HANCOCK — Superintendent Steve Patchin told the board at Monday’s regular meeting that schools have been mandated to distribute food to their students.

The way the program is set up, he said, the school sent out a sign-up list to all the parents on Monday, allowing them to opt into the program. Parents who opt in will receive seven days’ worth of food per week, for every student in their household, up to 18 years of age.

Patchin said when they fill out the form, the school will not verify the information, saying: “This is what you need, this is what we send.”

While some schools are trying to make full meals for the students, most are dealing in bulk, which is what Hancock Schools is doing, because of the sheer volume the school is working with, Patchin said.

“The pick-up is going to be every Wednesday,” he told the board. “We’re giving them the food in bulk, so it won’t be a cooked meal, it will be everything to make that meal.”

Families within the school district may or may not have children enrolled in school-of-choice, but those families can also sign up to receive food through the Hancock Schools, said Patchin, even if they have students enrolled in another school. Intermediate School District students who received classes in Hancock Schools can also receive food.

The program will continue until further notice, said Patchin, so parents who did not sign up this week can do so, and be added to the list for the next food distribution.

Patchin said that all the districts he knew of were participating in the program, and conducting it in a similar matter.

“This is all funded, including the option to have it delivered,” Patchin said. “The funding coming will also pay for buses to deliver it. This is pretty big. We’re expecting more of these types of programs to flow, especially from the (federal level).”

The funding for the program came in the form of a federal waiver to the Michigan Department of Education. The meals are available to all children at no cost. Under the waiver, they would not be required to be served in a group setting.

The waiver assists Michigan school food service staff to make sure kids receive meals during the state-wide school closures announced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Whitmer ordered all K-12 schools in Michigan closed for three weeks last Monday, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published its recommendations on school closures based on available science, reports from other countries, and consultations with school health experts. The CDC’s findings were that available modeling data indicate that early, short to medium closures (4-8 weeks) as part of a larger community mitigation strategy, do not impact the “epi curve of COVID-19” or available health care measures, such as hospitalizations. There may be some impact of much longer closures, 8-20 weeks, but the modeling also shows that other mitigation efforts have more impact on both spread of disease and health care measures. Those mitigation efforts include hand-washing, and home isolation, or the political correctness term, “social distancing.” In other countries, the CDC states, those places who closed school, such as Hong Kong, had no more success in reducing spread than those, like Singapore, that did not.