Deondre Skipper stacks up trays of packaged meals to be shipped to individual schools at the Buffalo Schools commissary on East Delavan Avenue.
Derek Gee, Buffalo News
A significant delay in Buffalo Schools’ plan to develop a new commissary by the start of the 2025-26 school year has parent advocates and students lamenting the poor state of the district’s general health.
Shovels were supposed to break ground in September 2023 on a new central food hub for Buffalo Schools. Slated to open in fall 2025, the facility would be a headquarters to prepare fresh, healthy meals to serve 28,000 children in 60 schools. Instead, students will continue to eat mostly processed foods for the foreseeable future.
They’re afraid that, without a new facility in which meals can be made from scratch, and then chilled before service, the reliance on largely processed, frozen food will cause Buffalo’s academic achievement to continue to lag, spark further behavior and safety concerns, and allow the city’s child poverty rate to remain around the 40% reported by the state comptroller.
“We can’t achieve or meet those goals if I’m hungry – nobody can learn when they’re hungry,” said Khadijah Hussein, a leader of the Community Health Worker Network of Buffalo, wellness advocate and former Buffalo Schools student. “I can’t as an adult. I don’t know why we’re expecting the children to. Adults get upset when children act out and are behaving terrible because they’re hungry, but we’re not prioritizing the No. 1 thing.”
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The district’s lack of adherence to state education law, which prohibits lease-to-purchase agreements between school districts and developers, led to a revised commissary plan after more than a year of work was completed by McGuire Development, Kideney Architects and a team from Buffalo Schools’ nutrition and plant services departments.
The City of Buffalo was asked by Buffalo Schools to hold title for a new building on East Delavan Avenue, but the city will not do so unless it is involved from the start of a new procurement process, school officials said. Restarting the project, paying sunk costs and potentially renewing for five years the lease for the existing commissary will delay addressing what research shows is a dire need.
The results of a 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, released earlier this month, drive home the importance of nutrition and the reality of food scarcity.
The primary benefit of a new commissary will be the ability to prepare large-quantity meals from scratch and keep them fresh using a cook-chill method.
When Patrick Madden, the president of Maine-based Market Decisions Research, explained the takeaways from a digital survey that collected more than 10,000 responses from middle and high schoolers in BPS, only one topic fell under areas to improve for both levels: “There are significant financial barriers to healthy eating.”
Madden specified two subsections that increased in the food insecurity trend: “The percentage of students that are saying they’re either worried they’re not going to have enough food at home or they actually ran out of food at home because their family didn’t have enough money to pay for it.”
If students are not eating at home, the nutritional value of free school meals rises in importance.
Since the racist mass shooting at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue in 2022, food access has become a more visible priority in Buffalo, with an array of public, non-profit and corporate entities stepping up to support solutions. At the same time, the problem of hunger continues to grow, and there is a lot more work to be done, community advocates and food providers say.
“The current offerings in our cafeteria leave much to be desired,” Yahya Hussein, a student community health worker who attends Hutchinson Technical Central High School, told the Buffalo School Board in March. “It is increasingly clear that we need a change.”
School eating habits
To understand the need for a new commissary, which would allow for higher-quality ingredients, a wealth of culturally diverse lunches and better-tasting food, it’s important to take stock of a school food environment that sees small progress amid great limitations.
Hutch-Tech junior Rehma Kashindi has been active with the Community Health Worker Network in advocating for healthier meals. She’s quick to praise improvements in her cafeteria – seasoning bars that inject flavor in mundane meals, entrée options that now include rice and dumplings instead of only sloppy Joes and hot dogs, and occasional culturally diverse meals students will not only eat but feel connected to.
“Even with subpar meals, you can make them better by seasoning them the way you like,” Kashindi said.
Paprika, lemon pepper and Mexican are among her favorite seasonings in the Flavor Bar, an option debuted by Child Nutrition Services this year.
