The Revere Local School District applied for the federal lunch grant that provides any student a free meal through the 2020-2021 school year. 

Due to recent events, the federal government has allowed public schools across the country to apply for a grant that allows the lunches at school to be free of charge.

Revere High School Head Cook Ricardo Alaimo explained how the grant is available for any public school in the United States. 

“Every school district in the United States is counted for. It’s a federal U.S wide thing; it’s not just Revere. It’s every public school district that the grant is available to,” Alaimo said.

The grant allows the government to pay for students lunches, which ultimately gives more money to the food service (part of the school.) 

“The government pays for the lunch at a higher rate than what we were charging for, so we [get] more money back,” Alaimo said. 

Superintendent Matthew Montgomery explained that Revere signed up to be a part of the grant. 

Food Service Director Aaron Gnap was one of the people who helped Revere sign up for the grant. 

“[Gnap] went through the process to get us on the list to get [Revere] accepted. This was federal money that was available to apply for, but once [we went through] the application process, it wasn’t difficult,” Montgomery said. 

Gnap stated that one of the positives of the grant is how it does not single out the people who previously needed to receive free lunches from the school because of family income.

“It puts everybody on a level playing field, so instead of the students who are free and reduced having to come up and get the free meal; everybody gets the free meal. It helps to not single them out,” said Gnap.

Since the food service runs separately from the rest of the district, this grant is bringing in money they “desperately needed.” Going up to ask for a lunch while this grant is in place they encourage it since the grant supports the food services at Revere since students can give more money to the cafeteria workers than if they were paying regularly. 

“Any student that can come in and grab a free lunch is helping us out,” Alaimo said.