Partch shares race through her career in state government
Becoming a runner takes both the proper food and mental determination to use that fuel to the limit. One Hampton graduate knows the importance of both continuing to run for herself and helping kids in Nebraska to have the basic nutrition to push themselves.
For the past three years, Kayte (Tranel) Partch has been the director of the USDA Child Nutrition Programs for the Nebraska Board of Education. In that role she tackles issues that relate to children in the state not having access to meals. She takes to the job her runner’s mind-set and the patience to slowly push long-term changes.
“(As a runner), I guess I have a certain persistence about me,” Partch said. “It’s hard for me to give up on something even though sometimes that would be advisable in certain situations. I also would just recognize some things in life are like the story of the tortoise and the hare. It takes long, sustained effort to make progress on some things.”
Partch was born in Ogallala and, as a fourth grader, moved to Hampton with her mother, Bev Tranel, and sister, Abby Smith. While her mother worked at the hospital in Aurora, Partch grew up to become a high school athlete.
“I really loved sports and I learned to really enjoy competing in pretty much anything,” she said. “I ended up loving to play volleyball and running through track.”
She stated that she was able to push herself to the extreme and enjoyed the feeling of self-empowerment it gave her.
“I was willing to put in the time and enjoyed putting in the effort and the persistence,” she explained. “I knew that the stopwatch was going to be the thing that told me if all the time I was putting in was paying off and the gratification of knowing it was up to me was pretty satisfying.”
Through that dedication to physical peak health, Partch got involved in nutrition.
“So running is that door (which) opened...dietetics and nutrition for me because, of course, I was interested in performing as best as somebody could and I knew that was part of the equation,” she explained.
Partch graduated in 2001 and was attracted to the occupation of coaching the next generation by attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. However, having to decide between pursuing her track and cross country dream or getting necessary credits lead to a change in her career plan.
“One of the classes I needed to take I think conflicted with afternoon practice time,” she recalled. “(I was like,) ‘I just don’t like this teaching enough to really miss practice for this.’ I had a bunch of science requirements to be a science teacher already completed and luckily most of that transferred to a different degree program, which is the nutrition science degree, so it kind was just like divine intervention.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s in nutrition science in 2007, Partch would go for a master’s degree in 2011. Then it was off to her first job in Adams County as a UNL Extension educator, focused on health and nutrition.
Feeding change
At Adams County, Partch’s duty was to facilitate community education and youth development, teaching people of all ages how to eat healthier.
“I got to work with lots of different types of people, anything from young elementary-aged kids -- taking nutrition into the classroom and doing some fun hands-on activities with them -- to adults in rehabilitation, who just needed some support to get on their feet and to have an awareness to develop some healthier lifestyle habits,” she said.
In August of 2013, Partch would go to work for Nebraska Department of Education in Lincoln. She started as a program specialist, training and providing technical assistance to childcare providers as well as traveling around the state to schools and nonprofits that operate summer meal programs.
“I got to know lots of people who run those programs and I also got to see the kids receiving meals,” she said. “So I think that was really neat to get to see the work where rubber meets the roads sort of thing when if comes to these programs.”
Partch was promoted to director of the school meals program and summer meals program and then two years later, in May 2020, she became director of the USDA Child Nutrition Program, with the goal of helping children in need of more consistent meals throughout the year.
“Where there’s a higher poverty rate or higher student eligibility for meal benefits per year, we recognize that kids in those situations probably rely on the meals that they have access to at school during the school year,” she said.
“When school is out during the summertime, then there’s the potential loss of food security in those households or for those kids.”
She worked with libraries and volunteer and community programs such as churches in many of the towns dotting the flat Nebraska landscape.
“We did a lot of relationship building and because of that we were able to add new sponsors just because of local level interest from community leaders who understood that food security is something that is harder to see, but they figured out ways, or found out what the clues are, to identifying lack of good nutrition for kids in their communities and wanted to address that,” she said. “So I think it was just building awareness as part of it and then being a partner that is helping them reach their goals.”
Another program in recent years has been the Farm to School grants in which the USDA provides money to schools for meals purchased from local producers to provide more interaction between schools and producers.
“We’ve had a really big expansion in Farm to School efforts in the last few years,” Partch said. “I’m really proud of that work. We’re getting engagement from more small and midsize producers across the state and I think that’s awesome.”
She sees this also as a way to connect students to the local producers to get students interested in agriculture.
“We want these people to be able to help students get an interest in where their food is made and how it’s made,” she said. “We want kids to take an interest in ag because there’s a good chance that they could find a good, meaningful and impactful job in the ag sector someday.”
She also discussed the role of her agency in providing training for food service professionals in education.
“Team nutrition programming, and grant awards the state agency has received...has been primarily geared toward educating and developing food service professionals,” she said. “I think that’s one of the key ways that we help give food service directors the information and knowledge -- and knowledge is power, right? (They are) able to share information with their school leadership so they can get support for the work that they do.”
Going the distance
Taking her position shortly after the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, Partch talked about how meal waivers helped keep kids fed through federal funding during a stressful time.
One part of the program provided students with meals at no cost as an option across all schools in the United States, and which most Nebraska schools opted into, according to Partch.
The program ended in August 2022, going back to the options for free meals or a paid meal with price based on total household income. Partch stated that there were gains made during the waiver program that might be worth consideration in the future.
“When meals are provided to kids at no cost, we did see meal participation at school or in the school meals program go up by somewhere around 20 to 30 percent for most districts,” she said. “For districts that offered perhaps two meals, breakfast and lunch each day, kids were more likely to eat breakfast before their school day started. So I think, by and large, the data says that kids who eat breakfast are in the nurse’s office less often, there tends to be less behavior issues, those sorts of things because if you’re well fed and your tummy is not hungry, it’s easier to pay attention in the classroom.”
“Bottom line is that, financially, the meals program account is better off when more kids are eating school meals,” she stated. “That can sometimes mean less of the school’s general fund needs to be used to sort of support the food service account. And that’s good because there are probably a variety of priority areas where a school would love to use or contribute more general funds (but they don’t have them) because they need to inject a little bit into the school meals program.”
She stated that there is currently some attention from state legislatures to pass the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) to provide low-cost meals to all students, which might be welcomed by school administrations and families.
“After having gone two years of no-cost meals to this year at resuming that sort of traditional, free, reduced and paid operation, we’ve seen lots of schools report higher and more rapid growth of food service or school meal debt,” Partch reported. “So having gone through a year of that, it could mean that some school leadership in eligible schools might consider more strongly pursuing that CEP option because a number of factors that are affecting families...inflation is affecting everyone...household expenses are going up and paying for school meals after two years of not doing that, I think, it’s a big jolt to many households.”