I’m Jeffrey Boyce and it is January 21, 2022. I’m here in Mississippi today talking with Sebasthian Varas in Utah. Welcome Sebasthian, and thanks for taking the time to talk with me today.
Sebasthian Varas
Thank you.
Jeffrey Boyce
Could you tell me a little bit about yourself, your job, what you do, what your responsibilities are?
Sebasthian Varas
Yes, I work for the Canyons School District. I am the nutrition director for the district, so we oversee 43 schools that operate a school breakfast, a school lunch. We also do a snack and some other USDA programs.
We have about 300 employees.
I would say that’s optimal if we would have them. Right now we have less, but to run the operations efficiently, we need at least 300 employees and I’ve been doing this since 2009, but I’ve been involved with child nutrition since 2005, right after I graduated from college.
Jeffrey Boyce
Okay, so you’ve got quite a few years in then.
Sebasthian Varas
Yes.
Jeffrey Boyce
Tell me about your experiences with the Covid 19 pandemic and the challenges you faced running the programs.
Sebasthian Varas
So it’s been challenging, yes, but the challenges have changed from year to year. When we first started, and I don’t know how far back you want me to go, but when we first started the pandemic, the biggest challenge was to figure out, overnight, how to serve the students when we were in quarantine, but we were able to do that, and thanks to USDA waivers we were able to provide meals and have parents pick them up and still provide nutritious meals to all of our community.
This year, the challenges have been different. Most of our schools are open and most of our students are in person.
One of the things that has been a challenge has been, of course, the supply being consistent, not knowing what we can or cannot get.
And the other biggest challenge we have is labor. We have a lot of positions that are unfilled, and also right now with the search, we have a lot of people who are getting sick.
So how can we overcome this?
Again, I would have to thank USDA for all the waivers. If it wasn’t for the waivers in place we wouldn’t be able to run the programs successfully, starting with universal meals. Universal meals really has made it possible for us to be able to afford the overtime that we need to pay for our workers that are serving, being shorthanded. But also being able to afford all of the increments in price for supplies and food that we are seeing at this time.
What we do is, we have a warehouse in our district, so we plan very carefully and we try to bring in as much as we can, food or supplies, into our warehouse, that we have that peace of mind that we can plan our menu based on what we have on hand.
And we also work with great distributors and they are fantastic at getting us substitutions and when we see that they fit with our quality and with our program demands we take them, of course, and then we’re able to serve students but we’ve had to be very flexible in our menu planning.
We actually have had to cut down choices for the students, due to the shortage in supplies, but it’s working.
Every day we feed the students, we provide them with choices, and our goal is to feed all of our student community and we’re doing that, so I say that’s a success.
Jeffrey Boyce
You talked about some of the things that worked. Were there other things you’ve tried that didn’t work?
Sebasthian Varas
I think we’ve learned lessons doing this – trial and error. One of the things, but maybe didn’t work, was at the beginning, at least, we tried to stick so much to our menu planning. And when we had a substitution or something we learned quickly that we needed to communicate that to our student community and our parents.
Because they get used to our menus. They have their favorites. Let’s just say orange chicken, for example. If we have that on the menu, and oh, we didn’t get it, and we would serve something else, but if we didn’t let them know we would find a lot of disappointment in the community and getting phone calls of how come we didn’t get orange chicken? So one of the things we learned is that communication is key.
And not just to our students, but it goes all the way from our Board of Education to our superintendent, all of the faculty, administration, and everybody at the school, so they know what we’re doing. We are an integral part of the school, as far as the support system goes, because we know that nutrition, good nutrition correlates positively with student performance. So we want to make sure that we are a good resource, but that we’re communicating all of our challenges, so they can dissipate. If there are any problems, we can resolve them ahead of time.
Jeffrey Boyce
You talked about getting the word out. What forms of media did you use to do that, let people know, for instance, if there wasn’t orange chicken this week?
Sebasthian Varas
So we have a fantastic communications department in our district, and they have been great to work with to send robo calls to parents letting them know about our practices and our problems that we’re having, whether it’s Labor or supplies.
