GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The Green Bay Area Public School District is stressing the importance of offering nutritious meals to children over the summer with their sponsorship of the annual Summer Food Service Program.
Starting Wednesday, free meals will be served for kids at community sites and at District schools participating in Summer School. But there will be some changes from how things have looked over the past few years.
“Last year, we were serving breakfast and lunch at the same time. This yea, we are only able to serve lunch. We do have breakfast available at our summer school sites,” said Assistant Director of Food Service for Green Bay Schools, Amanda Frisque. “Families should be expecting to eat their meals at our parks, no longer just coming and picking them up and taking their food home…The child does have to be present to receive the meal. The USDA allowed us, in previous years with COVID, to serve meals to parents to take home without the child being present.”
All children ages 1-18 years old can receive free summer meals.
“You don’t need to be enrolled in our district or even live in the city. You could just be visiting friends or family and just enjoying our wonderful areas that we have,” Frisque told WTAQ News. “There’s no sign up. You can just show up at a park on any given day. We also have a couple of special events throughout the summer, and you can just show up to the special events. You don’t have to pre register or anything like that.”
Frisque says providing meals over the summer is vital for some children in the community.
“Working in our school nutrition program during the school year, we see how many kids really need a good breakfast and a good lunch at school,” Frisque said. “When the school year ends, their hunger doesn’t just end. We have a need to continue serving our students and building a strong community with a really well balanced meal program.”
Visit foodservice.gbaps.org/summer_program to view the list of participating locations, serving times, and days when meals will not be served.
The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and is administered by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, provides nutritious meals to children during the summer, when free and reduced-price school meals are typically unavailable. Persons over 18 years of age who are determined by a state or local public educational agency to be mentally or physically disabled and who also participate in a public or private non-profit school program during the regular school year may receive free meals as well.
The program runs through August 19th.
