An army of Nashville school employees work to keep students fed

A bright yellow school bus rolled slowly through a parking lot at North Nashville's Overlook Ridge Apartments, its windows open and its speaker system turned up.

"This is Metro Schools," one of the bus drivers inside cheerfully announced to the community. "We're offering free breakfast and lunch for anyone 18 and under."

A similar scene is happening all throughout the city as an army of Metro Nashville Public Schools bus drivers and food service employees descend into neighborhoods to keep kids fed until schools return from closures due to the coronavirus.

The job is an honor for the workers who assemble inside quiet cafeterias and on their buses to reach the students who can no longer go to school. 

The mission for the volunteers — who are being paid by the district regardless if they help — is to show their love for their students absent of a hug they know everyone needs.

Their reward is the smile on students' faces.

"We are going to serve everybody today, tomorrow, throughout the week and until we go back to school. We will be out here until their parents and everybody is able to go back to their job and their children can eat," said Marsha Martin, a bus driver of 11 years.

"I take this time as God telling us to get back together as a village. And this takes a village ... and we are going to feed the community."

Critical meals for children

The bus that left from Cane Ridge High School on Wednesday weaved through the apartment complexes surrounding the Antioch neighborhood. 

Driver Tabatha Mainord didn’t expect to see her usual students come out to collect the breakfast and lunch sacks, but that wasn’t important, she said.

“Seeing the happiness in those babies’ faces, even though they’re not mine, is why I do this,” she said. 

The school district is distributing about 1,000 meals a day to children along its bus routes, according to Spencer Taylor, executive director of food services. It’s an unprecedented shift for the district, which serves 72,000 in-school meals on a typical day.

Four out of 10 students in the district qualify to get their meals at Metro schools for free, he said.

Families are appreciative of the help, and at Mainord's first stop in an apartment complex up a steep hill from Bell Road, Kaidyn Aareen, 9, and Toriana Word, 6, ran over as the bus came to a stop in the parking lot. Mainord opened the door. 

“Here you go, baby,” Mainord said as she passed each one a plastic bag with breakfast — a muffin, a milk carton and apples — and a paper bag lunch with a sandwich and snacks. 

“Chocolate milk!” Aareen squealed.

The children’s aunt, Donna Owens, said the meal giveaway helps fill gaps in what the family can buy. It also gives her a break. 

“It helps a lot,” Owens said. “When the kids are home, it seems like you are cooking all day long.”

Spreading the word about food services

As the Overton High School bus traveled through South Nashville and East Nashville, the drivers worried not enough families knew about the service.

The route serves many families that speak another language. Few families approached the bus parked near the Falls at Mill Creek apartment complex.   

"The district has done a great job getting the information out there, but a lot of people don't know or aren't able to access the information for whatever reason," said Beverly Williams, an 18-year veteran bus driver.

"A lot of it starts to come from word of mouth."

But the bus drivers aren't alone. Teachers could stay at home, but many are checking in on students to ensure they get connected to resources.

Glenview Elementary School teacher Nicole Browning drove by the bus and asked how she could help. She wanted to notify parents the bus will be in the neighborhood serving food.

Browning and others also are getting educational resources for families. But the meals are essential.

"Our students rely on two meals a day from the schools," Browning said. "When they don't get this every day for months on end, that really worries us. We want to make sure they're safe and fed. We want to make sure they're not stressed at home."

A rough couple of weeks

As word spread through the Overlook Ridge Apartment complex that the bus was in the neighborhood, clusters of children — high school down to elementary age, and some even younger — timidly emerged from behind their numbered doors, grateful as they accepted sacks of food being hand-delivered by their bus drivers.

"Tell a neighbor to tell a neighbor," Tamara Mitchell, a transportation supervisor, told a mom as she handed out the food bags.

But she didn't have to coax too many. Others came eagerly.

"Hey, Miss Bus Driver," 7-year-old Euriah Baker said with a grin as he, his mom and little brother walked toward the bus.

Through the open back door, Markeshia Carothers smiled back.

Carothers has been driving a bus for four years, picking up kids around North Nashville and getting them to school at Whites Creek High, Joelton Middle and Cumberland Elementary, which is where Euriah attends.

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On Wednesday morning after picking up food for students at Haynes Middle School, she energetically joined a group of eight bus drivers and supervisors to go into the neighborhoods where she works and help feed the kids who without the daily meals they receive at school may not have enough to eat.

As they loaded containers filled with turkey and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches onto their buses, they stopped to record a few social videos letting the kids know they were coming.

Seeing Euriah — and others she welcomes on her bus every morning — warmed her heart.

Right now, Euriah is enjoying the togetherness with his mom and the little brother who wants his attention. They've been reading a lot of the books he gets in the mail from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. He misses school — his friends and his teacher most of all.

But now with the food deliveries from school, he gets to see his bus driver — and get a breakfast snack and a lunch delivered right to his neighborhood — which is special to him.

Neighbor Erica Lawton appreciates it, too. She has two girls, ages 3 and 1, not in school yet, but still appreciative of the milk, apples, cinnamon buns, graham crackers and sandwiches in the two meal sacks they got from the school bus delivery.

