When school's out, some kids go hungry

Like many students at the Marble Hill School (P.S. 310), Damaris Correa’s 5- and 7-year-old children receive free lunch. But come summer, they often lack a structured, stable place to get meals.

Ms. Correa, 46, said she was not yet sure how she will feed her children once school gets out.

“I’m planning,” she said. “I want to cook myself to eat healthy.” She added she might take her children to McDonald’s or IHOP for an occasional treat.

The Department of Education recognizes that hunger in the summer is a big problem. Its SchoolFood office runs a summer meal program with a national nonprofit called Share Our Strength to feed as many children as possible during July and August. Last summer, they served a record-breaking 8 million meals — but that’s less than what’s served in two weeks during the school year. Megan Cryan, the New York director for Share Our Strength, called the program “widely underutilized.” 

One major challenge is just getting the word out.

Six locations around the northwest Bronx will serve free meals this summer, including Van Cortlandt Pool, the Marble Hill playground, P.S./M.S. 37 and the Sheila Mencher School (P.S./M.S. 95). If 50 percent or more of students in a ZIP code are eligible for free lunch, the DOE will partner with Share Our Strength and other community organizations to serve the free food.

Ms. Cryan explained that Share Our Strength works to spread the word about these locations, printing more than 600,000 informational flyers and partnering with other community groups to canvas areas with historically low participation in the summer meal program. 

Those efforts had not reached Ms. Correa yet. As far as she knew, P.S. 310 had not passed along any information about free summer meals, either. Officials at the school did not answer repeated inquiries about summer lunch.

“A lack of awareness is probably one of the largest hurdles to participations in the summer meals programs,” Ms. Cryan acknowledged.

“We’ll be there,” Ms. Correa said upon learning of the program in her neighborhood.