Free Lunch Program Continues - New Signups For Those Unemployed Encouraged Now

/

When the announcement of the free $420 food credit to be used at stores was announced by Governor Cuomo, ALBB blogged about it, and then reached out to Beacon City School’s Director of Food and Nutrition, Karen Pagano, to ask how this works with the school’s Free Lunch Program, which she was encouraging people to sign up for back in the spring of the pandemic. People did, who were unexpectedly unemployed due to the pandemic. As of today, 650 people are enrolled in the Free Lunch Program.

As the ReOpening has been happening, some people have returned to work, but not everyone. Can people still apply for the 2020/2021 Free Lunch Program? “Yes,” says Karen. Because government services can be a little complicated, we are going to let Karen explain how it works in her words:

 

Each District submitted to SNAP or NYS a list of Students enrolled as of March 15, 2020, that qualified for free meals in our district either with:

  • Income application

  • Homeless status

  • Directly certified through SNAP or Financial need based Medicaid.

We submitted this file back in May or June 2020. This was the list used for eligibility for the P-EBT funding you wrote about here.

We do not get notified if families have received the P-EBT cards, so if a family has questions about the card, they need to follow up with the numbers listed in your other article: NYS Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance at 1-833-452-0096 or by email at otda.sm.eisp.PEBT@otda.ny.gov

Meal eligibility for Income applicants from the previous 2019-2020 School year will continue until a new application is submitted, or until mid October 2020 with no new application submitted.

Meal applications for the 2020-2021 School year are available on our District website for parents to download and print a copy - fill out manually and send back to the Food Service Office either electronically or in hard copy. We will also be sending copies home with students on the first day of school if they are attending building classes. We are looking to do a mass mailing for those that are not attending in school classes to get the applications out.

We are in the works for setting up online applications through a program called myschoolapps (students and parents use this now to fill breakfast/lunch money on for their kids to use at school - it’s the digital form of “lunch money”) but we will not be able to have this up and running until likely the first week of September as the company supporting this function is at the moment overwhelmed.

Families should still apply for free meals even if they are not attending in-building classes as we will be preparing grab and go meals with distribution for those enrolled families through a drive-by-pick-up on Wednesdays at BHS and RMS starting on September 16th. Parents will need to sign up for this service through a new addition to MySchoolBucks platform and that sign up should be available by the end of August.

We will be preparing these grab and go complete Nutritious Breakfasts and Lunches for the 3-day Remote Learning coverage as well as 5-day for all remote learning eligible students all with Wednesday distribution, times TBD.

We have certified about 650 students for Free meals who qualify for SNAP for the 2020-2021 year and have sent emails or if no email is on file, hard copy notification to those families about their continuation of free meals in the School year.

We will continue to update this download from NYS SNAP recipients on a monthly basis to capture newly added students receiving SNAP and therefore automatically eligible for free meals.

 

How Will The Non-Free, Paying School Lunch Program Work?

Currently, the Beacon City School District uses MySchoolBucks.com to handle money on kid’s meal cards. Parents log in and make deposits onto the cards whenever they want to. But how will this work on the Hybrid or All Remote Learning plan for parents who do not qualify for the Free Lunch Program? Karen answers:

“You would pre-order each week - all or nothing. You get 3 or 5 breakfast and 3 or 5 lunches (this will depend on if your child is in school 2 days a week or all remote). If your child is in school 2 days a week, they can also get breakfast as a grab-and-go bring into classroom, and lunch which will be pre-ordered in the morning with choices for meals that will be delivered into the classrooms. Both are optional - both are free for free qualifying students and payment necessary again on account with www.myschoolbucks.com for paying students who do not qualify for the Free Lunch Program. No money at school please.”