California offers free summer meals to low-income students

Children from low-income families will be able to get free meals at sites throughout the state this summer, including public school campuses, even though summer sessions at most L.A. Unified schools have been canceled due to funding concerns, state officials announced Wednesday.

Sites offering the meals are listed here and offer up to two meals daily, three if children are enrolled in a camp. Children do not have to be enrolled in any program to be eligible for the meals, according to California Department of Education officials.

-- Jason Song

Comments

[Justin]

Although the state has budget problems, this still looks to be a very good program. This will help many families and communities.

[M]

Sounds like a good idea, but I think we need more effort going into teaching these children and their families to grow their own food and cook their own healthy meals so they aren't dependent on these programs. There are also various things the city, abandoned property owners and other that own outdoor space could do to help out by offering up space for people to grow things.

As someone that had a chance to get free lunches from my school when growing up, the food was not what I could consider to be healthy. Also, if you look at the website, some of these sites are only available for a month. How are people supposed to get to these inconsistent sites? Walk? Drive? Take a bus? If people are taking the bus or driving, how much would putting that money into buying staples (rice, beans, oatmeal) cost vs. the cost of transporting yourself and children around to find a place?

[skeptical taxpayer]

Sounds financially wasteful. With the cost of cafeteria wokers who must be paid health benefits for as little as 4 hrs./day their salary and benefits and pension payments will be huge.

Then how will they estimate how many kids will show up if they're not there for summer school or any program? Will be a lot of waste -- at least they'd better be prepared to take excess food to a homeless shelter but they won't because it's not in anyone's union job description.

If someone has time to take their kids to one of these places just to eat they could could healthful meals. Just rice, chicken or meat on sale and rice and beans or some other vegetable makes enough for a whole family. Onions are cheap and healthy, so are root vegetables. My parents were immigrants from Russia and could buy and cook tasty meals for very little money, teaching self-sufficiency in the process. Asians do the same, though traditional foods have too much lard and can be made for little extra money with healthy oils instead.

I agree that a lot of poor people should learn how to cook and shop more wisely. Excuses that they're unhealthy because there aren't enough farmers markets and too many fast food restaurants are nonsense. There's plenty of food at any market to make a tasty meal.