They also send emails to all of our students. But if we have a particular case for a school, because sometimes it doesn’t affect all of the schools, sometimes it may affect one or two schools, our managers talk to the administrator at that school. And all of our administrators, our principals, are great to work with, and they send communications to their communities letting them know what’s happening so they can know in advance. We especially try to take really good care, of course, of our special diet students, because if there is ever any substitution that may affect their diet, we want to make sure we have something to back up to offer them.
So we work directly with the school, in conjunction with nurses, the principals, the kitchen manager at the addition, and we make it work.
Jeffrey Boyce
What changes did you have to make in your delivery model during the pandemic? Did Utah schools all go remote, like most places did at first?
Sebasthian Varas
So, at first, yes. Starting 2020 we were all of course quarantined, so that’s when we had to go to grab and go form of serving. Basically parents will drive up to the school that was kind of like a drive through, and we got meals for them and for their kids. They would come and pick them up. Then last year, last school year, students were given the option to go virtual or to attend in person. And I’m not certain of the actual percentage, but I would say, a good number of students chose to go virtual, so because of that we were serving meals in the cafeteria as well as we have a window for pickup option for parents to come and get meals. And this year school is in person.
The district did create a virtual school for students that wanted to go virtual, but I think most of our students did come back to in person, so we’ve been serving in the cafeteria this year, which is great. It’s great to see students go back to a little bit more of normalcy and they are able to interact with each other, relax and have lunch, of course always following safe protocols, so that they can avoid getting sick.
Jeffrey Boyce
How has this affected your meal planning? You mentioned the unavailability of some items, so how are you dealing with that?
Sebasthian Varas
Well, we’ve learned to be very flexible. We still plan, we have to plan menus, we plan ahead, because I think if there is no plan, really you have no direction to go.
So we have to plan, but we’ve learned to be flexible and knowing that food comes sometimes on a weekly basis, or like I mentioned before, we have the food in our warehouse. At least we know what kind of inventory we have on hand and we can plan ahead to use that inventory in the near future.
But we have certainly had to cut down choices. Just to give you an example, our elementary schools, every day we gave them three choices. And we had to cut to two choices, because of the labor and the uncertainty of supplies.
But our secondary schools, they normally had anywhere between 15 to 20 choices a day, and now they have between eight to 10. So we have to cut about half of the choices, just to make sure that again we have the food and we are not making too many substitutions to avoid frustration for the students.
Jeffrey Boyce
You’ve mentioned that the variety and the meals has suffered some. What about the quality? Have you been able to maintain quality?
Sebasthian Varas
We are very particular about our quality, and that’s part of the reason why we cut our menus, because we’d rather secure products that we know that work, that they’ve proven to work with us for several years, instead of trying to get substitutions for those products. And one example would be chicken. We use a lot of whole muscle cuts for chicken, even our chicken nuggets.
And our students, of course, love that and they’ve gotten used to that for many years now, so we didn’t want to go to substitutions that were anything other than whole muscle chicken nugget or chicken products for secondary schools.
So, because of that we were able to just work with commodities and secure that in our warehouse if it’s coming. And if it’s not coming, then we plan for something different, instead of trying to substitute.
Jeffrey Boyce
Have you been able to form partnerships with other organizations within your community to meet your mandate?
Sebasthian Varas
Yes, we with one company called Kelly West. They are great partners in our community. They’ve been great supporters right from the get go when we started the pandemic.
I remember a few examples. During the first year at the pandemic they wanted to help the farmers, because of they got stuck with product too. So they donated yogurt and cheese and butter to our school district. And as we were giving out meals to the community, we were also giving out those products. And it was really good, first of all, because a lot of parents in the community and families were affected by the pandemic job wise, so they appreciated, first of all, the universal meals, and I still hear about how that made a huge difference for their families, to know that they can rely on good nutrition, at no cost, at school for them.
But also, on top of that, to get the case of yogurt, or pounds of cheese and butter just to supplement those meals. That was a great help for the students.
Kelly West has not only provided food, but they have programs where they can give us equipment.
