KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – Every night, more than 15 million kids crawl in bed with empty stomachs in the United States.

Summer meal programs might not ever slow that number, but most parents would agree “every little bit helps.”

During the last month and a half, Clay County Schools have followed a 10-year record of offering free breakfasts and lunches to children under the age of 18.

“There’s really a need – 41 percent of the students being free, we look at what the individual schools are for free and reduced,” said Susan Glover, nutrition director for the Clay County School District. “When you see those numbers, you know those children are dependent on those meals, so to be able to extend those services and be able to provide those meals during the school year is equally important. If they need it during the school year, they need it during the summer as well.”

The program aims to fill the nutritional gap between school-age years where kids run the risk of going to sleep malnourished. Currently, the district offers the program at nine of its 41 schools.

“We’ve been coming probably for three years, four years, probably more,” said Adina Tomlinson, a Melrose resident. “It’s necessary because there’s a lot of people that struggle with the food. Kids, they will literally eat you out of house and home, especially over the summer. Food is expensive, you can get fresh fruits and vegetables, apples and it’s free. For adults it’s a $1.50, you can’t beat that.”

Tomlinson and her daughter Mia previously went to the program at Keystone Heights Elementary before she said the district moved it to Keystone Heights Junior-Senior High.

Tomlinson has rheumatoid arthritis and lives off disability along with her daughter’s salary. She said it’s hard to give kids the nutrition they need over the summers and the breakfast the schools provide are not only convenient, but nutritious as well.

Nearly half of the students at Keystone Heights High School receive free or reduced lunch, above the district average of 42 percent free lunch and five percent reduced lunch.

Because free and reduced lunch is based on parental income, Glover said a good indication on pockets of poverty in a community are those places where the percentages of free and reduced lunch are higher.

Glover said the school district examines poverty pockets such as the ones at Wilkinson Elementary, Grove Park Elementary and Keystone Heights High School to determine where to place summer meal programs where children both have the need and the necessity for them.

By comparison, Fleming Island High School’s percentage of free lunch is only 17 percent, so a disparity exists in the county. Glover said identifying these pockets is a good way to determine the location of the need.

“We also look at where children can also walk to the location we find that we have a higher participation in communities where kids can walk, ride their bike, where they have means of transportation to get to the location,” Glover said.

She said the program has seen great success in Charles E. Bennett Elementary in Green Cove Springs because it is in the middle of a neighborhood.

When there’s locations where the need is there but the means to get to the meal program aren’t, the school system rolls out its mobile food bus and delivers hot meals straight to Ronnie Van Zant Park in Lake Asbury.

Likewise, kids eat for free in this program and parents eat for $1.50.