This November, Colorado voters will see a ballot measure to approve a high-income tax, which would create a consistent funding source for free meals for all students in the state’s public schools. Dubbed Healthy School.
During the pandemic, local organizations in Eagle County saw food needs change and grow. And this summer, as needs continue to evolve, they are rising to meet the occasion once again. According to recent.
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As part of the pandemic services that are getting extensions and additions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced it would fund the universal free lunch program for another school year. And while the program is ultimately good and benefits over 2,000 Eagle County students and families it could reduce the funding that the school district receives as part of its participation in the National School Lunch Program. is a federally assisted meal program that was signed into law in 1946 by President Harry Truman. Eligibility as well as the distinction between free and reduced in this program is based off a number of factors including household size and income. Last year, the USDA made this program free as a result of the pandemic, meaning that all students were automatically eligible for free breakfast and lunch.
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Melisa Rewold-Thuon, assistant superintendent for Eagle County Schools, remembers spending her birthday at the emergency school board meeting. “It’s a birthday I will always remember,” she said of March 13, 2020.
. It would close 17 schools and switch to remote learning for three weeks starting Tuesday, just three days later.
The news that kids would be learning from home because of the rapidly-evolving pandemic, exactly one week after Eagle County’s first confirmed coronavirus infection, reverberated throughout the county’s households and businesses.
“I was hoping for the best, but also worrying, what if we have a huge outbreak?” Rewold-Thuon said of the uncertain weeks leading up to the district’s announcement, when the shadow of the pandemic spread and darkened, but had not yet upended life. “I do remember thinking, ‘This is not going to be good, I have a feeling,’” Rewold-Thuon said.