A Florida school district is cracking down on its free school meal program after it caught parents selling the food online.
Staff at Hillsborough County Public Schools have now installed a tracker on the meals to ensure parents are not cheating the system, WFLA reported.
Several sites ran out of food at the meal pickup last week, prompting officials to get to the bottom of the shortage.
District officials found parents selling the food online and parents who had the food stockpiled in their cars.
“We had some individuals who made undesired behaviors last week, but we stand ready with new organizational controls you know hats off to operations and the IT department for helping us with this process,” said Hillsborough Schools Superintendent Addison Davis.
Parents now have to provide their child’s name and school ID number before they can pick up food, and they are not allowed to pick up more than once.
“We want to make sure that children actually get the nutrition they need to be successful during the e-learning process,” said Davis.
In other parts of the country, many school cafeterias distributing free school meals are struggling to keep up with demand, as many adults often walk in as hungry as the kids. However, the federal school meals program will not reimburse districts for serving meals to adults in need.