Thank you for your ideas, support and expressing your concerns. We appreciate the feedback and the many community members offering their services and help.
We are currently running our Summer Food Service Program. This program helps ensure that children have access to nutritious meals and snacks when school is not in session. The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is a federally funded, state-administered program. SFSP reimburses program operators who serve free healthy meals and snacks to children and teens in low-income areas.
This program allows us to serve children and teens ages 1 through 18 years old. We are required to have students present in order to receive a free meal. Parents may not pick up meals for their children. If a parent would like to pick up additional meals for children not present at pick up, then they must be charged the adult meal price.
We received a waiver from USDA and approval from the State of Idaho, Child Nutrition that allows us to operate our sites as non-congregate (i.e. allows them to take food to go). The waiver also allows us to provide breakfast and lunch meals at the same serving time. Each child that comes to our open site will receive one breakfast and one lunch combo meal.
We understand that there is concern that this poses a challenge to some. We are able to serve our community operating out of the state-approved locations. In these locations we will produce meals and pass them out between the hours of 11am – 1pm in bus lanes or parent drop off lanes in a drive-through. One meal choice is provided in our grab-and-go service.
The question of delivery service to those who are unable to get to our meal service locations has been asked of us. We must assure that children are not overtly identified through methods used to distribute meals certified to receive free or reduced meals.
The following is prohibited in our programs:
- Publicizing or announcing eligible households or children’s names
We appreciate your support in providing meals to children during this unanticipated school closure.
Thank you,
Jessica Hild, SNS
Supervisor – School Nutrition Services
West Ada School District
