The New York City school system is pushing far beyond the corridors of summer school in delivering free meals, handing out breakfast and lunch for the first time in housing projects, libraries, day camps and church groups to become one of the nation's largest summer soup kitchens.
Education Department officials say they expect to significantly exceed last summer's totals of 4.4 million lunches and 2 million breakfasts. And last summer's figure was already more than twice as many meals as Citymeals-on-Wheels provided for homebound elderly residents in a full year, and well beyond the reach of other big-city public school districts like Los Angeles and Chicago.
''We're really trying to expand our scope for the summer,'' said Eric Goldstein, who became chief executive of student support services four months ago. ''We're trying to get to as many kids as possible. If there are kids there, we want to be there to feed them.''
Groups that track food needs say the $23 million program easily dwarfs others in the city. ''Not only will no single pantry or kitchen serve even in that ballpark, there is a good chance that even the combined 1,200 pantries and kitchens in New York City won't serve much more for children over the summer,'' said Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which supports soup kitchens and food pantries.
One day last week, moments after the blue delivery van arrived at the Sheltering Arms Pool in Harlem, Carol Williams zigzagged through a gathering crowd to snap up two white paper lunch bags for her grandchildren, Devon, 4, and Jordan, 8 months. ''We saw the sign for free lunch, so we came,'' said Ms. Williams, who lives blocks away in the Manhattanville neighborhood. ''We're going to be here every day.'' The meals are intended for ages 18 and under, the schools say.
At the Queens Library in Long Island City, Julissa Jara calculated that she would save $150 each month on chicken, rice and beans by bringing her 9-year-old daughter, Sabina, for a free lunch each day.
''This helps me with my financials,'' Ms. Jara said, while Sabina nibbled on a peach. ''I need the money to buy other things.''
Many other school districts, including Boston, Austin, Tex., Columbus, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky., offer free meals to students during the summer. Last year, the Los Angeles public school district provided about 320,000 lunches and 142,000 breakfasts to the students who participated in summer programs.
But New York City has gone further. What was once a program restricted to summer schools, and years ago expanded to parks and pools, is now a broad effort to find children where they hang out, in church groups and at libraries, community organizations, housing projects and playgrounds.
Mr. Goldstein, who oversees the program, said the primary purpose was to provide proper nutrition to as many children in the city as possible. ''First and foremost, it's really an anti-hunger thing, with a really serious nutritional background to it,'' he said. ''Academic performance is tangential to this.''
The food is being publicized with yellow subway advertisements that announce the free meals in both English and Spanish.
The sheer logistics are impressive. It takes more than 7,800 employees and 99 school kitchens to prepare the meals, and 84 trucks to deliver them. This year, the city expects to increase the number of locations where food is served to 1,166, from 966 last summer.
Most of the costs are reimbursed by the federal government under the Summer Food Service Program: $1.66 for breakfast and $2.91 for lunch. The city contributes $5 million, according to Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Education Department.
The Food Research and Action Center, an advocacy group in Washington, has lobbied school districts to take advantage of the program, arguing that the millions of children who receive free meals during the school year are left stranded during the summer.
According to a recent study conducted by the group, only one in five of the children who participate in a school free lunch program receives a free meal during the summer. ''Summer is a really difficult time for low-income families,'' said Crystal FitzSimons, a senior policy analyst for after-school and summer programs.
It has been nearly 100 years since a New York City public school served its first lunch -- a hearty plate of hot pasta with three slices of bread -- in a Little Italy elementary school in 1909, for a cost of 3 cents. (Fruit and cocoa cost an extra penny or two.)
Then, it was a fledgling experiment designed to help children whose parents were too poor to provide them an adequate meal during the lunch hour, when most schools emptied and children walked home for a noon meal.
And a controversial experiment, too: an earlier proposal for discounted school meals was rejected by the Board of Education in June 1906, after one member argued strenuously that serving lunch would make the board ''a wholesale caterer'' and cause ''scandal in the public schools.''
Today, many schoolchildren in New York are still lacking basic nutrition, a fact that city officials say they want to correct. The school system has hired Jorge Leon Collazo as the first executive chef of the New York City public schools, and he has tried out a healthier, low-fat menu, with items like turkey burgers and Swiss chard.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made nutrition a major issue, from the city's recent trans-fat ban to a program to encourage bodegas in low-income areas to offer healthier products like low-fat milk and fresh vegetables.
In 2005, he announced that the public schools would offer free breakfast to all children, regardless of their families' income level, in the hope that the stigma attached to the meals would dissipate. And last year New York City -- the nation's largest school district -- decided to replace whole milk with low-fat milk.
Many of the families who are showing up for the free food said, with some relief, that the difference in what they can get their children to eat at home and what the children receive at school is stark.
Lunches provided by the Education Department might include a ham and cheese wrap with lettuce and tomato; a stew made of zucchini, corn, tomato and basil; or coleslaw and an assortment of fresh fruit. Breakfasts are often made up of mini sweet-potato pancakes with syrup; strips of turkey bacon; or an orange-cranberry muffin and fruit juice. Whole milk is banned. Chocolate milk is skim only.
While eating a free meal at the Queens Library last week, Ayana Haynes, 15, said her typical lunch was simple, to say the least. ''It's usually last night's dinner,'' she said.
One mother, Karticka Kirby, was more hesitant to confess what she usually feeds her 4-year-old, Jaida. ''I'm a sucker,'' she said ruefully. ''McDonald's.''