Since the pandemic began, the food service department at West Babylon School District stepped up to make sure students and families had food. In March, the department started feeding the community from the West Babylon Junior High School as a grab-n-go site which continued over the summer months.

Once school started, the lunch department served school meals in different manner. All elementary students receive their meals delivered to the classrooms. Each student receives a cold bag that includes a milk, fruit, utensils and any other cold item that may be included with the meal and a hot lunch tray. Breakfast on the elementary level is now being offered as a grab-n-go breakfast bag that is picked up on the way into school to be eaten in the classroom.

On the junior high school level, small clusters of classes are served their lunch meals from kiosks that get loaded up, before each lunch period, in the kitchen and wheeled throughout the school.

“At the high school level, the lunch staff does an amazing job feeding the entire school in session in a 30-minute period as all of the students break to eat lunch between lesson block 2 and lesson block 3 around 10:15 every day,” said Jeannette Frabizio, West Babylon School District’s lunch manager. They serve from kiosks in the hallways as well as from the serving lines in the cafeterias. Serving stations are placed around the school so that students can remain socially distant when they are picking up their meals in a quick manner.

Breakfast and meal distribution for the take-home meals for the following day are set up at the entrances and exits of the junior high school and high school buildings as well. “We are also running a meal-pick up program for the remote only students on Mondays,” Ms. Frabizio said. “The family members of remote-only learning are able to pick up free meals for the entire week on Mondays out of the high school.”
Life is also very different this year for the school lunch staff as we are offering free meals to all students. Breakfast participation has more than doubled at all of the elementary schools due to this change, she said.

“The lunch staff has been amazing at altering their routines to meet the demands of this year,” Ms. Frabizio said. “They are working harder than ever to maintain high quality meals in a very unusual way. They miss seeing the students coming through their lines on a daily basis but are continuing to show pride in their work.”

 

Students at Santapogue Elementary School helped to spread holiday cheer to the law enforcement community. Holiday cards were made and sent to men and women in blue. The students hope that the cards will bring smiles and hope to these essential workers during the holiday season.

West Babylon Junior High School sixth grader Addison Eglin was accepted into the Institute of Creative Problem Solving for gifted students at SUNY Old Westbury. She has been attending two-and-a-half hour classes at the school on Saturdays since September. This is a prestigious program that requires an admittance exam and only 25 students out of hundreds of applicants are chosen.

In celebration of autumn, students in Heidi Last’s first grade class at Forest Avenue Elementary School fostered their love of reading during their time with librarian Andrea Francisco. The students read about the change of seasons and its impact on trees and their leaves. During the next two library classes, Ms. Francisco paired two stories, “We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt” with “Look What I Made with a Leaf!” During the first class, the students went on a leaf hunt and the following class, they imagined and created their own leaf creatures.