Jackson schools feed students for free

Note: This story has been updated.

Jackson public schools are offering free breakfast and lunch to all students, thanks to a program through the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, or DESE.

The program began Thursday and will continue through Dec. 31, or as long as funds allow, said Keenan Kinder, associate superintendent of safety and district operations.

The program provides a free breakfast and lunch to any district student, including those learning from home, Kinder said.

The program developed out of the Seamless Summer Option through DESE and the U.S. Department of Agriculture working together to provide free meals to students through schools, Kinder said.

“We qualified due to an increase in participation in the free and reduced lunch program through the past couple of years,” Kinder said. “With COVID-19 and so many people losing jobs, this year’s applications were much higher.”

Kinder said district administration knew many families were hurting financially at the beginning of this school year, but the cost to the district to provide free meals for all students would have been upward of half a million dollars.

Coupled with state budget cuts to education funding, that wasn’t a feasible option, he said.

Kinder said that while some other school districts, including the Cape Girardeau district, have an open site program, meaning anyone younger than 18 who lives in that district’s geographic area could get a free meal, Jackson’s leaders felt it was important to keep the site closed due to contact-tracing concerns.

On the program’s first day, Thursday, Kinder said an additional 300 breakfasts and 400 lunches were served. That’s exciting, he said, because several students’ families don’t qualify for free and reduced lunch, but not by much.

“We feel we’re offering a good, nutritious breakfast and lunch,” Kinder said.

He praised the food preparation staff for mobilizing quickly to meet the increased demand, and for working with grocery and milk suppliers to get up to speed.

“This program is helping parents out,” Kinder said. “This way, money they would have spent on meals at school can go to other things, like doctor appointments or winter clothes. Our hope is that this helps the whole community out.”