Day 1: 1,628 School Meals Distributed

The effort to feed needy children during indefinite COVID-19-sparked school closings got off to a slow but in some places steady start Monday in New Haven and Hamden.

Columbus Family Academy Principal Roy Araujo put up blue balloons to cheer people up as they came to the door of his school to pick up breakfast and lunch bags.

According to protocols, he could open the door just a crack and hand the bags to families and kids as they arrived, and the doors and tables in the lobby were festooned with signs of instruction in social distancing and handwashing.

“We have to model behavior. We have to help de-stress,” he said, as he stood beside his school door, and beneath his balloons, in Fair Haven.

That was the scene Monday morning, as 37 New Haven and three Hamden public schools began providing free breakfast and lunch pick-ups in an effort to make sure kids don’t go hungry while both systems are indefinitely closed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.

New Haven distributed 1,328 meals to 664 people, according to schools Chief Operating Officer Michael Pinto. Hamden distributed another 300.

Read the fuller story of that decision here, along with a map and list of the schools.

Food distribution sites will be open for both breakfast and lunch pick-up Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and noon.

The Morris Cove and the Annex neighborhoods on New Haven’s East Shore do not have a distribution site. The public school there, Nathan Hale, was the first to close after a guardian present in the building turned out to have had contact with the virus. Pinto promised to add the school as a meal-distribution site in coming days ​“once I’m convinced that we’ve done the full disinfection.”

The word got out faster in some neighborhoods than in others about the meals. Quinnipiac School distributed food to just one family; Columbus was the busiest in town, serving 61 people.

Araujo’s school emerged as by far the busiest in a brief circumambulation of some schools on the east side of town. In the first hour, he said, four families had come to the door, and he had distributed breakfast and lunch bags for ten kids.

“We feel it’s going to pick up,” he added.

Over at the John Martinez School, with an empty parking lot in the shadow of English Station, things were even slower. There was no principal on duty, only a food service worker, a security person, and a custodian.

The food service worker manning the tables in the lobby said In the first 45 or so minutes, only four meals had been given out to two parties who had arrived at the door.

One was a mom with a child in tow. The other was an 18 year-old who was picking up the grab-and-go bags for himself and two younger siblings.

Just when the food service worker was joking in a gallows-humor-sort-of-way that distribution was so slow her time might be better spent if she were home disinfecting, two young moms came up to the door.

They didn’t want to photographed or identified. Each had four kids, from the mid-teens down to 3 and 5; the younger ones were students at Martinez.

They gratefully accepted the bags and said they planned to come back on Tuesday as well as on the following days. Their kids, who are not being allowed to play outside, are happy to be home, at least for this day, the moms said. They’ve explained the virus to the kids. The main activity in the house, one mom reported, is ​“cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.”

Over at the Clinton Avenue School, only a single grab-and-go bag had been given out in the first half hour of distribution, although there, as at Martinez and Columbus Family Academy, 300 meals had been delivered.

One of the NHPS food service managers, having visited the school, described the food in the bags as ​“shelf-stable” items, including apple sauce, cheese sticks, crackers, sun butter (peanut-free peanut butter) in the lunch packet; and items such as yogurt and fruit in the breakfast bags.

Each of the meal packets meets the national food lunch requirement: a protein, fruit, vegetable, grain, and milk. Of course, without hot food.

Back over at Columbus Family Academy, Araujo said the 503 kids in his pre‑K to eight grade school went home with work packets to occupy them for two weeks. Parents can — and are — in touch to receive more work for their kids, in addition to the learning programs available on line, he added.

Pointing to the signs throughout the school teaching kids how distance and how to sneeze into the crook of the elbow, Araujo said, ​“This is all part of our preparation. Hopefully some of it has sunk in, so now — even when it comes to a shut down and food distribution — we can still be cordial and get through this together. It’s all about de-stressing.”

Hamden Hands Out 150 Meals

At around 11 a.m., Jackie Camputaro and Grace Guidet (pictured) stood outside Hamden’s Church Street School bundled up despite the sun. Every few minutes, a car pulled into the parking lot. Some parents got out of the car, while some just took meals through the passenger’s‑side window.

Joshua Austin got out of his car with his niece Shay-pryn and walked up for the two tables where Camputaro and Guidet stood. As he walked away with two white-paper bags, he stopped in the parking lot to talk.

Schools being closed is hard for a lot of families because they need to keep their children occupied, he said. But it also allows families to spend more time together, he added.

He was free Monday morning because he works in the afternoon at Yale New Haven Hospital as a janitor. He said he and his colleagues had been told ​“just to keep calm, work on your own pace, and don’t rush.”

And if you get sick, ​“just make sure you stay healthy and drink lots of water.”

Once Austin (pictured above) had left, another car pulled up, and Guidet went to the window. The driver asked for meals for two high school students. Once Guidet handed the bags through the window, the driver pulled out of the parking lot.

Guidet, a teacher in the district, was just there as a volunteer. She said she knew the operation might need some help, so she decided to spend her morning handing out meals. Camputaro, who runs the kitchen at the Church Street School’s cafeteria, was in charge. She works for Whitson’s, which the district contracts to run its food services.

So far, the pair had handed out meals to 46 children. Camputaro had brought out 46 breakfasts and 70 lunches, so she had to run back into the school to grab a few extra breakfasts.

Camputaro said the breakfast bags contained juice, milk, cereal, and cookies. For lunch, she was handing out sandwiches with either buffalo chicken and cheese, turkey and cheese, or ham and cheese. Lunch bags also had fruit, chocolate milk, and either carrots or celery.

While Guidet’s and other teachers’ their pay is protected by their contracts, Whitson’s workers are not guaranteed the hours they would normally work, but their contract does allow them to collect unemployment benefits, said Camputaro.

Both said they were trying to get used to the new uncertainty of their jobs and their lives. ​“It’s such a sudden thing that happened. I think everybody’s just trying to catch up to what’s going on,” said Guidet.

Parents, though, had begun to catch on. Another car pulled into the lot and the driver leaned over to the open passenger’s‑side window and asked for meals for seven children, between two different families. That brought the day’s total to 54.

It was still slow, but more than a typical day during the summer meals program, said Camputaro. ​“I think as the days go by, people will tell other people and we’ll get more,” she said.

Superintendent Jody Goeler said the district handed out 300 meals to 150 people between the ages of 5 and 18 on Monday. The district has three pickup locations: the Church Street School, Hamden High School, and Hamden Middle School.

Parents Wait For Packets

Just before noon, Khalilah Dann drove up to the side of Hamden High and walked slowly toward the door. Donna Ferrara, a paraprofessional at the Ridge Hill School, opened the door to the airlock, where she and a few other people were keeping sandwiches out of the sun so the meat and cheese would stay cold.

​“Hungry? We have food!” she said.

Dann said she was not there for food, but rather for a packet of learning materials that the district said it would have ready for students to keep their brains occupied. Ferrara told her that the packets would not be available until Wednesday.

That means Dann’s husband will have to come pick it up, she said, because he works from home. She was off work on Monday; usually she is not. She’s a family medicine doctor at an outpatient clinic run by Hartford Healthcare. After Monday, her husband will have to figure out how to work and keep their 12- and 4‑year-old sons occupied at the same time. 

Dann said her clinic is preparing with extra cleaning, and has set up a separate room for anyone who comes in with a fever or cough. She said she and her colleagues have had to keep their hand sanitizer in a special location because people have been stealing it.

She said people should remember to find ways of counteracting the social isolation that comes with social distancing. ​“Just try to make sure you’re maintaining contact with others. And, of course, wash your hands.”