Beginning Monday, April 6, meal service from Desert Sands Unified School District will be reduced to two days each week. DSUSD currently serves daily meals. This service ends Friday, April 3.

On Mondays, two days of meals will be provided; on Wednesdays, three days of meals will be provided.

Meals will be available for pickup between 10 a.m. and noon each of these two days.

For a complete list of locations in English, click here. For a list in Spanish, click here.

Meal service and nutrition is a primary concern for parents — and has been —since Riverside County Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser on March 13 ordered the closure of the county’s schools to step up the fight the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) was school lunches.

So many children and parents rely on school lunches for nutrition.

Across the United States, millions of students rely on school lunches, more than 20 million of which are distributed for free each day, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

When schools close unexpectedly — during a pandemic, for example — the USDA allows them to provide food to students using programs designed for summer meals, which are often offered at churches, parks and other community sites.

Schools can then be reimbursed by the federal government for the meals they provide, just as they would be during the summer, according to a USDA memorandum issued last year.

The catch, according to the School Nutrition Association, is that the meal distribution sites, including unused schools, must be located in areas where at least half of children come from low-income families.

Desert Sands Unified School District has an emergency food plan which was put into place on Monday, March 16, 2020. The District has been distributing “grab-and-go” cold school lunches Monday-Friday.

Image Sources

  • School lunches: DSUSD