Bertram: How One Library Stepped in to Feed Kids in Rural Texas

For many kids across Texas, summer meals look like Mom, Dad, or another adult driving them to a meal site each day to eat. For kids living in rural Texas, though, this is impractical, and in many cases, impossible. For many, that would mean driving forty minutes one way to eat breakfast then driving forty minutes back, then driving forty minutes to eat lunch then driving forty minutes back––and that is only if their guardian can afford gas and is able to be off work and to drive them.

In Bertram, Texas, this just isn’t feasible.

Carley Carpenter, who serves as the Director of Food Services for Burnet Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) and oversees summer meals, acknowledged this need and adjusted the district’s summer feeding program accordingly. Her perspective as a food services director for a consolidated district is unique. For one, she has entirely separate communities to think about.

The Summer Meal Program’s congregate option requires kids to show up to an approved site to eat their meals where they can be supervised. However, Carpenter knew this option wasn’t feasible for families living in rural areas such as Bertram, Texas. This past summer, her team operated the rural non-congregate option, allowing kids living in rural communities to pick up an entire week’s worth of food in meal boxes at a local community site.

That local community site? Bertram Library. With the help of Schalean Druell, the library’s Assistant Director and Children’s Librarian, along with Lisa Haley, the Library Tech, over one-hundred meals were served each week to Bertram families. These free meals were not simply appreciated, they were desperately needed in a community that lacks basic access to resources.? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

“We watched families cross a four-lane highway with their children to get food."

In Burnet, Texas there are many economically disadvantaged families facing chronic transportation issues, which only serves to exacerbate household food insecurity. With the rural non-congregate option, Burnet CISD was able to meet the community’s specific need for fresh, accessible, and free meals over the summer.

To achieve this, Carpenter organized school district employees, ensuring they received all the required food safety and food handling training and put them to work packing boxes each week in the school cafeteria. Employees then loaded up the boxes into the school district’s trailer and drove them to the Bertram Library, where they were distributed to families each week at the designated pick-up time.

Carley Carpenter cares deeply about advocating on behalf of families who need assistance as well as providing necessary resources to kids. And as she put it,

“We’re not talking about first world problems. We’re talking about basic human needs.”

About the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty

The Baylor Collaborative believes a world without hunger is possible. To achieve this, we aim to advance food security by becoming a leading contributor to the landscape of hunger research, promoting the adoption of proven and effective interventions, and advocating for evidence-based approaches and policy.