Bring lunch to the masses

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HURON — As the summer approaches, the Huron School Nutrition Department is working hard at a new mobile lunch program this season. The Summer Mobile Lunch Program will be offering free lunches to kids age 1 through 18, Monday through Friday during the summer at three different locations.
Three Huron city parks will host the mobile program, Splash Central Water Park at the picnic shelter, Winter Park at 6th Street and Oregon Avenue on the east, and Prospect Park at 16th Street at Iowa Avenue in the large northwest picnic shelter.
The mobile program will make its first stop of the day from 10:55 to 11:15 a.m. at Splash Central, followed by at 11:40 a.m. to noon stop at Winter Park, then the food unit will end the day with a stop at Prospect Park between 12:25 and 12:45 p.m.
“This is our first year running the Mobile Lunch Program, it’s something new we haven’t tried before,” explained Nutrition Director Carol Tompkins. “So we are very excited to see how it turns out. It’s the next step. In the entire district, 60 percent of kids eat free or reduced meals during the school year. That is a pretty high number, which is sufficient enough for us to run this program.”
The common goal is to provide kids with food in the community who rely on school lunches as part of their main daily nutrition source. There will be at least four staff members present at the mobile sites, the cleaning up will be done by the staff and kids, plus extra supervision time will be offered as the meals are to be consumed on-site, with the exception of fresh fruit.
“Kids who are old enough, with parental supervision of course, can ride their bikes out to these locations, and if they are a little late, they have the option to move to the next site if possible or go out to the middle school,” Tompkins explained.
In circumstances where the weather may cause issues, there will be days that the mobile programs will not be running. If there is a weather warning of any kind, the program will not run, likewise if there is rain during the scheduled times for the mobile unit.  
“If we have a severe weather warning of any kind, we will not run the program because it’s not safe, we do not want kids leaving their homes in unsafe conditions, plus it is unsafe for our staff,” Tompkins explained.
“If it is raining at the time we are supposed to be at a mobile location, we will shut down the mobile units but most likely be running the hot meals at the middle school. There are going to be some tough calls to make with unpredictable weather, so we will be watching the weather closely.”

Parents, guardians or adults are welcome to bring their kids along to have lunch and get out the house, however the mobile sites will only be providing food to kids, unlike at the middle school where adults have the option for a paid meal.
“Adults can eat at the middle school for a small fee, while the kids eat for free as usual. However, we will not be feeding adults at the mobile sites for a couple reasons,” Tompkins explained.
“It is partly because we won’t be carrying money with us, but also because we can only carry so much food with us and we want to make sure all the kids who turn up are fed.”
Various programs in the district have run, which offered kids the opportunity to receive food from the school outside of the school year, such as the middle school program which has been successful for years by sending transportation.
The middle school program will run from from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Monday through Friday from June 4 to Aug. 3, in the commons. There will be some exceptions to these times during the last three weeks in June when the middle school runs a summer educational program.
From June 11 to the 28, breakfast will be served from 7:45 to 8:15 a.m., Monday through Thursday, plus lunch is scheduled to run as usual. No lunches will be served on July 4.  
“The middle school has been serving hot meals during the summer months since the mid 90s,” explained Tompkins.
“We received a grant one year and thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could bus the kids out to the school to be fed.’ But we didn’t see the numbers bringing the kids to us, so we thought, ‘we’ll go to them.’”
At the mobile locations there will be a variety of foods offered, such as sandwiches, rainbow wraps, fresh fruit and vegetables, plus a choice of milk and more.
“We are going to really try to load the sandwiches up and do some different things to keep the meals healthy and interesting for the kids,” Tompkins said.
The three parks that will host the feeding program all have picnic shelters and benches to sit and enjoy a meal with friends and family, and the distance between them is such that it allows for people living in different areas to have more options.
“Huron city and parks have partnered up with us to allow us to have safe places with shelters to run the program,” explained Tompkins. “They didn’t hesitate for a second, so we are very thankful for that.”
There is no need to sign up in advance. Simply turn up at the specified times and enjoy.
Tompkins’ ending statement was, “come eat with us.”

Photo courtesy of the Huron School District
This panel van will be in use this summer, as the Huron School District extends its summer food program to parks in Huron, with daily delivery, weather permitting.