Summer meal program under way
Schools in Jackson County may be closed for the summer, but the kitchen at Holton Elementary School will remain open to help keep school-age children throughout the county fed during summer vacation.
This year, however, Holton’s three “grab-and-go” meal distribution sites, which will be open weekdays starting Monday, June 2 and continuing through Thursday, July 31, will be the only sites servicing the central and eastern parts of the county, as the Royal Valley and Jackson Heights districts will not offer summer meal programs this year.
But as Holton food service director Wilma Shupe noted, students from those two districts — or from any district across the country — can get meals to go from Holton’s program, which is classified as an “open site” by the Summer Food Service Program, a federally-funded, state-administered program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that offers meals to children at no charge.
“Any child ages 1 to 18 across the entire United States is eligible for meals,” Shupe said. “We would love to see children from all the schools in Jackson County come for meals. And if a family is passing through, they can pick up a meal for their child.”
The Holton district’s summer meal program — which reportedly served about 400 children per day last year — allows students and families to pick up prepared breakfasts and lunches Monday through Friday at three locations — from 10:45 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. at Countryside Park in Holton, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Holton Elementary School and from 11:30 a.m. to noon at the Denison Community Center.
Meals include the day’s lunch and the next day’s breakfast, with extra breakfasts and lunches provided on Friday to tide kids over through the weekend. Meals will not be served on Friday, July 4, but the program will provide extra meals on Thursday, July 3 to give children some extra food to get through that holiday weekend.
“There is no need to sign up for the program as long as the child receiving the meal is present. If the child is not with the adult we will provide a form to the adult at the time of service. They may simply write down the names of children they are collecting meals for,” Shupe said.
Summer food service delivery consent forms may be picked up at HES or at the district office. For more information, call the HES office at (785) 364-3251 or visit holtonks.net
Royal Valley USD 337 superintendent Aaric Davis said his school district, which has participated in the Summer Food Service Program in previous years, is not doing so this year, noting the district’s participation was “low in participation and costly.”
Davis added that Royal Valley students may get meals to go from Holton’s distribution sites or participate in the Topeka-Seaman district’s “eat-on-site” program at Logan Elementary School, which begins Monday and continues through Friday, July 25 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. For more information on Seaman’s program, call (785) 575-8650.
Elsewhere in Jackson County, Delia Community Center Park has been designated as a “meals-to-go” site for the summer meals program at Kaw Valley USD 321. Pick-up meals will be made available from 9:50 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with two days’ worth of breakfast and lunch meals served on Mondays and Wednesdays and three days’ worth of meals served on Fridays.
Pick-up meals in Delia will begin Monday, June 2 and continue through Friday, Aug. 1. The site will be closed from Monday, June 30 through Friday, July 4. For more information, call the district office at (785) 249-8283.
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