RCAS students will eat for free for the rest of the school year

Rapid City Area Schools will serve meals to students for free until the end of June 2021 as part of the US Department of Agriculture’s extension of their Summer Food Service Program.

All RCAS enrolled students, even online learners, will receive breakfast and lunch for free for the remainder of the 2020/2021 school year. Distance learning families can pick up a weeks’ worth of meals at a time. Monday parents could grab those meals at six different locations, including General Beadle Elementary. With the extension of this food service program, RCAS also refunded families for meals going back to October 1st.

“We’ve already had a pretty big positive response from our families of just the positive impact that this is going to have on them. It’s been a financially tough situation for a lot of people lately and just having the burden lifted off them of how I am going to pay for school lunch, school meals, has been a positive thing for a lot of families.”

Leischner said an elementary school lunch costs $2.75 which means families would spend almost $14 a week. And if their child attends school regularly for around 40 weeks, that’s $550 for just one child’s school lunch.