Laura Cabe, School Nutrition Director for Jackson County Schools, said an extra $500,000 approved by the Jackson County Commission going toward the CEP program this year will provide more free breakfasts and lunches for kids in Jackson County.
CEP stands for Community Eligibility Provision, and the program offers free breakfasts and lunches for all students at participating schools. The schools asked for an extra $500,000 to help CEP expand to more schools than were covered last time, but if the program can’t get more student participation, it may not return the following year.
Cabe said the issue at Blue Ridge School in Cashiers is that they don’t have enough staff. That prevents them from doing as much with the free meals as they could be.
“We’d like to do several things, but we struggle to staff the school,” Cabe said. “We’re not able to bring the program to the Early College because we have no staff. We’d like to have different food options, but we’re not able to do that.”
She said the school’s difficulties filling jobs might come down to a few factors that make the Highlands-Cashiers area unique. For one, she said, some other jobs in the area might be more alluring to younger people.
“There are different prices at some of the jobs people work in Cashiers,” she said. “Some of the food serving jobs at the golf courses probably pay $25 an hour. We have better hours and benefits and retirement, but younger people might be looking at the hourly rate, which we can’t compete with.”
Moreover, she said the housing and the remote location are likely turn-offs for potential employees.
“The drive is hard,” she said. “And if you don’t want to do that drive, and you want to live there, there’s no housing.”
She said the lack of a full-time child-care facility in Cashiers also likely deterred some people.
The way CEP works is that schools pay a sum for the meals and then are reimbursed for the meals eaten by students, so if more students are eating the meals, the schools get reimbursed more.
That’s led to some creative methods to try and entice students to eat more. At some other schools in the region, they’ve implemented methods like allowing students to eat meals at various areas of campus rather than only the cafeteria, and, for high school students, offering grab-and-go snacks for breakfast that they can take to class – easy for students who sleep late and don’t want to get to school early to eat breakfast there.
Other times they’ve brought food to students in various locations at the schools, which helps reach some students in schools where going to the cafeteria is a long trek.
However, Cabe said Blue Ridge School hasn’t been able to implement some changes like that due to the staffing issues.
Ultimately she said the CEP program, while it’s still funded for the coming year, might be at risk in future years – due in no small part to rising costs all across varying sectors of society.
“Food costs are going up, the price of equipment is going up,” she said. “Those are all things to take care of with a business. It’s a lot of hoops to jump through. At the end of the day, we just want to feed kids.”
The issue is a dear one to Cabe, who said she always enjoys visiting Blue Ridge School.
“Blue Ridge School is such a great school,” she said. “The kids start there at age three or four and you can see them go their whole career there until they’re 18.”