Free weekly meal boxes will be made available to children and teenagers in Pulaski County through a federal program the Pulaski County Special School District has partnered with, their spokeswoman said on Wednesday morning.
The weekly meal boxes will include five breakfasts and five lunches and will be available for pickup at seven different school campuses in the district.
“We know summertime can sometimes be hard for families with no school,” said Regena English, the Student Nutrition Director for PCSSD. “We want to ensure that each student is provided with meals to help where we can. We encourage all families to come out to one of our summer locations and grab free meals for your student.”
The program will start on Monday, June 7 and continue through the summer. Families, even if their children aren’t enrolled in a PCSSD school, can receive a weekly meal box. Pickup times every Monday will be from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Pickup locations are:
Pine Forest Elementary: 400 Pine Forest Drive, Maumelle
Oak Grove Elementary: 5703 Oak Grove Road, North Little Rock
Harris Elementary: 4424 Highway 161 N, North Little Rock
Meals will be similar to those made available to students when schools pivoted to virtual, so a five day box would include:
Five heat-and-serve prepared home meals
Five cups of vegetables
Five cups of different fruit
10 ounces of grain items
10 cartons of milk
Five prepared breakfast entrees
Five cartons of juice
A five-day lunch box at Pulaski County Special School District from earlier this year. (PCSSD photo/File)
A typical breakfast would then be a sausage biscuit, half cup fruit, 4 ounces of juice and 8 ounces of milk,” she said for breakfast, while lunch might be chicken alfredo, green beans, orange glazed carrots, whole grain roll, half cup of fruit and 8 ounces of milk.
The Seamless Summer Feeding Program, district spokeswoman Jessica Duff explained, “allows school districts to provide free summer meals in low income areas during the traditional summer vacation periods” and “it is an extension of the National School Lunch Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”
Free summer meals for students
I visited William Jefferson Clinton Elementary this morning, June 7, at 11am, and there was nobody there. Are you sure they're participating in this?