MILTON — While Santa Rosa County children are outside classrooms this summer,
school district officials are ensuring they don’t go hungry.
That’s possible with a mobile feeding program and two locations that offer free
breakfast and lunch.
LUNCH ON THE GO
Each weekday, the school district takes a mobile unit to several north Santa Rosa public parks
and distributes free lunch. Referring to the meal, “it kind of looks like a Lunchable,”
said Bill McMahon,a senior operations manager for Sodexo, the school district’s food service company.
“We serve them five days a week with five different sandwiches … there is always a milk in
the container and a fruit or vegetable.” McMahon said the lunches are taken to each site in a clearly marked school district vehicle. An employee wearing a school district shirt, with a valid school district identification
card, distributes the meals.
The mobile unit meals are distributed as follows, weather permitting:
• Benny Russell Park, 11:30-11:50 a.m., at 5417 West Spencer Field Road
• Floridatown Park, 12:30-12:50 p.m., at 3900 Floridatown Road in Pace
• Carpenters Park, 11:30-11:50 a.m., at Broad Street and Munson Highway in Milton
• Santa Villa Park, 12:30-12:45 p.m., at Sunrise Drive and Santa Villa Drive in Milton
• Optimist Park, noon to 12:15 p.m., at 6244 Old Bagdad Highway in Milton
McMahon said the meal program, funded through the Florida Department of Agriculture, usually distributes more than 6,000 meals at the parks.
“Depending on the day, you will see three or four car loads of kids just show up
(at the parks for the lunches),” he said.
OPEN SITES
The summer food program — which began shortly after school break began on June 2 — ends a week
before the school year begins on Aug. 5.
In addition to the mobile program, the school district set two open sites that offer
lunches to children under age 18, regardless of where they go to school.
“The open sites (Milton High School and East Milton
Elementary School) are 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. for breakfast and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for lunch,” McMahon said.
The meals help every child who is hungry, he said.
“It is open to the public,” McMahon said. “We can feed anyone 18 (years of age) and under; they don’t
have to live in Santa Rosa; they don’t have to go to school here.”
SOUTH-END SHORTAGE
The mobile feeding program, in its third year, regularly receives requests to branch out to the southern
end of the county, McMahon said.
“Based on where I can go with the (mobile feeding program) is based on the free and reduced percentage,
which makes it very difficult to go on the south end,” he said.
While several north-end schools meet or exceed the requirement of having a 50 percent rate of students needing free and reduced lunches, McMahon said just one south-end school comes
close, with 42 percent.
McMahon said county commissioners have often asked him about making the mobile lunch program available in south Santa Rosa. However, “my hands are tied; it’s a federally funded
program,” he said. “That is still hard to explain, because I know that the kids in Navarre are just as hungry
as the kids up here.”
NEED IS GREATER THAN EVER
Unless the program’s guidelines change, or the rates of free and reduced lunches increase at a southend
school, McMahon does not envision expanding the mobile lunch program to the southern region.
In the meantime, he will help ensure meals go to those who need them on the north end.
That’s actually a significant number, according to McMahon, who has seen the summer meal program’s
need increase over the years.
“It has taken a while for the program to get as big as it has,” he said. “When I first started, going back 10 years, we only served about 30,000 meals over the summer.
“Now, we should probably hit over 90,000 meals this summer.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Free meal program helps children, but federal requirements result in south county shortage