There’s No School Lunch

Local food pantries and nonprofit organizations are working hard to meet the needs of the hundreds of children on the South Fork who receive free or reduced-price lunches at school but whose nutritional needs may not be met when school is out for the summer.

While some pantries report a slight dip in the number of families they serve over the summer — which their administrators say happens because parents on the East End are often working longer hours at seasonal jobs and cannot get to the pantries during normal hours — they also say there’s a gap in both availability and geography for that part of the local population.

“We know the need is very high just based on our numbers,” said Gabrielle Scarpaci, director of the East Hampton Food Pantry. “There are students affected who aren’t receiving meals at school [in the summer]. This is a problem nationally.”

Indeed, CNN reported in June that only about 18 percent of the 21.7 million children who are enrolled in the free and reduced-price lunch program are able to receive government-sponsoredfood assistance over the summer.

In the East Hampton School District, during the 2014-15 school year, about 32 percent of the district’s students — just under 600 kids — were signed up for the program.

One mother of three in East Hampton, whose eldest child will be a second-grader at the John M. Marshall Elementary School and receives free lunches during the school year, said the East Hampton Food Pantry’s offerings are critical in helping her feed her family during the summer.

“Feeding your kids is totally different once school is out,” said the mother, who asked that her name not be printed. “It’s so frustrating when your kid asks for something healthy, like a glass of milk before bed, but you have to save the milk for your other kid’s bottle. I can’t afford to go out and spend $5 on a gallon of milk. It’s not even like they’re asking for junk.”

In Bridgehampton during the last school year, 55 percent of the students were participating, totaling 89 kids in the same year. In Sag Harbor, during the 2013-14 school year, 66 kids, or 7 percent, were enrolled in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

But in districts that do not serve lunches in a school-operated cafeteria — such as Springs and Montauk — the exact numbers of kids in need might be hard to gauge. Pamela Bicket, who is currently running the Springs Food Pantry, said it serves anywhere from 35 to 80 families per week over the course of a year. Some of those families may have as many as eight children, she said.

“I think there’s a lot of hidden poverty,” she said. “There are a lot of working poor people and they are largely invisible to the public.”

In Montauk, about 125 families or households per week take advantage of the pantry, according to Alice Houseknecht, who is currently running the Montauk Food Pantry. But that food pantry only operates between November and April.

“Being that in the summer everybody seems to have jobs — there’s landscaping and fishing and carpenters and waiters — we realized there was a need for help six months out of the year,” Ms. Houseknecht said. “In the winter, a lot of them have to go to unemployment or don’t qualify for unemployment.”

“There is always emergency food available,” she added. Information can be found at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church.

It is a long drive from Montauk to Flanders, where the nearest Island Harvest open feeding site is set up at the David Crohan Center at 655 Flanders Road. Island Harvest is one of the largest food assistance organizations on Long Island, and it operates two types of food programs: closed sites, such as the summer feeding program at the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, which are for children who are registered for specific programs, and open sites, where anyone can come to receive free, nutritious food.

“The area out east is more rural and there are fewer resources available to people who live on the East End,” said Randi Shubin Dresner, executive director of Island Harvest. “If you were in another community like Brentwood or Amityville, it’s more condensed and there happen to be more resources. The further east you go, the more spread out the resources become. It’s definitely an issue.”

Schools are required to post information on free summer meals for kids, but according to a service map published by Hunger Solutions of New York, the Crohan Center in Flanders is the easternmost site on Long Island.

Compounding the problem of geography is the fact that many food assistance programs — even including Island Harvest — see a drop in donations over the summer.

“Historically, the summer is not a time that people are thinking about giving back to the community and making donations,” Ms. Dresner said. “That’s typically during the holiday season, November and December, when people are thinking about that. Hunger is 12 months of the year. If you’re hungry in November, you’re hungry in June and July.”

Ms. Scarpaci said the same is true at the East Hampton Food Pantry. “The times we see the most donations are around Thanksgiving and Christmas,” she said. “That’s when it’s in the forefront of people’s minds.”

But the community often responds in the summer in a different way. Ms. Dresner said farms contribute extra produce to both Island Harvest and local food pantries, and even some individual gardeners — like Barbara Thomas of East Hampton — see there’s a need to help.

“All the lettuce comes at the same time. Every plant does that, and suddenly you have hundreds of tomatoes or tens of pounds of lettuce. What do you do with it?” Ms. Thomas asked. “The idea of wasting it was terrible, so I just harvested a huge amount and called the food pantry in East Hampton. It really led me to thinking that this is true not just of my garden, but of so many gardens all over the place, and how that can be used to augment the food pantries and food programs of all kinds.”

Childhood hunger is just one reason why a partnership was created between several East End towns, known as the East End Partners for Youth. According to Nancy Lynott, its coordinator and Southampton town’s youth bureau director, the group’s mission is to connect families with the resources they need, identify exactly where there are holes in services, and then find ways to eliminate those gaps.

“For kids who receive free and reduced meals during the school year, there are very, very limited programs that provide that same service over the summer, and there are really only a few kids who take advantage of that during the summer,” Ms. Lynott said. “There’s lots of potential for kids who need the service, but most of them can’t get there.”

The East End Partners for Youth is planning a meeting on Aug. 12 in which representatives from several East End towns will pool their information to create a map of youth services. It doesn’t stop at food resources for kids.

“There are lots of gaps,” Ms.  Lynott said, “and even with the services that exist, kids have trouble accessing them, either because of transportation, finances, or family isolation, meaning families that are not hooked into the resources that are around them.”