Teriyaki chicken with noodle salad, housemade hummus and pita bread, turkey grinder with seasonal fruit and vegetables — they’re all on the rotating lunch menu at Burlington’s Andy A_Dog Williams Skatepark this summer. The site is one of many around the state where kids ages 18 and under can grab a free meal every weekday this summer.
The Burlington School Food Project staff prepares and packages meals for sites around the city, including the skate park, in the kitchen at Edmunds Elementary School. The food is distributed at a wide variety of sites, said director of food service Laura La Vacca; she and her staff work with 31 different programs, including community partners such as the Boys & Girls Club, DREAM, the Richard Kemp and Sara Holbrook centers and Burlington Parks, Recreation & Waterfront.
Free meals are also available every summer weekday at five sites in the city: the skate park, Franklin Square Apartments, Riverside Apartments, Roosevelt Park and the South Meadow Apartments in the South End.
“We serve lots of kid-friendly food,” La Vacca noted. And there’s always a vegetarian option.
Some sites serve breakfast, too — typically a baked good such as a muffin, bagel or piece of sweet bread, along with fruit and milk. The Roosevelt Park site also serves dinner. “Pizza is popular,” La Vacca said.
Rules around the summer meals program have changed a bit this year; pandemic-era allowances have ended. That means there are no to-go meals at urban meal sites such as the ones in Burlington. Some areas, such as parts of southern Chittenden County, have also been deemed ineligible to offer the free meal program this summer, though kids don’t have to live in communities where meals are offered to get them.
“Meals are still available in many places,” said Tim Morgan, child nutrition and program data manager at Hunger Free Vermont. “Any child 18 and under can get free meals, including kids who aren’t enrolled in school yet,” he said. Parents and caregivers can find the list of summer meals sites at hungerfreevt.org/summer-meals, by calling 211 or by texting “food” to 304304.
“You can text your address, and the closest meal sites automatically get texted back to you” he said.
Paid For by Uncle Sam
Unlike the school-year meals program, the summer program is funded entirely by the federal government. More meals eaten means more federal dollars coming to Vermont. That money pays for kitchen staff, equipment and, in the summer, lots of produce from local farms.
“It’s a huge boon to the area,” said Harley Sterling, school nutrition director for Windham Northeast Supervisory Union. His summer meals program serves communities including Athens, Grafton, Saxtons River, Westminster, Bellows Falls, Rochester, Springfield, Putney and Keene, N.H. Summer is actually Sterling’s busiest season. “It’s pretty much full throttle,” he said.
His 12-person staff is spread across three different kitchens — at Westminster Center School, Bellows Falls Middle School and Bellows Falls Union High School. They prepare breakfasts and lunches to be distributed at 12 different sites, including local summer camps. They also contract with a few meal sites distributing food in New Hampshire.
On Wednesdays, Sterling and his crew set up a drive-through distribution point in front of the high school to give out prepacked meal kits with enough food to feed a child for a week. “A lot of families lack the ability and transportation to get to a site seven days a week,” he explained.
The kits might include a loaf of whole-grain bread and an eight-ounce pack of cheese, plus some vegetables such as a few ears of corn, as well as milk and eggs. Sterling and his staff also prepare recipes and activities to go along with the kits. “We make it fun,” he said. And everything is cookable in a microwave oven, because “sometimes families don’t have stoves,” he said.
They give out 1,000 of these kits every Wednesday — enough for 14,000 meals each week. Cars line up and cycle through various stations. Sterling said a wide range of families frequent the site. “Summer meals are convenient and helpful for everyone, whether you are struggling or not. This is a real community event,” he said. “A lot of teachers bring their kids.”
He’s happy to give out food to everyone who’s feeding a child, no questions asked. “We’re grateful for everyone who comes,” he said.
Available in Small Towns, Too!
The summer meals program in the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union is a bit smaller. Director of food service Craig Locarno estimates that his kitchen at the Windsor School feeds roughly 150 to 160 kids every weekday.
From 7:30 until 11:30 a.m., anyone can stop by the school’s grab-and-go meals site to pick up breakfast and lunch. Some kids bike over.
“We serve healthy, well-balanced meals,” Locarno said. That often includes summer favorites such as sandwiches, wraps, summer salads and fresh fruit.
On Wednesdays, volunteers from Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Feeding Windsor deliver meals to families in Weathersfield, Hartland and Windsor who can’t make it to the school, an example of the type of unique community partnership that springs up around these programs every season.
Locarno said he thinks that the people who really need it know about the service, but he’d like to see greater participation from the community. His biggest challenge, he said, is getting the word out.
“We serve good food,” he said. “I wish we served more.”
Need help finding food for your kids?
Vermont’s federally funded summer meals program is open to every child age 18 and under. There are no income restrictions and no paperwork needed! Every child eats for free.
Find a summer meals program near you:
Check the list of Vermont sites at
hungerfreevt.org/summer-meals.
Call 211
Text “food” to 304304, input your address, and you’ll receive information about meal sites closest to you.
This article was commissioned and paid for by Pomerleau Real Estate.
