For children who rely on free or reduced meals from school cafeterias during the school year, summer can be a difficult time. But the Ware, Massachusetts school district is keeping its doors open to make sure children in its community don’t go hungry.
Superintendent Mary-Elizabeth Beach says over sixty percent of students in Ware receive subsidized school meals during the school year, and with funding from the US Department of Agriculture, the school district continues free breakfast and lunch service to all children ages 1 to 18 from late June to the beginning of August.
“I believe we probably have some families coming from other areas, because the next closest programs are West Springfield and Springfield. So as I said, it’s a valuable resource to the community and to any family it can reach out to.”
Beach says the district typically serves breakfast to seventy children, and lunch to over one hundred.
Sarah Gibbons, communication director at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, says twenty percent of children in Western Massachusetts are “food-insecure” – meaning they spend much of the year unsure of where their next meal will come from. She says summer is an especially difficult time for families who rely on school meals to feed their children.
“Working families who just aren’t earning enough to make ends meet, who rely on this support during the school year, have to make up for those meals -sometime fifteen meals in any given week for each of their children,” she says. “So it really pinches a budget that’s often already stretched.”
Ware public schools will serve free meals through August 3rd. According to the Child Nutrition Outreach Program, 62 locations in Western Massachusetts provide free summer meals to children.