Pinellas Preparatory Academy Faces Dilemma in Transporting an Additional 350 School Lunches

Pinellas Preparatory Academy, a school without it's out food preparation cafeteria, faces dilemma in feeding 350 more students next school year. The problem is they don't have a way to transport the additional meals to students. 

In 2006, Pinellas Preparatory Academy (PPA) was told about the State of Florida mandate to offer a school lunch program. The program had to be available to every student and offered without prejudice to those needing free or reduced meals. The biggest problem was the school didn’t have their own food preparation facilities.

They had two choices: contract with independent vendors to provide lunches or contract with the school district to use one of the nearby school’s existing lunch program.

The first choice proved too costly. Principal Curtis Fuller explained that the school would have had to hire a part time person just to handle the program and its paperwork.

If it had been feasible to pay for the additional staff person, a bigger obstacle stood in its place. Most independent caterers did not want to provide lunches because of the mountains of paperwork and rigid state regulations in running a public school lunch program.

The charter school chose the second option and contracted with the district.

They buy their students' lunches from the nearby public school, Frontier Elementary. They also rely on a pool of volunteers to travel to Frontier daily and pick up coolers of food.

PPA orders about 130 or more lunches a day. Thirty to 50 percent of the students order lunch-- 30 percent of them qualify for the state’s free and reduced meal program.

When PPA first bought their lunches from Frontier, they chose the cold lunches. The food was already packed into individual bags, which was easy to transport. Volunteers didn’t need a huge amount of vehicle space to transport bagged lunches. But the cold lunches weren’t popular among the students.

“Kids like hot lunches better than cold,” Fuller said.

The demand made the school switch to hot lunches, which are prepared in large quantities. The food is packaged in large coolers. After transporting the coolers to PPA, the volunteers must divide the food onto individual student lunch trays.

It takes a lot of volunteer time, in the middle of a workday. It also requires a large enough vehicle to transport the coolers.

PPA’s current lunch program requires six to seven large coolers. So far, parent volunteers are able to handle the load.

However, PPA now finds itself with a new obstacle. The number of lunches will double when their elementary school opens in the fall. Pinellas Primary Academy will be housed within PPA’s current building. Between the two schools, they will have a student population of almost 700 kids.

With additional student lunches, the problem will be the school's lack of a big enough vehicle to handle up to fourteen coolers of food. Coolers won’t fit in a regular-sized car or an SUV. They’ll require a large truck, perhaps a cargo vehicle without seats.

The administration hopes to find a business sponsor willing to donate a lift van. With additional coolers, the school volunteers could load the coolers into a big rolling cart, which can be pushed into the van via the lift.

Fuller is trying to solve the dilemna with best available options. It's possible they may get enough elementary school parents to transport the lunches. Even if they do, they'll have an organizational issue. They have to work out scheduling times between all the volunteers and pickup times at Frontier Elementary.

With upward of possibly 350 students needing lunches, the problem is immense and fairly immediate. PPA’s elementary school will open in August 2011.

“We are a non-profit, 501c 3 organization,” Fuller said. A vehicle donation made to this type of organization is tax-deductible, he added.

If you want more information or would like to help, contact Curtis Fuller, Pinellas Preparatory Academy, at (727) 536-3600.