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Henrico Schools officials are making plans to continue providing grab-and-go meals for students and others 18 or younger throughout the summer months.
The school system has been distributing meals at sites countywide since mid-March; there are now 15 sites, from which more than 250,000 meals were provided at no cost to students during the first two months of the operation.
Continuing the program through the summer will require additional funding, Henrico Schools Chief of Staff Beth Teigen told the Henrico School Board during its virtual work session Thursday, but a recent grant from Facebook to the Henrico Education Foundation will help cover a portion of that.
Facebook’s $280,000 donation designated $160,000 for the provision of those meals; that amount will fund 64,000 meals. (The rest of the grant will fund the purchase of several hundred WiFi hotspots and associated service costs for a year, to allow students who wouldn’t otherwise have internet access to get online.)
Henrico Education Foundation Executive Director Mike Taylor has told school system officials that if more money is needed for the provision of meals, he believes some donors would be willing to make additional donations, Teigen said.
School system officials believe that through the grab-and-go meals and other donations of food bags to local food pantries, they’ve been able to meet the needs of all students who otherwise might have gone without meals, Teigen said. Officials have maintained regular communication with the Henrico Department of Social Services department, and DSS officials have said they aren’t receiving any calls from families in need of food, she said.
Finding enough nutrition staff members to distribute food throughout the summer shouldn’t be a problem, Teigen told the board; some already were scheduled to work a portion of the summer during what would have been the normal summer school period.
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