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To see our map of Summer Food Program sites in the Dayton region, with contact information and what days and times they serve, go to MyDaytonDailyNews.com and search “summer food”
Dozens of Summer Food Service sites kicked off this week around the Dayton area, providing meals to children who rely on free and reduced-price lunches from their schools the rest of the year.
According to the Ohio Department of Education, 102 summer meal sites have been approved in the greater Dayton area this year, almost all of them serving lunch, and a few dozen offering breakfast or an afternoon snack as well.
“For many families across Ohio, the beginning of summer means vacations and summer camps and barbecues,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said Wednesday. “But for too many others, it means stress over how to care for children while parents work, or how to feed children nutritious meals. … Summer break shouldn’t mean going hungry.”
Locally, there are 64 approved sites in Dayton, 15 in Trotwood, and a handful each in Fairborn, Huber Heights, Moraine, Riverside and Troy. There are one or two sites each in Xenia, West Carrollton, New Lebanon and Clayton. Most are under way, although a few start later or are tied to weeklong camps.
James Putman, nutrition services supervisor at Trotwood-Madison schools, said his school district is serving multiple meals at multiple schools. The district also sponsors meal sites at apartment complexes and churches.
“Last year we averaged 600 per day at all of our sites,” Putman said. “This year we will be close to 1,000.”
Summer Food Service sites in the region
Brown said roughly 700,000 Ohio children qualify for free or reduced-price lunches (which are funded by the federal government), and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the national number is more than 21 million.
But U.S. Secretary of Education John King said only 1 in 6 students who qualified for the federal summer meal program took advantage of it last year, largely because of location and transportation hurdles.
“We’re looking for schools, libraries, service organizations, faith-based groups, park and recreation departments across the nation to take up the call to provide a good location for youngsters to congregate, to be active, to learn and to be well fed,” Vilsack said.
Program organizers say participation is better when the lunch program is paired with an enrichment activity at a library, school or community center.
The Summer Food Service Program is generally limited to areas where at least 50 percent of children qualify for free and reduced lunch. That means communities like Kettering and Northmont, with more than 30 percent of students eligible, don’t have federal program sites for needy children.
In Kettering, the Partners for Healthy Youth agency runs its own lunch program at a lower-income apartment complex. Local churches, civic groups and businesses provide the meals on a rotating basis.
And for those needy families that are able to travel, any child under 18 who comes to a federal program site will receive a lunch, with no application needed, regardless of where they live.
Fairborn schools interim superintendent Ed Gibbons said that’s certainly true in his community.
“We are the only school district in Greene County that is offering it, so it really is for any students in the area,” he said.
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