New Haven tries to hook more kids on free summer meals
James Hillhouse High School was one of 43 sites around New Haven that offered breakfast and lunch to kids this summer. Photo: Brian Dowling
Reported on July 10, 2010
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – When the school year ended for the city’s public school students, so did regular meal assistance through the national lunch program that provides breakfast and lunch at school to students of low-income families.
As part of a summertime extension of this program, sites around the city opened to provide free breakfast and lunches July 6 to kids who live in areas with a high enrollment in the lunch assistance program.
“Today is cereal for breakfast,” said Betty Forbes, Hillhouse High School’s summer cook, as she walked toward the breakfast and lunch calendars posted on the cafeteria wall, “and turkey, ham and cheese sandwiches with salad and fruit for lunch.” She served breakfast and lunch five days a week as part of the Summer Food Service Program, a federally funded effort started in 1968 to provide summer meals to kids who get free and reduced-price lunches during the school year.
A report, however, showed that the summer nutrition program struggled to provide food to those who needed it last year, and in response, New Haven launched an advertising campaign to increase participation. Advocates think that the number of people participating is low because many people do not know about the program and schools have had to meet a high percentage of school-year participation to open during the summer.
About 509 of Hillhouse High’s 979 students qualified for the free and reduced-price lunch program, but according to Forbes, only 160 made it to the cafeteria on Wednesday. She expected numbers to rise as the weeks pass and more people hear about the program. The majority of kids who ate at Hillhouse were at the school during the day as part of summer classes or other youth programs, and very few are walk-ins, she said.
“If you can’t afford to send your kids to class, at least let them come over and eat,” said Forbes about the few walk-ins. In New Haven, 36 sites were open to children under 18, like Hillhouse, while seven were closed to children enrolled in a summer program at that site.
Participation statewide, though higher than the national average, is still low. Last summer, less than 26 percent of Connecticut kids who participated in the national meal program during the school year continued with the meals during the summer, according to a report by the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.
New Haven hopes to increase the program’s visibility with billboards, public service announcements and websites, as well as working with community groups, said Timothy Cipriano, executive director of food services for New Haven public schools. “A lot more could be done, but we lack the financial resources to do more,” Cipriano said. “Ideally we would have banners at every site advertising free meals, more billboards, utilize buses for their ad space.”
A lack of awareness, however, isn’t the only problem, according to Dawn Crayco, child nutrition and policy director of End Hunger Connecticut!, an anti-hunger advocacy group in Hartford, Conn. The other difficulty to increasing participation is making sure sites are available where they are needed. Some areas, Crayco explained, have schools with 30 or 40 percent participation in the school meals program, but because they don’t meet the 50 percent minimum, these schools cannot participate in the summer food program.
Congress is in the process of reauthorizing the program. With the reauthorization, school nutrition advocates hope to see the minimum participation level lowered from 50 percent to 40 percent, which is closer to the pre-1981 minimum of 33 percent.