Community Health Workers from Buffalo Public Schools speak at a wellness collaborative meeting in February. Rehma Kashindi, second from left, Khadijah Hussein, second from right, and Yahya Hussein, far right, regularly speak out about wellness initiatives and the negative aspects of suspensions.
Ben Tsujimoto
Significant concerns remain.
One is federal: Portion size is too small for high schoolers, and far too small for athletes who may need more calories and nutrients for energy in practices or games, Kashindi said. Locally, though, there’s a discrepancy between healthy foods offered and their appeal.
“I’ve never seen anyone eat the green beans,” Kashindi said. “They are not appetizing – they taste like canned green beans, and I usually love green beans.”
A quick glance at the district’s kindergarten-through-12th grade lunch menu for May reveals frozen fare and glimmers of hope. But chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, pizza, chicken wing dip, hot dogs, French toast sticks, sloppy Joes and tacos appear most frequently.
Erica Chambers pulls a rack of pizzas out of the oven at the Buffalo Schools’ current commissary. Even if ground broke tomorrow, a new commissary to replace the East Delavan Avenue facility would not be operational until early 2026.
Derek Gee, Buffalo News
“Can all of our food not come out of a plastic wrapper? Can we just start there?” asked Danielle Grzymala, co-chair of the Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization and a parent of a City Honors student.
Side dishes, such as garlic-Parmesan roasted broccoli, roasted red potatoes and slushies using New York fruit, though, are creative and health-conscious. A vegetarian item, often using chickpeas or black beans, is listed most days.
For those with food allergies, who follow halal dietary restrictions and for students with disabilities, alternatives are either unavailable or hard to find.
“My son with autism, he doesn’t eat very much. They give him these tiny little Uncrustables, and that’s his meal,” said Ed Speidel, chair of the District Parent Coordinating Council and a South Buffalo resident, referring to the snack-size Smucker’s frozen sandwiches. “That’s his lunch, almost every day. They come home starving.”
Leaders of three Buffalo Schools parent groups published a petition that seeks to raise public awareness that the new commissary is far less certain to move forward.
Students are not always aware of the vegetarian options, Kashindi said, which is unfortunate because sometimes tasty fare – such as the spicy black bean burger – is wrapped in tinfoil and a general mystery unless a student inquires, she said.
In other words, many students choose not to eat at school, and many who do receive limited nutrition, either by choice or availability.
“A lot of students,” Kashindi said, “don’t find anything appetizing.”
Hungry at home
If kids do not find something they like to eat at school, they are hungry by the time they get home.
“We have no evidence that restorative practices are happening, and restorative conferences are extremely rare,” said Jessics Bauer Walker president of Community Health Worker Network of Buffalo.
“Every one of our kids comes home and eats the first thing they do,” said Speidel, whose statement was met with nods by Parent Congress leaders seated around him. “Every one.”
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey compared data from 2021 to those recently reported. Among the most sobering for both middle and high school students in Buffalo Schools was the percentage of students who “were worried that food at home would run out before their family got money to buy more.”
In 2021, that was 22% for middle school students and 19% for high school students. Last year, rates jumped to 32% and 29%, respectively.
The East Side will lose six Family Dollar locations in the coming weeks. It is part of a wave of store closures at the company, and the East Side is being hit particularly hard.
In this year’s surveys, 10% of middle schoolers and 13% of high schoolers said they “did not eat for a whole day because of money.” All eight food insecurity metrics declined at both levels.
“We live in a community where kids don’t have access to healthy and fresh foods – a lot of them are dependent on corner stores,” said Jessica Bauer Walker, director of the Community Health Worker Network of Buffalo. “From a public health standpoint, this is so critically important.”
Madden said inflation and macroeconomic reasons could be behind the trend. It’s likely, too, that Covid-19 federal relief, sent in three installments in 2020 and 2021, temporarily buoyed families in the 2021 study.
