HISD is offering a variety of fun and educational activities for the summer to help students prepare for the upcoming school year and prevent the “summer slide.”

HISD is offering a variety of fun and educational activities for the summer to help students prepare for the upcoming school year and prevent the “summer slide.”
The Houston Independent School District is launching its 2021 summer meals program this week, in conjunction with the start of summer school.
As part of the summer meals program, Nutrition Services will host weekly curbside student meal pickup at 10 of the district’s highest-need campuses. The distributions will be held at the end of each week and provide students with meals for the weekend, as well as hand sanitizer and reusable masks.
Weekend meals also will be provided to students enrolled in summer school. They will receive no-cost breakfast and lunch at school each day as well as meals to take home for the weekend at the end of each week.
“As we have learned from this past year, we have an overabundance of students from food-insecure households in HISD,” Nutrition Services Officer Betti Wiggins said. “I’m grateful that we’re able to provide this program to help ensure our students continue to have access to good food through the summer.”
Campus curbside pickup locations include:
The first curbside pickup will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Friday, June 18. Students will receive two days’ worth of breakfast and lunch to eat over the weekend.
Beginning Thursday, June 24, all remaining pickups will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Thursdays to better align with the district’s summer work schedule. On Thursdays, students will receive three days’ worth of breakfast and lunch to eat over the weekend.
The program is slated to run through the end of summer school.
For more information or to find a curbside pickup location near you, visit HoustonISD.org/StudentMeals.
A group of Windswept Gardens Apartments residents made their way through the complex’s tree-lined central courtyard, which sits just a few hundred yards from the speeding cars and unending traffic of the Southwest Freeway.
Clad in face masks and carefully keeping their distance from each other, the families gathered around a blue tent where HISD’s Nutrition Services staff were handing out student summer meals in the afternoon sun.
The district has long offered a free summer meal program for students throughout the greater Houston community. In previous years, children would come to local schools to eat. But the COVID-19 pandemic changed the game, prompting Nutrition Services to look for innovative and safe ways to feed kids without a cafeteria.
Continue readingThe Houston Independent School District is streamlining its summer food distribution programs and launching a new partnership with the Houston Food Bank to better serve families with the most need.
Nutrition Services is revamping its Curbside Summer Meals and Fresh Bus programs, consolidating distribution sites to redirect resources to the communities with the highest demand.
Continue readingAs the school year wraps up, the Houston Independent School District is revving up its nutrition outreach efforts with the launch of curbside summer meals for students and the Fresh Bus produce delivery program.
The programs come on the heels of the district’s successful community food distribution initiative, which ran for nine weeks following HISD’s closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coordinated by HISD in partnership with the Houston Food Bank, the program, provided nearly 7 million pounds of food to more than 160,000 families during that time.
“When everything around us was shutting down due to the pandemic, it became essential for us to be there for our students and their families,” HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan said. “I’m proud of the hard work and dedication that went into this effort. Remarkably, we were able to impact so many families.”
The district is aiming to build upon that success with the launch if it’s annual and state-mandated summer meals program, which begins June 1. Families will be able to pick up packaged student meals twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays at one of 71 designated schools across the district. Families will receive several days’ worth of food per child.
The HISD Summer Meals Program came to an end for the 2015 season on Friday, July 17, but families can still obtain free meals for kids through the City of Houston’s Parks and Recreation Department. Continue reading
The Houston Independent School District is serving free breakfasts and lunches to children ages 1-18 at more than 200 schools this summer.
Children do not need to be enrolled in summer school to participate in the program, and no paperwork, registration or proof of income is required. Adults may purchase breakfast for $2 and lunch for $3.25.