It's a hectic scene as the 30 or so kids at Calais summer day camp arrive, chasing each other around the gymnasium, bouncing basketballs and grabbing breakfast from a cooler.
"They can pick either cereal or like a baked good, and then they get juice or milk," said day camp director Cadence Braughton.
Braughton said breakfast was added after many of the kids, who arrive as early as 7:30 a.m., complained of being hungry.
"And some of the kids don't have snacks that they bring from home, so the breakfast is a really good filler until they get that lunch," she said.
Free meals are a key support for students during the school year in Maine, but summer vacation can create a void. Summer meal programs, which have bridged some of that gap, are helping to meet demand.
And it's a relief for parents like Sierra Morrison, and her three kids.
"I think it just is one less thing that you have to worry about as a parent," Morrison said. "Coming here and knowing that they're taken care of fully."
Summer meal programs like this are particularly important in a rural state like Maine.
"One in five children in Maine experience food insecurity, which is the highest in New England," said Kirsten Tenney, the Community Engagement Manager with Full Plates Full Potential, a ten-year-old nonprofit that advocates for child nutrition programs in Maine.
Tenney said Washington County has the highest rate of child food insecurity in the state, particularly during the summer months.
"There's a big distance and a big gap in a lot of accessibility issues, just because we are so spread out, and it's such a big county that all the resources aren't just really, they're not as handy here as they are in other places," she said.
The Maine Department of Education administers the funding for these efforts through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's SUN meals program. The DOE said meals were offered by more than 100 sponsor organizations this summer at more than 400 sites. And through July, the department distributed more than $2 million for summer meals.
But as the school year gets underway, districts are seeing threats to federal funding for in-school meals, which only adds to the anxiety around food insecurity in rural Maine.
"I don't really do politics, but things are changing so fast, rapidly I can't keep up with it," said Sue Carter, principal at Calais Elementary School, the site for the district’s summer meal program.
"If it was not funded, we couldn't do it," she said. "Our school budget has been cut, and we certainly don't have funds laying around that we could use."
In addition to feeding the kids at day camp, the school is an open site in the summer, meaning anyone 18 or younger can drop in for breakfast and lunch.
Carter said while the program doesn’t see many drop ins, it’s an important service to offer families.
"So anything that we can take off the plate for our families to help them manage- financially, but also like emotionally, to take a stress off to you know, help in that way is so important," she said.
For the moment, the kids at day camp will focus on playing games, swimming and enjoying their meatball subs in these final days of summer vacation.
