HCPS offering free meals over holiday break

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - It’s time for winter breaks in schools across the Valley, but for some students being away from school that long isnt always a good thing.

Many students rely on school lunches to provide them with the nutrition they need.

After a few years off, Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) is offering meals to students and the community while they’re on break.

“The prices of groceries is pretty high so offering these resources to families is really important to us,” Andrea Early, director of nutrition for HCPS said.

On Wednesday, Dec. 14 HCPS will host a food box distribution. From 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. food boxes will be distributed at Harrisonburg High School and the bus loop between Skyline Middle School and Smithland Elementary School.

They have partnered with Blue Ridge Area Food Bank for this food box distribution.

“It’s gonna be a drive-thru you just let our volunteers know how many people are in your household and they’ll give you a certain number of boxes of non-perishable food items,” Early said. “This is available to everybody in the community who wants to come out, we’re targeting it to our families but it’s really available to anybody.”

However, it doesn’t stop there. HCPS is bringing back its mobile cafe to serve in nine different neighborhoods over the two-week long break.

The mobile cafes will run on the two Thursdays during the break, Dec 2 and 29.

“We’ll be offering lunch at no cost to children up to the age of 18 and again this is not just for students who live in those neighborhoods it’s for any children up to 18 who come to one of those sites,” Early said.

The meals offered at the mobile cafes will be hot lunches.

“For many of our students school meals meet a critical nutrition need and we know that that doesn’t go away because we are on holiday break and for all of our families food prices are just up, this is a way that we can help our families out a little bit over break and it also allows us to connect with our community too and stay in touch over break,” Early said.

You can visit the HCPS website for an updated list of food resources in the community or find out more about winter break food resource options.

Spotswood Mobile Home Park

1715 Country Club Ct.

11:00 - 11:20 am

Liberty Square

Founders Way

11:30 - 11:50 am

Harris Gardens

215 Vine St.

12:00 - 12:20 pm

NENA Community Center

491 Broad St.