GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Students in many Alachua County Public Schools no longer have to rely on their parents to feed them.

Their schools serve free breakfast, lunch, snacks, and supper, courtesy of taxpayers.

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Alachua County Public Schools launched a free supper meal program, also known as after-school meals, at Norton Elementary School as a pilot project, and the results convinced officials to expand the program to 14 more schools this year.

“Snacks and supper meals are provided free of charge to children enrolled in after-school programs at Alachua Elementary, Duval Early Learning Academy, Irby Elementary, Lake Forest Elementary, Metcalfe Elementary, Rawlings Elementary, Shell Elementary, Norton Elementary, Caring and Sharing Learning School, Foster Elementary, Newberry Elementary, Idylwild Elementary and Terwillinger Elementary schools,” the Gainesville Sun reports.

“And students attending these schools also receive free breakfast and lunch.”

“We wanted to work out the details at one site and make sure we had menu items and the right packaging for the supper meal and make sure it worked well with the after-school program and the cafeteria staff,” Alachua County school food director Maria Eunice said.

“We saw the need and decided to add more sites.”

The money for the meals comes from the After-school Meals Program administered by the Florida Department of Health Child Care Food Program, according to the Sun.

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“It’s a rule of the program that the meal must be eaten at school before the end of the after-school program,” Eunice said. “We want to make sure our students are consuming their supper meal.”

Schools involved serve students their suppers in different ways, depending on the schedule at each school and the after-school program used. At schools with normal dismissal hours, students receive a hot meal served in the cafeteria by cafeteria staff, but in schools with extended hours cafeteria workers make the food ahead of time and it’s served to students cold by after-school staff.

“I just think there is a tremendous need,” Melissa Montgomery, manager of the district’s “21st Century” program, told the Sun. “I think this (supper meal) program is the greatest gift. It’s an opportunity for the children to have a meal at a time when we want to impact learning gains.”

“It’s hard to be hungry and expected to perform academically and physically,” she said.

The Alachua County district is among many that have expanded free food programs from students as part of a nationwide push led by first lady Michelle Obama to control what children eat.

New “community eligibility” provisions in federal school programs now allow districts to give away free food to all students – and receive reimbursement from the government – if the majority of students qualify for free or reduced lunches through the National School Lunch Program.

The Palm Beach County School District, for example, also expanded its free student dinner program to 20 schools this year after piloting the program in four schools last year, the Sun-Sentinel reports.

“The meals, which include a meat or meat alternative, grain, fruit, vegetable and milk, are funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fifty thousand meals were served through the county program last year,” according to the news site.

Those meals – as well as school snacks, lunches, breakfasts, vending machine fare and fundraising food sales – must comply with strict regulations on calories, sugar, sodium, fat, grains and other nutritional measures required by the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act.

Federal lawmakers were set to review those regulations this fall amid cries from school food directors that the government restrictions are driving away students while driving up costs and food waste, but opted instead to delay any decisions indefinitely.

More than 1.2 million students have dropped out of the National School Lunch Program since the Obama-inspired rules went into effect in 2012. Experts claim the regulations – particularly the requirement that all students take a fruit or vegetable whether they want it or not – increased food waste by $1 billion annually.