“It is not OK that you have a program that is supposed to feed kids in the summer and it is only reaching 1 out of every 7 kids. That’s just not good enough.”
that before the pandemic, 6 out of 7 kids who may have needed summer meals were not getting them, said Lisa Davis, a senior vice president of the program at Share Our Strength, a nonprofit organization working to end hunger and poverty.Many children do not have transportation to summer meal sites or can’t make it during the time windows under the normal USDA rules, she said. Weather can also pose a problem, with sites usually outdoors and sometimes forced to close in storms or excessive heat.
But unlike in past summers, when noncongregate feeding was allowed because of COVID-related health concerns, the extended waivers expanded circumstances permitted for to-go meals. In an email, the USDA said it did “not explicitly define limitation of congregate meal service due to COVID-19.”“It’s very difficult to maintain program integrity when the program is not operating under normal circumstances,” she said.
While community nonprofit groups were bound by pre-pandemic regulations, the education department opted in to waivers to allow for grab-and-go meals and no time restrictions that its 2,227 school sites could apply for, compared to the 1,108 summer meal sites that operated with the restrictions under the health department, per data provided to NBC News by both departments.
Erin McAlvany and her family live about five blocks from two parks that host meal sites. She brought the kids by about once a week.
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