04/09/2025
The city of Oakland is eliminating its free summer meal program for children, which provided more than 100,000 free, hot lunches to children last year.
This will have devastating effects for children and families in Oakland, where nearly 75% of OUSD students — about 33,000 — qualify for free or reduced lunch.
“If you think of a low-income family, they often depend on school meals. So when schools are out, that is typically when we will start to see spikes in seasonal need...That’s why this program has been so enormously beneficial to the families that we serve.” — Michael Altfest, ACCFB’s Director of Community Engagement & Marketing
Read more about the end of this program, how it will affect the community, and how the Food Bank will be tasked with filling the gaps it causes at
The program, which provided more than 100,000 hot lunches last summer, was slated to begin after the Oakland Unified School District’s final day of classes on May 29.