October 13, 2020

Dear Westwood Families,

We are pleased to announce that, through a federal grant from the USDA, ALL Westwood Public Schools students can receive FREE LUNCHES from Tuesday, October 13 until at least December 31, 2020. In fact, we have recently learned that this opportunity will likely continue until the end of the school year or June 30, 2021. This is great news. In the coming weeks, we will receive more details from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education about this extension to the federal grant for free lunch.

How does this opportunity work?

One free lunch is granted per student, per day. A lunch meal consists of a main entrée, side vegetable or fruit, along with an 8 oz milk.  Menus are available for viewing or printing here.

Note: Purchases of milk à la carte are not currently free, because they are not part of the federal free lunch grant.

To take advantage of this opportunity, families need to pre-order lunches through LINQ, our online ordering system. When you are filling the LINQ shopping cart and submitting your order, you will find that the price of the meal in the ordering system is now $0.

Free lunch will be served during the day at elementary schools. Students’ pre-ordered lunch will be delivered to them.

For middle and high school students, free take-away meals will be available at dismissal. If the order is submitted in advance on LINQ, these take-away meals can be picked up by middle and high school students at the end of the school day.

What happens when the federal grant expires?

At this time, it appears that the federal grant from the USDA will last for the duration of the school year, or until June 30, 2021. However, if the federal grant funds run out, the normal school lunch program will resume. At that point, the lunch program will reinstate its normal pricing. In order to continue accessing free or reduced lunch after the conclusion of this program, families can always depend on Free and Reduced Lunch meal applications. Families can submit these applications anytime during the year and the meal application for Free and Reduced lunch will be reviewed for eligibility.

How can fully remote students participate?

For families whose children will be remote for part of the week or the entire week, a free Wednesday meal kit will be available for pickup and can include the components for up to five days of remote meals (Wednesday through the following Tuesday). Meal kits can be pre-ordered on LINQ as well.

The meal kits can be picked up on remote Wednesdays only:  

• Elementary Student Meal Kit:  Downey School rear entrance, 10AM - 1PM
• High School and Middle School Student Meal Kit:  WHS Cafeteria Snack Window - please enter through the Auditorium entrance and walk straight to the Cafeteria, 10AM - 1PM.  Note: The outdoor Flahive Field snack shack will no longer be a pickup location.

Please note: Due to consistently low participation to date, starting Tuesday, October 13 we are no longer providing same-day pickup of lunch meals for students who are remote. Instead, we strongly encourage families to take advantage of Wednesday “meal kits” described above.

What’s the next step?

We are extremely pleased to provide these free meals to our students now and hope that families will participate. Please help us accomplish this task with our limited staff by pre-ordering on LINQ and arriving to pick up your meal kits on Wednesday during the time frames provided.

Families that have questions about school lunch may email food@westwood.k12.ma.us.

If you have not yet done so, please click here to learn the details of online ordering and set up your LINQ online ordering account.

To set up your account you will need your child’s ID number and last name.

Thank you!