Coronavirus means school food is free across the U.S. What if it stayed that way?

YAKIMA, Wash. - Tracy Renecker has been working almost nonstop since the coronavirus pandemic set in. A kitchen manager with the 16,000-student school district serving this central Washington city, Renecker has been ordering ingredients, packing entrees and sides, and filling grocery sacks to build the five-breakfast, five-lunch kits passed out at the drive-up distribution point outside Washington Middle School, where she works.

Renecker knows what the bags of cut vegetables, single-serve cereal boxes and heat-and-eat bowls mean to parents picking them up each week. They are a lifeline to families, including her own. The school meal program "helps to stretch our money," said Renecker, a former nursing assistant raising a 6-year-old and a 13-year-old in Yakima.

"I was a hungry child at one point, and I would hate to see any child go hungry," she said. "I know they can't learn when they're worried about when they're going to be fed."

https://hechingerreport.org/coronavirus-means-school-food-is-free-across-the-u-s-what-if-it-stayed-that-way/