ASD partnerships help to address rise in student hunger
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The Anchorage School District and partner organizations are gearing up to provide food assistance to thousands of students.
According to Feeding America, food-insecure children can experience struggles in school due to the challenges of focusing or learning.
“Hungry kids don’t learn,” said Lindsey Salazar with ASD Student Nutrition. “They can’t concentrate.”
Currently, ASD has 79 schools that are a part of the National School Lunch Program, a federally-assisted meal program that helps provide meals to students. According to ASD, a little under half of those schools are a part of the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows them to serve free breakfast and lunch.
“It’s very important that [students] don’t need to worry about where their meals are coming from,” Salazar said in a recent interview, “and they can show up at school and have breakfast and lunch without having to pay for it.”
The remaining 44 schools offer a free and reduced meal program. Eligibility for this program is determined by household size and income, according to Salazar. Instructions for how to sign up are posted online here.
“It’s a huge financial burden lifted off of their shoulders,” Salazar said.
Anchorage nonprofit Bean’s Cafe also eases that heavy financial burden.
The Children Lunchbox program, which was established in 1995, has recently doubled in size — from serving lunch box meals to 250 students four years go to now about 500 students.
“We then began making ready-to-eat meals, ready for them that they could eat after school or at the camp or wherever they were at, just to fill in that gap,” said Scott Lingle, Bean’s Cafe CEO.
“We’re just now starting to get the phone calls to say, ‘Hey, can you put us on the list to deliver meals?’” Lingle said.
Families wishing to have their students receive a lunchbox meal from Bean’s Cafe can reach out to the organization through its website.
“It’s 2024 — no kid in Anchorage should go hungry,” Lingle said. “We have enough food.”
Bean’s Cafe reports that 14% of Anchorage children live in a food insecure household.
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