The purple and white Scorpion-clad school bus pulls into the Windsong Mobile Home Park from State Route 89A on Monday, June 1. Driver Marianne Perrier taps the horn to alert the neighboring families that their food is here.

At 9:52 a.m., Windsong is the route’s last stop of the morning, and Michael Milligan jumps out of the bus with the remaining food bags straight from the cooler. A smiling girl walks a few feet out of her back door and takes the bags from Milligan’s gloved hands.

The food will feed the girl and her two sisters breakfast and lunch Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, before the bus returns at the same time on Thursday morning for Thursday and Friday’s meals.

Since March 18, the Sedona-Oak Creek School District has distributed nearly 17,000 free meals to area children. The children don’t need to attend district schools in order to receive the meals. The parents don’t need to prove their incomes. The only requirement is that the meals go to kids in the community who are 18 years old or under.

“I know we have families that have been immensely happy and very grateful for the opportunity to pick up meals,” SOCSD Assistant Business Manager Stacy Saravo said.

When government officials began to close schools due to the coronavirus pandemic, the district applied for a waiver and submitted applications with the National School Lunch Program to have delivery services during the weekday in five locations, including the two SOCSD campuses.

SOCSD Assistant Superintendent Deana Dewitt said that because many district students were eligible for free or reduced lunches during the school year — 57% district-wide and upwards of 70% at West Sedona School — the district wanted to make it a priority that those kids who rely on meals at school were provided for when school wasn’t in session.

On April 20, the district upgraded from the five distribution sites to 69 total bus stops with a bus that goes through West Sedona and another through Uptown and the Village of Oak Creek. The West Sedona route starts at 9:03 a.m. at Pinon Drive and Juniper Lane and ends at 9:52 a.m. at Windsong.

The southbound route’s first stop is 9:07 a.m. at Jordan Road and Apple Road and the last one is Bell Rock Boulevard and Apache Lane at 10:15 a.m.

Before April, “families physically had to go to one location,” Saravo said, adding that now, families can walk out their doors instead of driving from their houses.

“People are extremely grateful — very, very grateful. And there is a need,” Perrier said. “The people are always outside waiting. … We’re on a schedule and they know when we’re going to be there and they just come out, meet us at the door and we just give them [their food]. Usually the kids are with the parents and the kids are partaking in it.”

Starting last week, the food buses began coming twice a week for summer, on Mondays and Thursdays, instead of every day. Perrier and Milligan pass out more meals at a time on each of those days. If families miss the meal delivery, they can get theirs from the high school office from 9 a.m. to noon. In addition, the Sedona Community Food Bank offers weekend meals to those in need through a different program.

According to DeWitt, the numbers of families getting food has decreased some since the switch from delivery every weekday to twice a week, whether that be from families going out of town or getting used to the new schedule change.

“We did notice a drop in the number of meals that were distributed on Thursday,” DeWitt said, adding that there has also been a significant decrease of meals picked up at the high school lately. “There are so many variables. Its hard to tell until we have a few weeks under our belt to kind of gauge what’s going on.”

Between March 18 and 31, 3,860 meals were provided, according to Saravo. In April, 6,824 meals were served and in May it slowed to 6,098 meals.

“I do know that other area school districts have either scaled back or stopped their food service, and so I was wondering if others were thinking that we were doing the same thing,” DeWitt said. “So hopefully [with] just getting that word out to families that we do still have resources available and the different distribution, it will pick back up because we do know that we have families in the community that are in need.”

Starting on Thursday, June 4, the food will be courtesy of St. Mary’s Food Bank rather than from Sodexo, the school cafeteria provider. For over four summers, the district has partnered with St. Mary’s Food Bank to provide meals for children in need, but it was on site at West Sedona School.

This will be the first time St. Mary’s food will be distributed via the bus. The food may vary a bit from the school cafeteria food, Saravo said, but will have the same nutritious staples and will also be cold, or ready-to-eat, to avoid having to worry about it going bad or needing to recook.

“They get fruit, they get milk, they get chocolate milk, they get a juice, they get a sandwich, they get cereal, they get celery or carrots,” Perrier said of the items the kids had been getting in their bags.

Perrier helps the cafeteria workers bag the food at 7 a.m. before distribution days, in what she says is a process like an assembly line.

“It’s gone really well actually,” she said. “It’s very well organized, extremely put-together.”

Alexandra Wittenberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126 or at awittenberg@larsonnewspapers.com