Students, forget about waiting in that long cafeteria line to swipe your ID and get your food. Parents and guardians, don’t worry anymore about filling out that form to get your student on free or reduced lunch.
Because starting this school year, all Noble Schools students from day one can get free breakfast, lunch and dinner at school every day. No application or ID necessary. This is all part of a federal assistance program that Noble was accepted to called Community Eligibility Provisions (CEP).
“There’s no stigma associated with your food status, there’s no IDs, there’s no long lines.”
– Monica Karis, Director of Dining Services, Noble Schools
“There’s no stigma associated with your food status, there’s no IDs, there’s no long lines.”
This is what Monica Karis, Noble’s Director of Dining Services, says about the CEP program. For five years, she’s been hustling with her team to get Noble accepted to the CEP program. Finally, in December of 2020, Noble was accepted.
What Noble Families Need To Know About This New Program
- Students will receive a free breakfast, lunch and dinner at school
- Students will no longer have to use their school ID to get food
- There is no additional form or application for this program. All students are automatically enrolled
- Adult and Second Meals will be charged at full price
“It’s great to know that we can transition from providing free meals for almost two years to start the school year off with providing free meals,” Karis says.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last March, Noble Schools and their food partners, Chartwells and Aramark, have been providing free meals to families across Chicago. As they wrap up this service in September, they’ll have served well over 1 million free meals. The meals were all served through their on-campus meal sites and partnerships with local community organizations.
Since starting their Free Community Meals program in March 2020, Noble Schools and their partners have served over 1 million free meals to the Chicago community.
Now, with the CEP program, Karis is happy Noble can continue to provide free meals to its students.
“I would have hated to have to go back and be like ‘Okay now, a certain percent of you have to start paying for food,’ so I’m really happy we’re able to do that for our students.”
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Big thank you to Chartwells, Aramark and all our community partners who helped support Noble’s Community Meals program:
Black Bread Company
Chi Fresh Kitchen
Children’s Place
Crazy Bird
Family Centered Education
Frosted Layers Cakery
Gad’s Hill
Hangrys
Healthy Hood Chicago
Helen & Joe Acevedo Scholarship Foundation
Janiks Cafe
Rica Arepas
West Humboldt Park Development Council
Youth for a Better Future
10th District Police Department
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For more information and announcements on free meals and dining services at Noble Schools, head to https://nobleschools.org/meals/
For more on how Noble students and staff are returning back to schools in-person safely, visit https://nobleschools.org/coronavirus/
To learn more about the federal CEP program, visit https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/community-eligibility-provision
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