SAUGUS — This fall, Healthy Students – Healthy Saugus is bridging an important gap for the district’s students.
With the Healey/Driscoll administration implementing free lunch for all students during the week, no student is left wondering where their next meal will come from during the school day. Coupled with the services HS2 provides — where students are sent home with a bag full of food for the weekend — every student in Saugus’ public school system now has access to a meal seven days a week — for no cost.
School Committee member Dennis Gould started the program in 2018, but eventually stepped away upon his election to the committee, with the ethics commission determining he could not fulfill both roles. But, as he watches from afar, Gould is blown away by the program’s growth — having seen the number of students helped rise from 50 to 60 to more than 120 last school year.
When Gould was elected to the committee, he was in search of someone to take over HS2 in his stead — a process that eventually led to Julie Cicolini taking over the program in early 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. For her work guiding the organization through the pandemic that year, Cicolini, and Jeannie Meredith, a former School Committee member who works in Town Manger Scott Crabtree’s office, were named Essex Media Group’s persons of the year for Saugus in 2020.
Now, with the uncertainty of the COVID years in the rearview mirror, it’s full steam ahead for the program.
Cicolini said one of the most critical functions HS2 is able to provide is to plug that potential hole for students on the weekends, and in doing so, provide relief for families who may be having trouble juggling the cost of food with other expenses.
“Parents or guardians who might be struggling with the cost of food today as costs have been rising or they’re wondering, ‘Am I buying food this week? Or am I paying my mortgage? Or am I paying my rent? Or am I paying my gas bill?’ We’re able to help them bridge that gap,” she said.
And, ensuring students have access to food can boost their performance in the classroom.
“We hope that they will be healthy and have great behavior and good achievement when they’re in school,” Cicolini said. “They don’t have to worry about sitting in class being hungry and tired because they haven’t eaten and they have no energy.”
So far this fall, roughly 65 students have signed up for the program, though Cicolini said she expects that number to rise as fall turns to winter and the holiday season approaches.
Healthy Students – Healthy Saugus is powered by volunteers.
Each Thursday, a group comes together in the basement of the MEG building to bag each of the meals being sent home with students the next day. Bags are then carried out to the vehicles of three delivery drivers, who shepherd the meals to each of the town’s three school buildings.
The only time during the school year when the program doesn’t operate is during holidays and school breaks, Cicolini said. But, to combat the time off, the organization takes care to “load up the food” for their bags the week prior to help carry students through those breaks.
And, there is no income verification or qualification process to get help through HS2 — all families need to do is opt in and fill out a Google Form.
