Food Service & Menus

Free Meals Available to all Students on 10/1/20

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has recently announced that schools participating in the National School Lunch Program will have the opportunity to offer free breakfast and lunch to all enrolled students in the Harrison Central School District. Beginning October 1, 2020, Harrison Schools will offer free menu breakfast and lunches to all enrolled students while the Federal funding is available. No action is necessary to participate in this new offering. Complete meals, which are the options appearing on the monthly menus, will be available at no charge for all enrolled students of the District. A La Carte menu items will still be available for purchase during in-school instruction.

For those students who are receiving 100% virtual instruction, full meal kits for the entire week will continue to be available, but must be ordered each week by CLICKING HERE (orders should be placed by 3:00 p.m. each Sunday for pick-up on Mondays between 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.). Pickup locations are Harrison High School and Samuel J. Preston Elementary School. Parents can now pick up from either site based on convenience regardless of what school their child/children attend.

For those students receiving hybrid instruction, meals may continue to be picked up on the days when students are not receiving in-school instruction at either Harrison High School or Samuel J. Preston Elementary School, based on personal convenience, between 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Parents can request multiple meals for hybrid students at the time of pickup. 

Breakfast & Lunch Pre-Payment Program

Parents and guardians may choose to create a pre-payment account, using the MySchoolBucks program. To create an account and add money to your child 's MySchoolBucks account, please Click here.  Please be aware that if you choose to use E-check payments rather than a credit card to fund your child's account, e-checks can take up to one week to clear and post to your child's account.  If you have a problem establishing an account using MySchoolBucks, please contact them by phone at 855-832-5226 or email at support@myschoolbucks.com.  If you are having problems after you entered your credit card information, please contact Pay Pal at either 402-935-2050 or 888-221-1161 for payment issues.   Click here for an important disclaimer about the MySchoolBucks program.

The goal of the Harrison School District is to provide student access to nutritious no- or low-cost meals each school day and to ensure that a student whose parent/guardian has unpaid school meal fees is not shamed or treated differently than a student whose parent/guardian does not have unpaid meal fees. If your child's MySchoolBucks account reaches a low balance, you will receive an email or be contacted with instructions for adding money to his/her account.  Students will not be made aware of these low balances.  If a student does not have sufficient funds to purchase a meal, he/she will be provided with a meal consistent with the provisions of this policy.  However, the charging of items outside of the standard reimbursable meal (i.e., a la carte items, adult meals, etc.) is expressly prohibited.  

FREE & REDUCED MEAL PROGRAM

The District encourages families who are eligible for free and reduced meals to apply for these benefits.  Inquiries about the free and reduced meal program will be confidential.  For information about the free and reduced meal program, including eligibility criteria, click here: English / Spanish.  To apply for the free and reduced meal program, click here: English / Spanish.

In late August the Harrison Central School District sent a school lunch pamphlet to all families that provided important information regarding the school lunch program for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, at that time we did not have all the final guidance from New York State regarding how the program could operate given the challenges associated with COVID-19. We have now finalized our plan for food service for the 2020-21 school year, and this will remain in effect unless we receive further guidance from the State.

As we shared in our August pamphlet, the District is required to make school lunch available to all students regardless if they are receiving instruction in the school building or remotely from home. Our plan for in-school meals will remain largely the same in operation, but with changes to student seating and how meals are physically distributed to students.   For students receiving instruction remotely, meals will be available and may be picked up each day at one of two locations: Harrison High School or Preston School. If you are not currently enrolled in the prepaid lunch program My School Bucks please enroll before the opening of school by clicking here, or refer to pages 15-18 of the District's School Lunch Information Pamphlet.

Meal pick up for remote instruction:

Parents or guardians may access meals for remote students at either Harrison High School or Preston School. If your child/children attend either Preston School or Purchase School, your pick up location will be at Preston School toward the rear kitchen door, next to the cafeteria.

If your child/children attend Harrison High School, Harrison Avenue School, Parsons Elementary School or Louis M. Klein Middle School, your pick up location will be Harrison High School.  As you enter the high school, turn right and proceed up the driveway.  Meals will be distributed from the concession stand next to the gymnasium. All parents/guardians should have their child’s student ID number so they can either provide it to the cashier or enter it on a key pad. Please remember that all meals must be paid for at pick up unless the student is eligible for free and reduced meals. This process will be very efficient if parents set up the prepaid accounts through My School Bucks.  If your child is learning remotely five days a week, you may pick up all five meals during one visit.

Should you have any questions regarding school lunch, contact our Food Service Director Ann Pantoja at 630-3114 and Jane Kelleher for questions related to My School Bucks at 630-3010. Thank you.