{"id":281989,"date":"2018-08-10T06:06:19","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T20:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=281989"},"modified":"2018-08-10T06:06:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T20:06:19","slug":"free-meals-for-all-pss-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/free-meals-for-all-pss-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Free meals for all PSS students"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Dale Roberts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Child Nutrition Program of the Public School System will be providing free meals to all its students starting this incoming school year. The meals will include both breakfast and lunch. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the meals that will be served this coming school year will be free of charge for PSS students,\u201d said program manager Dale Roberts. <\/p>\n

He said that PSS had always had a \u201cFree and Reduced Program\u201d but, in order for students to avail of free meals before, families had to apply for it. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d process it and then discern, based on the income information provided, whether you are eligible or not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This time, parents need not apply for the free meals. \u201cAll of the meals served at public schools will be free of charge, without [parents] having to [submit] an application. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor private school [students], if they want to avail of free meals, they will have to fill out an application and see if they get approved if they meet eligibility requirements,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Roberts said the free meals has always been the system with the Head Start Program as it is a low-income program. \u201cWith Head Start, we never made them fill out an application. We served the free meal to every child and we basically extended that [benefit] to the food of all the public school students.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, public school students will have to apply for free meals that are obtained outside of PSS. \u201cThis happens during spring, Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks as the children are taken to day care by working parents\u2026 To be eligible for free meals, you have to apply and your application has to be vetted and approved,\u201d Roberts added.<\/p>\n

Aside from breakfast and lunch meals, PSS elementary and middle school students also get an after-school snack on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a two-month pilot on Tinian last year to see if we can so after-school snacks for high school students. On Tinian, they are combined middle school and high [school], unlike Saipan. We wanted to see the logistics\u2026,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to move it to Rota into the junior senior high school levels, probably during the second month of school. It\u2019s very possible that, by the end of Christmas break, we may have figured out a way to get after-school snacks to all of the high schools on Saipan too,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Roberts is aware of the food waste issue, especially now that all PSS students will get free meals. \u201cWe get a lot of comments from parents, teachers, [and] politicians about food waste\u2026that there\u2019s going to be a lot of waste\u2026 One of the things we constantly have trouble with is when a student brings food from home, which is totally fine because I would rather that you eat what you want to eat as long as you are eating,\u201d Roberts said. However, this defeats the purpose of the Child Nutrition Program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. Department of Agriculture rules states that we have to serve the children a nutritious meal and we try our best to feed them properly\u2026that is the program and the rules are written that it is meant to be a full meal,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

According to Roberts, meal menus are posted on the PSS website and in the school in advance. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you know that your child doesn\u2019t like the menu for a particular day, then you can ask the child to bring lunch. Meals are published at the PSS website and the schools usually post them in the office and in the cafeteria. It\u2019s a six -week cycle so they can figure out the cycle after the first couple of months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of things that we would like to do for this year is to put up flavor stations with some seasoning so the students do not have to bring their own and we are still figuring out the logistics of that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Child Nutrition Program of the Public School System will be providing free meals to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":282031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[22278,9094,42,40],"class_list":["post-281989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-child-nutrition-program","tag-dale-roberts","tag-food","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}