Lawrence Public Schools will offer free meals and meal kits to all kids in the community this summer, as well as special event days with storytellers and the library’s bookmobile.
Free lunches will be available for free to children ages 1 to 18 from Monday, June 1 through Friday, July 24, except for June 19 and July 3.
The district will serve on-site meals from noon to 12:45 p.m. Mondays through Fridays during that time at Sunset Hill Elementary School, 901 Schwarz Road. Food has to be eaten at the school and can’t be taken home.
No registration or ID is required for on-site meals. Adults can also get food for $5, paid via cash or check only.
Don’t miss a beat … Click here to sign up for our email newsletters
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
See this link for the summer meal menu.
Every Monday at Sunset Hill, folks can bring their library card and browse books for checkout as Dottie the Lawrence Public Library Bookmobile comes to visit. People can also return books at that time.
Thursdays will feature free performances from local storytellers, poets and musicians.
Meal kits
Summer meal kit pickup has been relocated to the Douglas County Fairgrounds Open Air Pavilion this year. That’s at 2110 Harper St. To get there, enter off of 19th Street on the northwest side of the fairgrounds.
Please support news you can use from the Times!
Click here to subscribe.
“While there’s no single perfect location for our summer meal kit distribution, we hope that the new location will support our families who struggled to get to the previous site and will be safer, overall, from a traffic perspective,” according to the summer meals webpage.
The kits include five days of breakfasts and lunches that people can prepare at home. Kits are free for children ages 1 to 18, but no adult meals are available.
Registration is required for meal kits. Learn more and sign up at this link.
Meal kit pickup is from 7 to 9 a.m. on Tuesdays from Tuesday, June 2 through Tuesday, July 21.
Each person or family who signs up will get an insulated tote bag that they should bring back each week. This new model allows the district to keep frozen products preserved longer, improving food safety and quality. It also reduces cardboard waste each week. If someone forgets their cooler, folks running the meal program will have limited empty product boxes they can hand out.
Each child will get a card where a parent or guardian can specify what food they should receive.
“Only want chocolate milk? We can handle that,” the summer meal website reads. “Your kids don’t like the fresh produce? That’s okay, you can choose not to take it. Is juice something you’d like to avoid? It’s no longer required.”
The district can’t alter breakfast and lunch entrees, however, because of the United States Department of Agriculture funding guidelines.
Kids who get free meals from other sites, including the Boys & Girls Club sites at Hillcrest, Sunset Hill and Schwegler, are not eligible for the meal kit program due to funding guidelines.
Kansas Summer EBT benefits
Summer EBT, or SUN Bucks, from the state are also available again this year.
Families with household incomes meeting the requirement for federal free or reduced-price school meals at Kansas schools, or those who meet other eligibility criteria, can receive a one-time payment of $120 per eligible child to help with grocery costs.
The Kansas Department for Children and Families website says participating in the program doesn’t affect immigration statuses. However, Kansas Reflector reported that around 138,000 immigrant kids missed out on free meals in 2025 because their families feared submitting more documentation in the face of President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts.
Children who use SUN Bucks are allowed to participate in other summer meal programs, according to the DCF website.
Applications for 2025 SUN Bucks, which are available on the DCF’s self-service portal, must be submitted by 5 p.m. Aug. 31. Learn more about the program on dcf.ks.gov.
If local news matters to you, please help us keep doing this work.
Don’t miss a beat — get the latest news from the Times delivered to your inbox:
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
This post is by the Lawrence Times news team.
If you have news tips, questions, comments, concerns, compliments or corrections for our team, please reach out and let us know what’s on your mind. Email us at [email protected] (don’t forget the KS!), or find more contact info and a quick contact form at LawrenceKSTimes.com/contact.
Follow us so you won’t miss the local news that matters most to you:
Latest Lawrence news:
Courtney Lane / Lawrence Times
Logan Pierson / Lawrence Times
