South Mississippi school districts offering meal programs during closures

South Mississippi school districts are making sure local kids are fed during the school closures.

Pass Christian School District Child Nutrition Director Saundra Isabelle said, “It’s kind of sad. There’s no noise in the building. No chatter of little feet. You wonder where they’re at and what they’re doing and wonder do they have what they need.”

One thing all students and children in Pass Christian will have come Thursday is at least two meals a day thanks to the free grab and go meals program the school district is rolling out.

Starting Thursday, a free lunch and breakfast for the next day will be available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for each child present at the two pick up sites Monday through Friday. “Meals will be served from the K-8 cafeteria. We will be posted outside near the car rider line near the Boys and Girls Club. We’ll give you a lunch and breakfast. We’ll give you lunch and breakfast for the next day.”

While handling this free meals program due to the Coronavirus threat is uncharted territory, Isabelle and others had a test run of sorts during Hurricane Katrina nearly 15 years ago. “We had a plan in place to continue to serve kids. We started off with a small group of kids but we continued to feed them with the inventory we had available.”

The Biloxi School District will also start serving up free meals on Thursday. One of the locations is at Popp’s Ferry Elementary School, also North Bay and Gorenflo Elementary Schools. Biloxi School District Superintendent Marcus Boudreaux said, “We’re anticipating closing for an extended period of time and we know lunch and breakfast are very important to our students. Students are going to be able to pick up lunches beginning at 10:30 am to 12:30 pm.”