KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Public Schools has stopped their food distribution service for the time being after discovering an employee may have coronavirus.
"We learned of a presumed positive case of COVID-19 on our child nutritional services team. Along with that, that this person had come in contact with 130 of our food services team as well as our delivery team and our custodial team," said Kelly Wachel, spokesperson for the KCPS.
The district said it was a tough decision, but the safest one.
KCPS has served more than 65,000 meals over the last few weeks since schools closed.
"They need us and we recognize that huge responsibility," said Wachel.
Many families rely on the district to provide lunch and, in many cases, breakfast for their kids.
"Usually you have dinner, maybe breakfast sometimes, but you know, anything can help out," said parent Davina Sirls.
Onita Omorodion takes care of her two grandchildren and said the meal distribution has helped her family.
"I didn't have to buy as many groceries as I do now because it did help supplement for the kids. They were able to eat breakfast, they were able to eat lunch, so basically, we just had to do dinner," said Omorodion.
Parent Angela Adams said now she has four extra mouths to feed during the day.
"We're just trying to stay above the waters a little bit, but it's not really working but we're trying," Adams said.
Families are looking to other pantries and churches to get them by.
KCPS hopes to start distributing food again by next week, but it depends on the employee's test results with the health department.
"We did give our children extra meals yesterday, on Monday, knowing that we wanted to stock them up for the week," said Wachel.
The district does not know how the employee may have contracted the virus. They are working with the health department on guidelines and reaching out to people who may have been in contact with the employee.
There are many other organizations still distributing food. The school district compiled a list of other places to go. People can also use Harvester's food assistance locator.
