Western Pennsylvania food distributions help keep children fed

Kate Heller was grateful Monday that Riverview School District is continuing to provide both breakfast and lunch to its students while schools are closed statewide due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Heller walked to Verner Elementary in Verona to pick up breakfast and lunch for her son, Chris, 8, and daughter, Rachel, 5.

“That’s a very big help,” said Heller, 31. “We are kind of a fixed-income household. I don’t really have it in my budget to feed them two extra meals a day.”

In trying to explain what’s going on to her kids, Heller said she likened the spread of the coronavirus to a zombie virus, but was clear that people aren’t turning into zombies.

“I told them about how we have to stay away from people,” she said. “The whole world is affected.”

In Riverview, meals can be picked up from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays at Verner Elementary in Verona.

Other school districts in the Pittsburgh area have announced their plans to keep students fed while schools are closed under state order.

On Monday, New Kensington-Arnold and Highlands school districts announced they would be providing food to students.

Highlands will provide “grab-and-go lunches” for students beginning Wednesday, the district announced on its website. They will be available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays at Highlands High School entrance door 23, near the student parking lot; Highlands Elementary School door 22 nearest the cafeteria; and at the Hayden Center at Sheldon Park.

New Kensington-Arnold announced it will start offering take-out breakfast and lunch on Tuesday. Lunch and breakfast will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays at Martin, H.D. Berkey and Roy A. Hunt elementary schools and at Valley Junior-Senior High School.

Additional breakfast and lunch distributions may be added to enable students to pick up meals more conveniently within the local communities, the district said.

Leila Stiefel, 36, of Oakmont, also got breakfast and lunch for her kids at Verner Elementary in Verona on Monday. She has three children, ages 17, 15 and 1.

“I think it’s very nice,” she said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next two weeks. We do have some food stocked.”

Stiefel, who works as a hair dresser in Verona, said she is staying home from work after developing symptoms over the weekend that so far she believes is just a common cold.

“The doctor tells us to keep an eye on it,” she said.

With her time over the weekend, Stiefel created a Facebook group, “Overcoming Coronavirus with Family and Friends,” to try to spread some positivity and offer help. As of Monday afternoon, it had about 70 members, including people from the local area as well as North and South Carolina and northeastern Pennsylvania.

Stiefel said she wants the group to offer any type of help its members can find, such as free food for babies, how to access assistance offered by companies, how to make hand sanitizer and baby wipes at home and keeping up with the news.

“I feel like there’s a lot of negativity running around,” she said. “If we just are reaching out to help each other instead of against each other we’ll be better off that way. A lot of people are being greedy and I don’t think that’s right.”

Stiefel asked people to stop hoarding, and just start preparing.

“We all need to take care of each other in the community,” she said. “It’s not something to be greedy about.”