With the closure of schools and restaurants, it can be hard for families to access affordable food and quick meals.

Since March 23rd, the school district of Lee County has been providing free meal options for anyone 18 years and under during this pandemic. The Grab and Go program allows students to pick up food from 9:00 am-12:00 pm at certain locations across the district.

Many students at Cape High have taken advantage of this opportunity and have highly benefited from it. 

“I can’t cook every day for my siblings and it’s easy access to food for us,” stated junior Victoria Mercado-Lues.

She and her mother have been driving to Pelican Elementary in order to get the meals. “It’s just school food, but the volunteers are always very nice,” Mercado-Lues added. “Some schools that give out meals do have longer car lines than others so it could be a longer wait.”

Other than the additional time that may be needed to grab the meals, the process overall is very quick and easy, regardless of pick up location.

Freshman Allison Brown has also been using these services but at Mariner High School. 

“They ask how many people there are and after you tell them they give you little plastic bags of food,” explained Brown. “We’ve only used the program a couple times, but we heard that the food could be pretty good so we tried it out.”

Although for different reasons, Brown and Mercado-Lues have had good experiences using the Grab and Go services. Both agree that the quality of the food and service are very good and convenient under the current circumstances.

 Along with them, many others in the district are also benefiting from this program.

In an email to the teachers of Lee County on May 1st, superintendent Greg Adkins congratulated the hard working lunch staff.

“I had the pleasure of visiting school campuses today to say thank you to our school lunch heroes,” stated Adkins “Together we have served nearly 650,000 meals to families in our community since we’ve started our Grab and Go sites.”

There are many others that can be supported by this program, and all students are encouraged to stay healthy and fed during this time.

The Grab and Go sites can be found on the district website.

https://www.leeschools.net/parent_portal/covid-19/meal_pick_up_sites