The Panorama School District recently received a donation to help kids get free meals during the summer and address other community needs.

Superintendent Shawn Holloway presented one of three projects that were for consideration at the 10 Squared Plus Men of Guthrie County’s meeting Tuesday night. The charitable group gives a donation of over $10,000 to a local nonprofit or project three times a year, and they voted on Holloway’s proposal to help sustain Panorama’s summer lunch program and support the Panorama Food Pantry and New Opportunities Guthrie County Family Development Center.

Though it was hosted by volunteers in years prior, the Panorama District took over the summer lunch program to provide free lunches to those 18 and younger five days a week at all of the District’s communities: Panora, Bagley, Jamaica, and Linden. The program was funded last year partly by private donations and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Food Service Program. Holloway says this donation will help continue the program for at least two more years, and expand to the City of Bayard, “Bob Rogers is our food service director and he lives in Bayard. So really it was a want of Bob’s to be able to try to do that and his route ends at his house. So for us that made sense to be able to try to do it that way and we’re hopeful that works out.”

10 Squared organizer Barry Monaghan says this donation will exceed $15,000, of which $10,000 is planned to go towards the summer lunch program, and $2,500 will go to the Panorama Food Pantry and New Opportunities pantry for purchases of toiletries and other needed items.