During the school year and summer school, children in the Mammoth and San Manuel area who qualify for free breakfast and lunch receive food assistance through the public schools; however, in the six-week gap between the end of summer school and the beginning of the regular school year, these students lack access to proper nutrition. Beginning 2015 the Summer Food Program, led by Paula Morgan and Terri Kunz along with their husbands Frank Morgan and Bob Kunz, has helped to feed approximately 60 hungry students during the summer break.
Food is purchased every two weeks at a discount from Bashas’ and assembled by volunteers at the Kids’ Closet warehouse in Mammoth. Every other week students go to Kids’ Closet to pick up a bag containing food for two weeks of breakfasts and lunches. Based on responses from students and San Manuel and Mammoth school administrators, each reusable grocery bag contains 16 individual serving sized boxes of breakfast cereal, chicken ramen soup for 14 lunches, two boxes each of fruit roll ups, 24 granola bars, two packages of cookies, eight packets of peanut butter/cheese crackers and unshelled sunflower seeds (for snacks).
This year a bag of pinto beans and a bag of brown rice will be included to help provide meals for the student’s family.
Food distribution will begin on July 1 and end on July 29, with the school year beginning on August 10.