As the school year winds down in Texas, the Summer Meals Program is ramping up. School districts throughout the Austin area will offer free meals to ensure kids and young adults have access to healthy meals while school is out.
Sid Miller heads the Texas Department of Agriculture, which administers the program. He said one in five children in Texas experiences hunger.
“Eating these healthy meals during the summer means students return to school in the fall ready to learn and not malnourished,” Miller said.
Any child 18 or younger can participate in the Summer Meals Program, regardless of household income, as can enrolled students with disabilities who are not older than 21.
People can find summer meal sites in a few different ways:
- You can call 2-1-1
- You can text ‘FOOD’ or ‘COMIDA’ to 304-304
- You can visit www.SummerFood.org and view an interactive summer meal site map
Austin ISD will provide free meals this summer at 38 different campuses. Dates and times vary by campus. Fifteen schools will begin providing meals on May 28, including Allison Elementary, Bedichek Middle School and Navarro Early College High School.
Pflugerville ISD will begin providing summer meals starting on June 3 at seven campuses, including River Oaks Elementary and Weiss High School.
“For many children who receive free and reduced-price meals at school, summer can mean hunger,” PfISD said in a statement. “Just as learning doesn’t end when school lets out, neither does a child’s need for good nutrition.”
Other school districts set to offer free meals over the summer include Leander ISD, Round Rock ISD, Del Valle ISD and Hays CISD. But schools are not the only places serving summer meals. Recreation centers, churches and even apartment complexes will participate in the program.
“We’ll partner not with just schools, but any kind of community service clubs, religious groups, churches, any kind of nonprofits, Lions Club, any of those types of people,” Miller said. “We strive hard to reach everybody. We’re in all the metropolitan areas.”
Miller said last year, there were more than 5,300 meal sites, and they served more than 13 million meals. His goal is to reach over 6,000 sites across Texas this summer.
While many sites will offer meals, Texas is one of about a dozen states that will not be participating in a food benefit program that offers eligible families $120 per child to buy groceries during the summer.
A Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokesperson previously told KUT the state could not participate in that program this summer because it did not get enough notice from the federal government to implement it in time for this summer.
