PORTLAND (AP) — A federal program that provides low-income schoolchildren with free meals during the summer has for the first time expanded to every Maine county.
Angela Wight, Summer Food Service Program coordinator for the state Department of Education, said there are now 307 summer meal sites in the state, up from 242 last summer.
She told The Portland Press Herald (http://bit.ly/12xEu4h) that this summer the program established in 1978 has expanded for the first time to Knox, Lincoln and Hancock counties.
The program is open to the 85,000 Maine students who get free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches during the school year. Wight says only 16 percent of the students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals during the school year use the summer program.
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