The last couple of weeks have been kind of rough, Lawton said. She's not working much right now. She has a job at the same day care her daughters attend, but the hours have been limited. Plus, her daughters were sick a couple of weeks, and she kept all of them home as a precaution. 

"It's been hard," Lawton said.

Reach Jason Gonzales at jagonzales@tennessean.com and on Twitter @ByJasonGonzales.

Translated information

For information on food stops or educational resources in multiple languages, visit: https://www.mnps.org/covid19.

Food drive-up locations

Sixteen school locations are offering breakfast and lunch meal service from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 

• Apollo Middle School: 631 Richards Road
• Buena Vista Elementary School: 1531 Ninth Ave. N
• Cole Elementary School: 5060 Colemont Drive
• DuPont Elementary School: 1311 Ninth St.
• Glencliff High School: 160 Antioch Pike
• H.G. Hill Middle School: 150 Davidson Road
• I.T. Creswell Middle School: 3500 John Mallette Drive
• Joelton Middle School: 3500 Old Clarksville Highway
• Lakeview Elementary School: 455 Rural Hill Road
• Madison Middle School: 300 W. Old Hickory Blvd.
• McKissack Middle School: 915 38th Ave. N
• Napier Elementary School: 67 Fairfield Ave.
• Rose Park Middle School: 1025 Ninth Ave. S
• Shwab Elementary School: 1500 Dickerson Pike
• Stratford STEM Magnet High School: 1800 Stratford Ave.
• Two Rivers Middle School: 2991 McGavock Pike 

Bus stops

Metro Nashville Public Schools buses will deliver meals at numerous locations throughout the city. Here is a list of the bus routes. All times are approximate.

Antioch

• Firelight Trail and Singing Hills Drive — 10:10 to 10:20 a.m. 
• Greystone Street and Blue Willow Court — 10:23 to 10:33 a.m.
• Springstead Trail and Lakewalk Drive — 10:37 to 10:47 a.m.
• Dove Creek Road and Dove Creek Court — 10:53 to 11:03 a.m.
• British Woods Apartments at Murfreesboro Road — 11:11 to 11:21 a.m.

Cane Ridge

• Arbor Hills Apartments at Bell Road — 10:12 to 10:22 a.m.
• Oak Chase Drive and Deer Valley Trail — 10:26 to 10:36 a.m. 

Glencliff

• Oriel Avenue and Miller Street — 10:09 to 10:19 a.m.

Hillwood

• Scholarship Drive and Achievement — 10:17 to 10:27 a.m.
• Lyncrest Apartments — 10:36 to 10:46 a.m.
• Bellevue Heights — 10:50 to 11 a.m.

Hunters Lane

• Rainwood Drive and Moorewood Drive — 11:17 to 11:27 a.m.
• Bellshire Terrace and Tuckahoe — 11:33 to 11:43 a.m.
• 119 Hillcrest Drive and Trailmont — 11:50 a.m. to 12 p.m.
• Warrior Road at Mallow Drive — 11:58 a.m. to 12:08 p.m.
• 207 Green Circle — 12:04 to 12:14 p.m.
• Wyndom Court and Canton Court —12:20 to 12:30 p.m.

Maplewood

• Lischey Place and Foster Street — 10:31 to 10:41 a.m.
• Lemont Drive and Maplewood Lane — 11:17 to 11:27 a.m.

McGavock

• 345 Burning Tree Drive — 10:19 to 10:29 a.m.
• Grove Drive and Brook Valley — 10:33 to 10:43 a.m.  
• Bonnavista Drive and Bonnaridge — 10:50 to 11 a.m.
• Topeka Drive and Denver Drive — 11:06 to 11:16 a.m.
• Pleasant Springs and Remington —11:19 to 11:29 a.m.
• 1342 Quail Valley Road — 11:30 to 11:40 a.m.
• Southfork Boulevard and Brackenwood — 11:36 to 11:46 a.m.
• 3158 Lincoya Bay Drive — 11:43 to 11:53 a.m.
• Truxton Drive and Cloverwood — 11:58 a.m. to 12:08 p.m.

Overton 

• 2302 Zermatt — 10:47 to 10:57 a.m.
• 107 Brentwood Place — 11:04 to 11:14 a.m.
• Humber Drive and Hopedale Drive — 11:22 to 11:32 a.m.
• 15180 Old Hickory Blvd. — 11:26 to 11:36 a.m.
• Hickoryview Drive at Hickory Plaza — 11:38 to 11:48 a.m. 

Stratford

• Warner Elementary — 10:45 to 10:55 a.m.
• Forrest Ave. and North 14th Street — 10:59 to 11:09 a.m.
• Churchwell Elementary — 11:40 to 11:50 a.m. 

Whites Creek

• 5515 Scruggs Lane — 10:01 to 10:11 a.m.
• 2400 Buena Vista Pike — 10:18 to 10:28 a.m.  
• Farmview Drive and Boyd Drive — 10:34 to 10:44 a.m.
• Augusta Drive and Cravath Drive — 10:48 to 10:58 a.m.
• Gwynnwood Drive and Ewingdale Drive — 11:03 to 11:13 a.m.