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.”
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.