The Citrus County School District is excited to announce our Food and Nutrition Services department will provide free meals to every enrolled student during the 2022-23 school year. Citrus Schools is offering free meals by expanding its participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). CEP will help provide free breakfast and lunch to our almost 16,000 students.
CEP allows schools and districts that predominantly serve low-income children to offer free, nutritious school meals to students through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. The good news is participation is automatic and families are not required to fill out any forms or applications. Approximately 71% of our students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. "With the high price of gas, groceries, and other goods, lots of families are struggling," says Food & Nutrition Services Director Roy Pistone. "We hope this will help provide some relief. We knew the federal assistance from pandemic relief was going to end at some point, so we were happy to position ourselves to continue to feed students at no cost moving forward.” Families will receive notifications in the mail with details of this program. We also want to encourage families who pack lunches for their students to take full advantage of the program andgrab milk and two other items for free! Just one more way to help ease the financial burden on families. eSchool is not eligible.
Citrus Schools will begin offering free breakfast and lunch to every student on every campus beginning the first day of school, August 10, 2022.
For additional information please contact: Jean Terrano, Food & Nutrition Services, 352-726- 1931, X 2402, email: terranoj@citrusschools.org.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up