“I’ve been here since 2001,” said Wham, who is also president of the Montana School Nutrition Association. “It’s like the hardest school year I’ve ever had. It’s kind of a disappointment.

The same situation is playing out in school canteens in Montana. Some kitchens have encountered difficulties in sourcing chicken or pork products, while others have seen milk prices skyrocket. Even plates and utensils cost more or are extremely scarce. These shortages are occurring among major food distributors such as Sysco and US Foods, which supply restaurants and hospitals in addition to schools, and are experiencing labor issues in their own warehouses and truck fleets. It’s happening across the country, leaving school food service executives scrambling to change menus, find substitute ingredients, or source locally, all in the name of student food.

“It could be a dairy product, it could be a vegetable, it could be a canned product, it could be ketchup, it could be chicken,” said Pam Radke, director of food services for Sidney Public Schools. . “There is no rhyme or reason for this. It’s just that it’s everywhere.

Radke has seen ingredients online that she’s trying to get from a distributor to sell before she can complete an order, prompting her to research and order substitutes. These last-minute substitutions on school menus also required her to closely monitor students with diet-related health issues such as diabetes or gluten intolerance, and to contact parents or a school nurse to find out. alert them to the change.

“My menu is prepared a month in advance,” Radke said. “So [now parents] can’t rely on what he says. It allows a lot more coordination, a lot more communication.

In more than 30 years in school catering, including 12 in Sidney, Radke said, she has never experienced anything like the current situation. Radke added that the cost of even basic dining supplies has increased at an alarming rate. Last month, a box of three dozen metal forks she was paying $ 6 for $ 18 and was only available by special order.

Similar problems in Missoula have complicated the school district’s continued efforts to reduce waste. Superintendent Rob Watson said public schools in Missoula County were unable to obtain compostable cardboard plates and cutlery from distributors this fall, prompting a return to plastic utensils. At Billings Public Schools, Director of Infant Nutrition Sid Taylor explained that middle and high school canteens in the district have had to get creative in the way they prepare food for lunch, using ” boats ”made of paper instead of the paper trays which are now rare. .

Billings even had to completely eliminate some menu items. The yogurt parfait was a popular menu choice at elementary schools in the district, Taylor said. But its manufacture requires bulk yogurt, which Sysco has not been able to supply. Spicy chicken sandwiches are also in high demand among college kids, but pre-spiced chicken patties are, again, hard to find due to staffing issues at food processing giant Tyson Foods. School staff have tried to make up for the shortage by adding spices to regular chicken patties, Taylor said, but “it’s not the same.”

“On average, we serve about 12,000 meals a day,” Taylor said. “So you know when we run out of something it really does have an impact. “

Some smaller districts have been successful in finding local workarounds to address supply shortages. At Greenfield Elementary outside of Fairfield, Food Services Manager Haven Murphy said she was able to make up for shortages by occasionally going to the local grocery store or Sam’s Club in Great Falls. With the current scarcity of whole wheat products, she added, she researched whole grain flour at Wheat Montana. Murphy’s ability to use these palliatives is entirely due to Greenfield’s small size – 80 students in total, plus six to nine staff who also eat school meals. Watson and Taylor said that in larger districts like theirs, the sheer volume of supplies needed precludes such alternatives.

Still, Murphy hasn’t escaped the pinch of National Food Services unscathed. French toast sticks, one of the most popular breakfast foods among young college students, have all but disappeared from the supply chain. And, she said, it had been two months since she couldn’t get hold of canned mandarin oranges. The situation, for Murphy and others, is made worse by federal nutritional requirements governing school feeding programs. Murphy said these guidelines, which are designed to ensure students get a balanced and nutritious meal, require her to offer both fat-free and 1% milk options, but she sometimes struggles to acquire the ‘either. Fruit juices, too, have become a challenge.

“Normally we would give them like apples, grapes and oranges,” Murphy said. “Then it was apple and orange, then orange juice. We drank a lot of milk and water on those days. … Especially when we couldn’t get the Juicy Juice brand and it was generic orange juice. It was quite disgusting.

The US Department of Agriculture has tried to alleviate the situation with regulatory adjustments, waiving financial penalties for schools that do not meet certain nutritional requirements, and even increasing reimbursement rates for free school meals. In late September, the agency also announced a $ 1.5 billion investment to help schools acquire the food supplies needed to continue providing breakfasts and lunches.

Shortages of spicy chicken, milk and canned corn aren’t the only issues facing school food programs in Montana and the country. School kitchens and canteens also suffer from the same labor issues that trigger food shortages. Taylor said the number of food service workers at Billings Public Schools has grown from about 145 to 105 in the past year. As a result, some cafeterias have had to consolidate or completely close lines for separate food items like pizza, burgers, or tacos. Taylor added that due to staff shortages, her human resources manager and other administrative staff are now mobilizing to prepare meals at various schools in the district.

Watson notes similar issues in Missoula, where the central district kitchen supports 16 K-12 schools. There are food service positions open at almost every one of these schools, Watson said, and the district tries to entice new hires with a $ 500 enrollment bonus, plus a $ 100 bonus for any employee in the school. district that successfully recruits a new hire. Bozeman Public Schools Superintendent Mike Waterman said his district has also made a habit of offering such incentives in light of ongoing staff shortages.

“That’s why we had to go for a lunch bag model only,” Waterman said. “The neighborhood has a nice high-end central kitchen. Our intention is and always has been to produce home-cooked meals and to make the most of these facilities. But unfortunately, we just don’t have the staff to manage all of our buildings and the central kitchen to make this happen. So we were relegated to prepackaged food in a lunch bag.

As with supply shortages, labor issues affect both rural and urban schools. In Sidney, Radke said, his program typically has 11 employees. With the departure of several employees, including herself, that number will soon be reduced to six employees covering an average of 1,300 meals per day in four schools.

“Honestly, I don’t know how it’s going to play out,” Radke said.

Despite the challenges, everyone interviewed for this story made it clear that there hasn’t been a day this fall yet where they haven’t been able to feed the students. They also did not report that they were so short of supplies that they did not meet the nutritional standards they were looking for.

“[Students] are definitely disappointed when they don’t get something they expect or really like, so it’s hard to see it, ”Murphy said. “But at the same time, they always get something and it always fills their stomachs.”

This story is printed with permission from the Montana Free Press. The original story can be accessed here.