HAMILTON, Ohio—It’s a new normal for many school aged children now spending their days at home. But local school districts are working to make sure children across the state are still being fed.

• Parents depend on schools to feed children breakfast and lunch
• Hamilton City Schools is offering free breakfast and lunch at 34 locations
• In its first day, the district handed out over 1,100 to-go bags of food

Many schools are tasked to make sure each child has breakfast and lunch each school day. But as schools closed last week, parents worried about feeding their kids. 

“It’s been kind of hard, but we’ll get through it," mother and grandmother Tammy Deaton said.

But school districts across the state are setting up feeding sites to make sure those kids get meals they might otherwise not get at home.

“This right here means that my kids aren’t going to look at me and say ‘mommy, I’m hungry,'" mother Katie Helton said.

“With something like the coronavirus, they were not prepared for this, did not make preparations and it was so sudden," Cherish Bowman student family support specialist at Fairwood Elementary said. "This is a huge need that our children are still fed that breakfast and lunch every day.”

Hamilton city schools started handing out lunches and breakfasts at 34 locations across the area to make sure they can reach as many kids as possible.

“I am so thankful that they are doing this literally right here," Helton said. "I live right up the street. So I could walk down here.”

The meals include several nutritional options, and plenty of snacks kids will love.

School employees say it’s been a difficult time for their students and teachers and this gives them an opportunity to get out of the house and have some social interaction too.

“Having zero prep time on this, everyone’s been real creative," Heather Cremeans assistant principal at Fairwood Elementary said. "Everyone in the whole district collaborating, sharing those ideas on how to keep those connections so we can keep kids learning.”

School bus drivers and cafeteria workers have been tasked to help hand out the meals

And parents couldn’t be more thankful for their help to make sure their kids have full bellies.

“If it wasn’t for these ladies doing this for us, I don’t know what we’d do," Helton said.

In Hamilton, breakfast and lunch will be handed out each week day from 11 to 11:30. To find locations for the feeding sites visit this website.To find out how your local school district may be helping feeding kids in the area, contact them directly.