Oakland Said It Didn’t Have the Money for Free Summer Meals. That Has Changed

A program that has long served free meals to thousands of Oakland kids over the summer and was slated to be canceled this year amid the city’s financial woes is back on track thanks to a public-private partnership, city officials said this week.

The program, which is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is now expected to once again deliver daily lunches and snacks to roughly 45 sites throughout the city, including many libraries, recreation centers, nonprofits and churches. Food service is set to begin in late May, immediately after the end of Oakland’s school year, and continue into the second week of August.

“The City intends to maintain the Youth Summer Lunch Program using a combination of one-time fund balance and philanthropic contributions,” the mayor’s office wrote in its proposed budget, which was publicly released on Monday. Although city officials have not yet provided specific details about the new funding arrangement, KQED has learned that the East Bay Community Foundation is one of the main philanthropic groups involved in keeping the program running.

“We’re working with a group of folks to share next steps,” said Shannon Baker, a spokesperson for the group. “We’re part of the conversation.”

Last year, the program served more than 1,700 lunches and snacks every weekday throughout the summer, cumulatively feeding thousands of children, according to the city. The program, it said, is intended to “bridge the meal gap throughout the summer months” when school meals are not available.

It’s still unclear if this year’s food service program will operate at the same capacity.

The food program’s apparent resurrection is the latest twist in a saga that started in late March, when the city, in a letter, informed most of participating sites that the meals they had planned to soon start serving would not be coming.

“We recognize this is a significant loss for the children and families who rely on these meals,” Michael Akanji, from the city administrator’s office, wrote in the letter, citing “severe city budget constraints.”

But just days after KQED first reported on the program’s demise, the city seemingly reversed course, announcing that it had figured out a way to continue offering meals to libraries and other city-run sites, but not to the more than 20 nonprofits that had previously participated. Now, thanks to the private partnerships, all the original sites will receive meals, city officials said.

Candice Elder, the executive director of The East Oakland Collective — a nonprofit that has provided meals to kids for the last two summers — was among a number of community site directors who told KQED they never received the city’s initial letter in late March announcing the program’s cancellation.

“As a smallish nonprofit, we can’t afford to pay for these meals on our own,” Elder told KQED last month, before the city called her to say the program had been reinstated and would begin delivering food to her site in late May.

Last summer, Elder said, as many as 50 children — from toddlers to middle schoolers — filed into her community center nearly every weekday to receive lunch and snacks.

“Everything from sandwiches, pasta, chicken tenders — it was a pretty well-balanced meal,” she said. “There was always fruit. There was milk, carrots, celery.”

Elder said her deep East Oakland neighborhood is a food desert, where many low-income families lack access to healthy food.

“So this has been an awesome program. It’s been really beneficial to have these meals available, and then the kids know that, guaranteed, Monday through Friday, they can still eat,” she said.

Nearly 75% of students in the Oakland Unified School District qualify for free or reduced lunch, and many regularly experience food insecurity.

The city’s announcement in March about canceling the program followed a City Council vote last December to reallocate funds from its sugar-sweetened beverage tax, part of a frantic effort to close what was then a nearly $130 million budget shortfall. The tax, which voters approved in 2016, generates more than $7 million a year, a portion of which is intended to support youth health-related programs, including the summer food service.

Oakland previously used about $200,000 of that revenue each year to supplement funding for the food program and cover administrative costs, but said the money was no longer available as a result of the reallocation.

The city administrator’s office did not respond to questions about when it officially made the decision to cancel the program or why it waited so many months after the Council’s budget vote to inform partner sites.

“It was really disappointing to hear that so late in the game. You guys couldn’t have let us know earlier?” said Dawna Williams, the interim executive director of the East Oakland Boxing Association, which participated in the program last year.

Williams said she was left “scrambling” after receiving word the program had been canceled, with just two months to go before summer break. “They probably knew this long before March. And they knew that we were already preparing for summer programming.”

In previous summers, Williams’ nonprofit has served free breakfast, lunch and snacks to about 75 kids per day, and relies heavily on the city’s summer food program to support that, she said.

“I know the kids don’t get the best nutrition at home because the families just don’t have the funds to do it,” Williams said.

Akanji, from the city, called a few weeks ago to let Williams know the program was back on, she said.

“It was a relief because I’m scrambling to write grants to make sure the kids have something for the summer,” Williams said. “Quite honestly, I’m grateful that someone sat down and came to a consensus that we really can’t [cancel] this at the 11th hour.”