Florida's Hillsborough County Public Schools have changed the way they provide free meals to children in the district after evidence emerged that some people were taking more than their share of food and offering it for sale online, CNN reported.
Staffers are now using new technology to track distributions and help ensure students continue to have access to the free meals, according to the district website.
The crackdown began after staffers noticed a "significant increase" in the number of meals being served at sites across the district, and even noticed adults arrived to pick up food with district meals already visible inside their car, a district spokesperson told the
District officials also received screenshots showing food items provided by the district being offered online, advertised as "free" but prompting potential buyers to make an offer when they clicked on the listing.
"It's a shame that a few of our community members would go to multiple sites, take food away from children, and seek to build their financial portfolio on children who will not have food today," Superintendent Addison Davis told CNN.
The district, across west central Florida and headquartered in Tampa, provides food every Wednesday at 147 sites. Each package includes a week's worth of meals, including one pound of lunch meat, a loaf of bread, milk, juice and nutritious snacks, according to the district website.
The packages are available to anyone under 18, regardless of whether or not they are a student, according to the site. But under the new policy, parents picking up a food package for their child must provide either the name and birth date, or student ID number, for each child, and are not allowed to collect more than the share allocated to their child(ren).
Many students in the US depend on healthy, low- or no-cost meals provided by schools to meet their nutritional needs — with schools closed for the foreseeable futures, districts are looking for innovative strategies to provide food and other resources to their students.
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