New York City feeds over 1.1 million kids every day. Now, with public schools shut due to coronavirus, its mission is much harder—and even more important.
On Monday March 16th, all New York City public schools were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving 1.1 million children in the nation's largest public school system without a place to go for school—and more critically—for food.
In the span of days, the logistics of feeding the city’s 1.1 million public school children was spearheaded by the OFNS team, led by Executive Director Chris Tricarico and longtime team members Stephen O’Brien, Armando Tadei and Nicole Scarengello, who were tasked with figuring out how to ensure no New York City child would be without food during the COVID closures.
"That they have been able to get things in place so rapidly, turning such a massive system on a dime," said Liz Accles, Executive Director of, the nonprofit responsible for moving the City to adopt Universal Free Lunch. "How do you even capture what an enormous task that is? There is nothing that compares to the scale. They have moved quickly and decisively to get meals out."
"I really like that you can pick up dinner, and they expressly said you can get the three meals at once and that parents can pick up on behalf of kids," said Justine Butler, who lives in East Flatbush and has twins in the 4th grade. "All of that makes it easier for families." The other significant differences in this meal program are that parents can pick up all meals without having their children present and that meals can be eaten off premises. Ordinarily, during non-COVID school closures, such as summer break and holidays, federal rules require children to be accompanied by an adult to pick up their meals and also require children to remain on site to eat their meals, never grab-and-go.
While the access to three free meals has been rolled out with amazing speed, concerns over the safety of food service workers—who are in essence operating at the front lines of the city’s response to the sweeping pandemic—have been raised in recent days. reported that many workers, including ones who are elderly or have chronic health conditions, say they’re working without social distancing and have been offered little in the way of protection.
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