CCSD2 to provide meals through summer

Despite an unusual school year that finished with students at home, Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2) and the Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) have been working to help students and their families. Throughout the rest of the school year, following closures on March 16, the district provided emergency meals to families for both breakfast and lunch.

In April, the school district served approximately 6,500 meals.

Now, while school may have been dismissed for the summer, both CCSD2 and BOCES are continuing to support students and their families. Even with having provided emergency meals in the final quarter of the school year, funds were available to continue the district’s summer lunch program.

“We decided we would go ahead and do that, which is fantastic because we are providing quite a few meals throughout the whole entire district,” said Brekke Munks, BOCES Director for CCSD2. “The northern part of the district, actually, is having more meals served—that’s breakfast and lunch daily—than the southern part of the district but there are a lot of families that are very appreciative of this.”

In the same way that CCSD2 offered emergency meals during the school year, the summer lunches are not just limited to low-income families or children who are registered students within the district. On the contrary, anybody under the age of 18 and who is living in a home within CCSD2 is eligible for a breakfast, lunch or both.

“So that means, if grandma and grandpa have grandkids coming in after the COVID situation chills out a little bit, grandma and grandpa can sign their kids up. Or, if an aunt and an uncle have niece and nephew come in for a couple weeks out of the summer, they can go ahead and sign their niece and nephew up,” Munks said. “You don’t have to be enrolled, you just have to be 18 or younger.”

According to Munks, signing up for the summer lunch program is fairly easy. Parents or guardians who want meals for children start by going to myschoolbucks.com and logging in. Each week, they can select how many children are in their household and what days they will be needing meals.

“When we first started doing advertisement for this, I was really kind of sad that people were thinking about this as almost a shameful thing and this isn’t a shameful thing at all. This is to help our kids,” said Munks. “We’ve had parents out of work and stuff. Don’t worry about food. Just go and get it.”

It wasn’t long after the emergency meals were announced that Munks realized that, while she had been pushing for other parents to use it, she herself hadn’t used it. Wanting to support a program that she was asking others to support, Munks began signing up her daughter for meals. It eventually became a type of outing for Munks and her daughter, who wore a different costume each day to bring a smile to the faces of the kitchen staff.

“The one thing that this program is also doing is getting the kids on campus to a certain degree and, if they are little, they’re starting to learn the school. At least where it’s at—they can’t wander around, obviously—but they’re learning staff, which is a big thing,” Munks said.

While she encourages anyone to use the program over the summer without feeling shameful, she adds that it also reflects well on the district to have participation.

“The participation in this program reflects well on the school district, especially with the Wyoming Department of Education, where we do a lot of our lunch funds which are, generally, federally based. So, participation obviously looks good with the state, which is exciting for our school district,” said Munks. “We’re keeping our numbers up, which is important.”

The summer food program began on June 2 and is available at the following locations and times; Saratoga Middle High School 11 a.m. to noon, Encampment K-12 School 11 a.m. to noon, Hanna Recreation Center Parking Lot 11 a.m. to noon, Medicine Bow Elementary Parking Lot 11:30 a.m. to noon and Elk Mountain Town/Senior Center Parking Lot 11:30 a.m. to noon.

Those wanting more information on the program can call 307-326-5271.