and so many County students rely on free or reduced breakfast and lunch during the academic school year but with the schools closed for the summer how are those students getting access to those meals today the Prince George's school system kicked off its summer meals program ctv's catara Jones is at an elementary school in New Carolton with more I'm outside of Carolton Elementary School which is one of several PGCPS schools that will offer free breakfast and lunch to students in need this summer now all of this is a part of the school district summer meals program which began today and is expected to run until August 9th officials say students will be served breakfast Monday to Friday beginning at 9:00 a.m. until 9:30 a.m. and lunch will be provided from noon to 1:00 p.m. parents must keep in mind that the food must be eaten on school property CTV News spoke to the assistant principal here at Carolton Elementary School about the importance of this program so one of the things that we um have come to notice is that we a lot of our families have food insecurities not knowing you know where their next meal is going to come from and one of the things that we're able to do here especially at Carolton and a lot of our other schools is to provide breakfast and lunch for our students so of course when they're not here for the summer one of the things that we have to be concerned about is are our students being fed are their families you know able have access to food so here having this program gives our families the chance to come and receive at least two meals out of the day during the week at no cost to them um and so I think it's very important that we have programs like that here through the program the school district will also provide free lunch to select parking planning locations and select county run libraries in new Carolton catara Jones CTV News and for more details on the various locations across the county that will offer free summer meals visit the website on your screen