfast and lunch for free.
Regardless of the outcome with the application, Halliday said Philomath will continue with the same arrangement that it had this academic year with the Corvallis School District, which provided menu planning and food.
“We continue to look at what the possibilities are for us to store commodities, be able to gradually take over pieces of that enterprise over the next couple of years — or not — and working that through,” Halliday said.
2. OSU ends graduation lists
For the past three years since Philomath News was established, I have published a list of locals earning degrees at Oregon State University. That includes not only those who call Philomath home but also those from Blodgett and Kings Valley.
Thousands of students earn degrees each year from OSU. Each June, the university would send out a news release to media organizations listing the “local students graduating” by county and city. This narrowed-down list would not only include the name, but the degree earned, high academic honors (such as summa cum laude) and their area of study.
That’s apparently no longer provided to the media. This year’s news release was limited to the number of students and various facts about the class. In response, I requested a list of graduates by hometown or city of residence.
OSU responded, “Some changes were made and we are no longer receiving that level of detail about graduates.”
My contact at the university indicated that he would see if he could get the Philomath names but nothing has been sent my way yet.
Perhaps it’s a sign of the times with privacy in our digital world becoming more of a concern. Or maybe it’s just a new computer system or program that doesn’t have the capability of sorting the graduation list by hometown.
From my perspective, I just wanted to give our grads a little recognition for a significant accomplishment. For what it’s worth, congratulations to all of our Philomath, Blodgett and Kings Valley students who earned degrees June 15 at OSU.
3. Citizens Bank, Maxtivity team up
For those of you who frequent the Philomath branch of Citizens Bank, a Philomath Community Services food donation barrel probably caught your eye. Not only does it include the familiar PCS logo but it also features the work of young artists.
Brent Kaseman, branch manager, said Citizens Bank made a donation to Maxtivity Arts and Crafts Creative Space with a request for their “artistic kiddos to create an eye-catching sign” for the food bank donation barrel.
“Fewer foodstuffs are available to food banks these days and so Philomath Community Services counts on the kindness and donations of the local community to support those with food insecurity,” Kaseman said. “This effort supported the good work going on at Maxtivity with the hopes of additional food donations coming into PCS.”
It’s another prime example of Philomath folks trying to pitch in to fight food insecurity in our community.
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
