Diogeles Sanchez sat patiently in the middle row of a school bus, waiting while her daughters ate an apple, Pop-Tarts, milk and juice for breakfast.
“They came and gave us fliers before the children went out of school,” Sanchez said of her daughters, Areli, 2, and Esmeralda, 10. “I didn’t believe it at first. It’s like a blessing… children eat all day.”
Esmeralda, a student at Thigpen-Zavala Elementary in McAllen, is already out on summer vacation but the familiar yellow school bus she takes to school continues to parade through the streets, announcing the arrival of free meals twice a day for children.
“We get here and first go around the neighborhood honking to let people know we’ve arrived,” said Minerva Montelongo, a food service worker for McAllen schools.
Montelongo and Dora Guerrero, a bus driver for the district, are in charge of the route, which stops in Sanchez’s neighborhood on South Ware Road before moving on to another location.
Summer food programs are typically offered by school districts at campuses open for summer school, but last year McAllen schools began offering meals-on-wheels.
The school district increased its program to 16 mobile sites last year, giving out 24,000 meals in August compared to 8,400 meals at open schools in August 2013.
This summer, the district expanded its mobile locations to 32, adding dinner and snack times at some of the locations. This is in addition to meals at 46 open schools and other locations across the city.
Children get their meal on the bus, while parents with small children are allowed to go on the bus as long as they don’t eat from the child’s plate.
Other school districts, including Weslaco and Roma, have also started offering mobile meals this year, hoping to reach needy families.
Roma schools began piloting 10 mobile locations for breakfast and lunch this week, on top of the four summer school campuses open to all children. Leticia Garza-Galvan, school board president, said the mobile locations are targeting some of the poorest colonias in the district.
Dora Peña, food service director for Weslaco schools, said she had heard about these programs in other states and after seeing it work for McAllen, she decided to give it a try.