There are some states that feed kids as a matter of routine state budgeting. Those kids get a lunch paid for by taxpayers. A damn fine investment of tax dollars, if you ask me.
Schools provide lunch to ANYONE who shows up needing lunch in my county.
Year round.
Adults can come, they can bring children not old enough to go to school and they can come alone.
They don’t sit in the cafeteria with the kids during the school year BUT they can pick up a free lunch from the kitchen.
Turns out feeding people costs less than hungry people (which is how they keep justifying it to the people who want to take it away) AND it’s the right thing to do.
Here we parents have to pay. But parents that cannot afford it can contact the authorities and get government funds for that without their children (and their friends) to ever learn about that.