ROANOKE COUNTY, Va. – Roanoke County students will get free meals again this year and parents, you don’t need to do anything, it’s automatic!
They’ve served more than 1.2 million meals since March 2020 when the pandemic started, including more than half a million breakfast meals.
Here’s a breakdown of how many meals were served from March 16, 2020, to June 30, 2021 (district-wide):
- Breakfast Meals: 526,987
- Lunch Meals: 731,271
- Total meal count of: 1,258,258
When students return to class next month, they’ll be able to get breakfast and lunch for free again too.
Roanoke County will also still have free meal pickups for anyone under 18 this fall too.
Every Wednesday this summer through July 28, families can pick up five breakfast meals and five lunch meals per child and you don’t have to live in the county to qualify. Those public meal distributions are at Burlington, Herman L. Horn and Cave Spring Middle School. The summer feeding program operations are conducted under the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program through July 31.
They’re still working to figure out how it will work this fall, but want families to take advantage of the program if they need it.
It’s all thanks to special pandemic-related federal funding for the upcoming school year.
“We will operate in school year 2021-2022 under the Seamless Summer Option of the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. All breakfast and lunch meals will be free to children 18 and under due to pandemic-related special federal funding in SY21-22 only,” said a Roanoke County school spokesperson.