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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Subject: Kids can get free summer lunches

Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz watched kids eat lunch, solve mysteries and learn how to fish recently in Richmond.

She visited the Just Us Kids Outdoors (JUKO) program operated by the Richmond Parks and Recreation Department, which took its afternoon campers to Middlefork Reservoir on a field trip.

Ritz and members of her staff are traveling the state to promote free summer meals for children up to age 18. No registration is required to receive the meals.

Hundreds of breakfasts and lunches in Richmond are prepared each weekday by Richmond Community Schools. They are funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Summer Food Service Program.

RCS is serving free meals at a few local schools as well as through JUKO, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Wayne County and the Richmond Family YMCA programs. All of those summer meal sites are open to the public. Children do not need to participate in the programs to eat.

In 2015, about 70,000 summer meals were served daily in Indiana. However, state officials know the need is greater, since there are about 1 million students in kindergartner through Grade 12, and about half of them are on free or reduced-price lunches during the school year.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your tax dollars at work.
Two meals a day, all year around, while their parents buy _____ instead of food.

And why wouldn't they, if they can get their kids fed for free?

Anonymous said...

SNAP should be reduced to offset the costs of giving their kids these free meals!

Anonymous said...

"Kids can get free summer lunches"

Free? It didn't just fall out of the sky! Someone had to pay for it!

Anonymous said...

If they did a after school program they got a third meal at school