For example, when we had to do more of the grab and go lunches, they gave us grab and go carts that we could put in different locations in our secondary schools, so we can become more efficient and students can go to those carts, get a reimbursable meal, enjoy their lunch, and go back to class. So they’ve been fantastic to work with and I’m pretty sure that anywhere in the nation, you can find partners in the community that are able to help and support your programs. And this was a very win, win situation, because we were helping the farmers to get the food out, or in the case of the carts, we are also committed to try a smoothie recipe on those carts for breakfast, so we’re using them for breakfast and for lunch as a grab and go, so it works both ways.
Jeffrey Boyce
Have you had any positive outcomes from experiencing the pandemic?
Sebasthian Varas
Yes, I think we always try to look for the positive and we learn from this experience.
If anything we’ve always been very huge, of course, on food safety and sanitation, but I love that it was reinforced more on the importance of washing your hands, and don’t come to work if you’re sick.
And even the fact of wearing a mask at work, it has helped us show people are not getting as sick as before.
But those are just technicalities that came with the pandemic. But we’ve also learned that, like I mentioned before, communication is key.
And whenever we are faced with an emergency type of situation we gotta communicate to the right channels in our community, so we’re all on the same page. Because parents, sometimes if we don’t communicate, they won’t understand how come we run out of an item or an item was not available today, or anything that could happen and then we get the phone calls, and how come you did this, and the complaints.
But when we are all on the same page they become very understanding and they appreciate every effort that we do to serve their students.
Like I mentioned, also labor has been one of our biggest challenges and I think we always knew that lunch workers are heroes, but now I tell them that the whole world knows that you are heroes, because if it wasn’t for you many kids wouldn’t get fed, and a big, big thanks to all of my staff and to everybody in the nation that is working in school nutrition programs, because truly they’ve made a difference.
Jeffrey Boyce
Do you think the lessons learned during the pandemic, will they stay or will they fade is we hopefully venture out of the pandemic?
Sebasthian Varas
I hope they stay. I think that’s how we grow as human beings. We can learn from experiences that are hard and we take the lessons with us, not just for a moment, but if they apply for future events, I hope that we can rely on that experience and then it will make it easier in the future. So I’m really hoping that that will stay. And I think there have been excellent things due to the pandemic. My district is not high on free and reduced and I don’t think we would have ever been able to do some type of universal feeding for my whole district.
And that’s one of the things that I don’t know if it’s going to be possible in the future, who knows, but one of the lessons that we’ve learned is how much this food is needed. We always assume like, oh yeah, the kids probably get fed at home. But now I hear from so many parents thanking us, saying, “Thank you for having that food available at school.”
And sometimes it’s been a great help, especially if any particular member of the family was laid off or they’re in transition of jobs or they were affected. So I thank USDA for that, but I also think that’s one of the biggest benefits that we’ve seen from the pandemic and if it applies in the future, hopefully we can see that happening.
Jeffrey Boyce
Where is your district in Utah?
Sebasthian Varas
So, we cover four cities in Salt Lake County. So we have Midvale City, Cottonwood Heights, Draper, and Sandy. We also cover some little outskirts like Alta. We’re located about, I would say, 20 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City.
Jeffrey Boyce
Was there anything else you’d like to share with me today?
Sebasthian Varas
I just want to say thank you to USDA again, and thank you to the lunch workers.
Honestly, they’ve been the true heroes, like I mentioned, and many times they don’t get the recognition that they deserve.
I think now it’s getting better and like I said, the whole world knows now that they’re heroes, but we’re quick to forget that. And we’re still during the pandemic and there’s still on line serving every day, being shorthanded and still making it happen. Just so you have an idea, I mentioned I have 300 employees to run my operations. I’m short about 90 employees.
So running with 210 employees it’s been difficult, but they’ve been nothing but fantastic and they step up and if they have to stay longer, they do, or if they have to do double shifts, they do, so thanks to all of the lunch workers in the nation, because I’m sure my case it’s not particular to my district. I’m sure it’s everywhere.
Jeffrey Boyce
That’s what I’m hearing as I do these interviews.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
Sebasthian Varas
Thank you, Jeffrey. My pleasure.
