You Can Get A Free Lunch Spokane Schools’ Summer Food Program Expanded

A boy sat quietly outside Regal Elementary School one morning last summer, when Spokane schools Superintendent Gary Livingston happened by. Puzzled, he asked the boy what he was doing.

“I’m here for breakfast,” he answered. He’d already had one breakfast at Shaw Elementary’s summer school program and would return for lunch. Those meals, he told Livingston, were the only ones he’d get that day. He planned to follow the routine until summer school ended.

“That really touched me,” Livingston said. “I hadn’t thought about the fact that we’ve got kids that dependent on the lunch program.”

It’s a story Livingston tells when he talks about the district’s expanded summer food program. Starting this week and continuing all summer, children 18 and younger can drop by some 26 schools for free breakfast and lunch.

Food workers expect to serve 124,000 meals - twice as many as last summer.

The meals will be offered at schools where at least half the students’ families have incomes low enough to qualify for the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Meals have long been served during summer school programs but stopped abruptly when classes did. Now kids can get meals through Aug. 20 at many sites, usually Monday through Friday.

“They don’t stop being hungry just because school is over,” Livingston said.

Spokane’s parks department also provides about 1,000 free summer meals a day to children at 19 parks, community centers and other places.

Mary Leach, an Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction employee who oversees the state’s summer food programs, said the district and parks department can team up to serve even more children.

The parks might lose some children, Leach said, but “sometimes parents are more reluctant to take them into the schools, but will take them into the parks.”

Both programs are reimbursed by the United States Department of Agriculture. The state also provides some money since the federal reimbursement rate dropped a few years ago.

Doug Wordell, the district’s nutrition services director, expects to be reimbursed some $250,000 this year.

A few school administrators balked when Wordell first suggested expanding the program for fear kids wouldn’t show up for meals or the public would feel schools shouldn’t feed children when classes end, he said.

“I struggled with that,” Wordell said. But because more than half of Spokane students qualify for free and reduced-price meals, he said, “I feel very good about providing something as basic as food to students.”

Schools will serve the meals outside and children will eat picnic-style, Wordell said. That is, on the ground.

Meals usually will consist of cold sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, milk and sometimes a treat. Food workers will make meals at North Central High School and deliver them to the other schools.

Anyone 18 and younger can stop by for a meal. Kids don’t need to register or prove they live in the area, Wordell said. “Yes, some (out of district) people may drive through and stop, and so what?”

There are a few rules to make sure the program isn’t abused, he said. Parents may bring their children, but they can’t eat anything. And children have to eat their meals at the school.

“We didn’t want Mom and Dad manipulating the kids to bring it home to them,” Wordell said. “Parents can’t even nibble a carrot. The state could shut us down.”