For Kids, There’s Still Such a Thing as a Free Lunch at 52 Summer Sites

As a way of helping Orange County families that depend on free school lunches, agencies from schools to kids clubs are handing out more than 13,000 lunches a day this summer.

The bag lunches, funded by the federal Summer Food Service Program and designed to meet children’s nutritional needs, are available at 52 sites in Orange County, with locations in Brea, Fullerton, Garden Grove, La Habra, Santa Ana and Tustin.

“It allows the kids, especially the children who are needy, to receive meals throughout the summer months when school is not in session,” said Diane Hanson, assistant director of food services for the Garden Grove Unified School District.

“This is a great opportunity for a family to feed a large number of children when they’re home during the summer, at no cost.”

At O.A. Peters Elementary School in Garden Grove, 520 summer school students receive the lunches on the playground as part of their daily routine.

At the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Ana, more than 150 elementary and intermediate school students who are off-track from their year-round schools and a couple of dozen high school students on summer vacation begin lining up outside 15 minutes before lunch is served at 11:30 a.m. They eat at large, round tables in the gymnasium, where the sound of bouncing balls competes with lunch-time chatter.

Anyone 18 and younger is eligible. No questions asked, no IDs required.

Nancy Leon brought her three children and niece and nephew to the club, one of a dozen sites in the city offering free lunches prepared by the school district’s food services department. Leon, who lives nearby, said she brings her children almost every day.

“Mostly, it’s for them: They get to have fun and play around,” said Leon. But, she acknowledged as the children worked on the day’s fare of peanut butter and celery, nuts, a peach, yogurt and milk: “It does save money, and it’s healthy food.”

Miguel Valencia, 34, a program director at the Boys and Girls Club, knows the value of a free lunch.

“I used to eat the lunches when I was a little kid,” said Valencia, whose family moved from Mexico to Santa Ana in 1973 when he was 6. He remembers standing in line for free lunches with his older brother, Jesus, at Flower Park during the summer.

“It was a big thing,” said Valencia, whose mother worked days cleaning houses and nights doing custodial work. “It made it really convenient for us to go to the park and eat. We were very tight for money, so that definitely helped out.”

Inaugurated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1968, the summer lunch program is administered by the California Department of Eduction’s Nutrition Services Division.

Statewide, an estimated 323,900 meals a day will be served over the summer. Last year, about 4.6 million lunches were served.

The Summer Food Service Program’s name is something of a misnomer.

Because children at year-round schools are off at different times, the program operates throughout the year, said Melissa Garza, a program analyst for the Nutrition Services Division.

During the school year, she said, districts offer the National School Lunch Program. Some students receive free or reduced-cost breakfasts and lunches, depending on their family’s income and size.

Garza said if half of any school’s students qualify for the free and reduced-priced meals during the school year, free lunches can be provided at the school or nearby during the summer or other extended school breaks. And the campus can provide meals to any children 18 or younger, whether they’re in school or not.

If the summer lunch program weren’t available, she said, “A lot of them wouldn’t receive a nutritious meal or maybe even a meal.”

Leticia Briseno recently brought her eight children to the Boys and Girls Club for lunch. The children wouldn’t go hungry without the program, she said, but the free lunches save money with such a large family.

And, she said, there’s another advantage: “I don’t have to cook.”