Jessica Bauer Walker, executive director of CoNECT and leader of the Community Health Worker Network of Buffalo, speaks about suspensions in Buffalo Schools on the steps of City Hall last summer.
Ben Tsujimoto
Food service conundrum
Under previous Child Nutrition Services Director Bridget O’Brien Wood and her successor, Ruth Conner, Buffalo Schools’ Food Services Department has aggressively pursued fresh food initiatives and benefited from outside funding.
Buffalo Schools was one of the first urban districts in the state to integrate local foods into schools when Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Cheryl Bilinski and O’Brien Wood started the farm-to-school program in Buffalo in 2014. It predated any state financial incentive by four years.
Through the NY Food for NY Families initiative, Buffalo Schools, its families, the surrounding community and 10 local producers will reap benefits over the next two years. Who is involved?
An awareness of the city’s food insecurity propelled the district to apply for and receive NY Food for NY Families grants, which created a system for local growers to package fruits, vegetables and proteins for the wider community at Buffalo Schools’ Saturday Academies.
The district partnered with Brigaid, led locally by Andrew Felschow, to develop recipes, train staff and implement speed-scratch cooking. Felschow, at a School Health and Wellness Collaborative meeting at D’Youville earlier this year, acknowledged challenges with labor and products available, but also presented a solution.
“Speed-scratch cooking uses premade ingredients or precooked ingredients,” he said, a few feet away from a Mexican street corn salad he had prepared, “but works in fresh ingredients as well.”
Paul Thompson loads up a delivery van with food supplies for the Saturday Academies outside the Buffalo Public Schools commissary on East Delavan Avenue in early June.
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
This granular progress clashes with large-scale problems. Promoting the commissary project early on, district leaders explained why it was sorely needed – access to fresh meals was just part of the equation.
The current commissary, at 1055 E. Delavan Ave., is far too small to feed a school district of 28,000 students.
Safety worries swirl outside the building. Conner, Buffalo Schools Chief Operating Officer David Hills and parent advocates agreed the intermingling of delivery trucks, private vehicles and pedestrians in tight quarters near William Gaiter Parkway is a hazard.
A Google search for health code violations shows the existing commissary frequently requires repeat inspections – which peaked at two critical and seven non-critical findings by the Erie County Department of Health last July.
The walk-in freezer at the Buffalo Public Schools’ existing commissary at 1055 E. Delavan Ave. on June 7, 2024.
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
Khadijah Hussein, who began her advocacy for wellness as a Buffalo Schools student in 2014, and Bauer Walker say they’ve known about the commissary’s limited capacity for several years. Their tours of the East Delavan site have amplified their urgent message.
“It’s not in good condition,” Hussein said. “We have people working in rooms where there’s mold and stuff.”
Are leaders listening?
Kashindi and about 10 other Community Health Workers at a School Board meeting midyear handed out healthy snacks – a bag of Sunchips and fruit – to board members seated at City Hall. It was a kind gesture, but also a symbol that these students were serious about nutrition in the district. The health workers urged district leaders at multiple meetings after to stay committed to the commissary project.
The East Side of Buffalo is losing something it desperately needs – a grocery store. Save-A-Lot will close its Broadway Market location next week, leaving Tops Markets and Aldi as the only traditional supermarkets to serve the area.
When she learned this month about the delay, Kashindi felt strong emotion.
“I’m immensely disappointed and at a loss for words,” she said. “It’s a huge social issue – there’s a certain passion and anger because it’s so necessary. I don’t understand why it’s not happening. Nobody likes to be ignored, nobody likes to not be heard, to not be seen.”
Parent leaders believe a disconnect exists between clearly stated student needs and district administrators’ perseverance amid difficult projects.
“If you’re not dealing with food insecurity and you never have, you’re not as connected to that,” Bauer Walker said. “Students are thirsty and hungry. To me, nothing is more urgent than that.”
Ben Tsujimoto can be reached at btsujimoto@buffnews.com, at (716) 849-6927 or on Twitter at @Tsuj10.
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