{"id":108295,"date":"2015-11-11T18:12:15","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T01:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/school-district-food-service-secures-major-grant\/"},"modified":"2015-11-11T18:12:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T01:12:15","slug":"school-district-food-service-secures-major-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/school-district-food-service-secures-major-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"School district food service secures major grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lindsay
Lindsay Hoover, Kathy Zufelt and Aunnie Hurley serve lunch at the Mancos school cafeteria. The cafeteria recently received a $70,000 grant for equipment and technology upgrades.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Just launched two months ago, Mancos Re-6 Food Services food pantry has served 122 adults, 151 children and 16 seniors \u2013 unexpected demand that has almost wiped out the pantry\u2019s supplies.<\/p>\n

The food services district receives about 1,000 pounds of food a month from nonprofit food bank Care and Share Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now finding that here we are in November, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, and we\u2019re pretty bare-bones,\u201d said Re-6 Food Services director Janet Fogel.<\/p>\n

The next shipment from Care and Share isn\u2019t scheduled until after Thanksgiving, so Fogel and some local partners are organizing a \u201cfast and furious\u201d food drive to ensure that the pantry has enough to help families get through the holidays.<\/p>\n

There are no income requirements or qualifications to be able to shop the food pantry, which Fogel says might be behind some of the appeal.<\/p>\n

Fogel says she transitioned from a \u201cfood packpack\u201d program into food pantry in September to ensure that more people in need could take advantage of the services, and has been surprised with how fast the program has taken off.<\/p>\n

The pantry is really in need of nonperishables, but Fogel says there is adequate storage for frozen products as well as root and winter vegetables, which tend to have a longer shelf life.<\/p>\n

Mancos Food Services was also recently approved for $70,000 in grant funds to go toward equipment and technology upgrades in the cafeteria\u2019s kitchen that should enhance the department\u2019s ability to do more from-scratch cooking.<\/p>\n

Fogel says that like many school cafeterias, the food services department has made serious strides over the past few years to ensure students are getting balanced, healthy meals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it all goes back to the food insecurity issues. One of my goals is to give these kids the most balanced meals they can possibly eat because it might be a full 24 hours until their next meal,\u201d she said. \u201cThis grant will allow us to ensure high food safety standards are being met, and do more scratch-cooking, which will allow us to serve those kids better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also as part of the grant, the food services district is getting new point-of-sale software that will allow parents to pay for their child\u2019s cafeteria lunches online.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping to have that up and ready to go by Christmas break,\u201d said Fogel.<\/p>\n

To donate to the Mancos School Food Pantry, look for food drive boxes around town and contact Fogel at 970-759-1813.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

help upgrade equipment, increase \u2018from-scratch cooking\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[83,392],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-mancos","tag-mancos-school-district-re-6"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108295"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}