Welcome back to our blog series, the No Kid Hungry New York Partner Spotlight. We’ll be speaking to our partners across the state, learning what’s new in their summer meals programs, and celebrating the tremendous work they do to ensure that more kids have access to the fuel they need to learn, grow and thrive. This week, we heard from Heidi Ottaway, Food Service Director at Cassadaga Valley Central School District, a rural district in Western New York.
Tell us about your community. What makes the area special?
Cassadaga Valley Central School District is located in Sinclairville, NY at the heart of Chautauqua County and our location represents who we are as a community. Families view our school as the center of opportunity for their children. Many of our parents graduated from Cassadaga Valley and are proud to raise their children here and have them graduate from Cassadaga Valley as well.
What are some of the challenges (or barriers) that kids and families face during the summer? How has implementing more flexible summer feeding options helped to overcome this?
Cassadaga Valley has been a Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) district since 2018. Students receive free breakfast and lunch at school during the school year and families depend on these meals for their children. Summer meals alleviate this gap when school is not in session. Geographically, we are a large school district and families have to travel over 12 miles to the closest full service grocery store. Many families have limited access to transportation. The opportunity to offer a non-congregate summer food service program helps families provide the food they need to feed their children healthy meals during the summer months.
If you could tell everyone in America something about summer meals, especially flexible feeding options (e.g. grab-no-go, pick-up meals, home-delivered meals), what would you tell them?
The opportunity to offer a non-congregate summer food service program helps families provide the food they need to feed their children healthy meals during the summer when they do not have access to school meals. It is not only a useful way to provide food to children in high need, rural communities but is also a very efficient way for our school to provide meals in the summer with a limited number of staff available to work.
How have kids and families expressed gratitude for flexible summer feeding options such as grab-n-go meals, pick-up meals and home-delivered meals?
The families in our community thank the staff each distribution day. They express comments like, “I am so glad you are providing this for our community” and “I am so glad that we have this program in our school.”
What keeps you motivated to do this work?
I know how important this program is to our families. In a small school, our staff knows many of the students and parents personally and can see the difference we make in the daily lives of each one.
At No Kid Hungry New York, we thank Heidi and the food service staff members at Cassadaga Valley for their dedication and enthusiasm in feeding kids throughout the summer. We’re grateful to support their work and honored to shine a spotlight on their extraordinary program!