AUBURN – The school system is giving away free meals in a pilot program to help hundreds of city kids who go hungry during the summer.

If successful, the program may become permanent next year.

Thirty-three school systems, including Lewiston, SAD 9 in Farmington and SAD 36 in Livermore, offer summer meal programs to underprivileged kids. They operate at 80 sites and usually provide both breakfast and lunch.

Although open to anyone under 18, Auburn’s program is designed to provide food to the more than 1,000 students who qualify for free or reduced-cost meals during the school year. Those children often rely on school meals and sometimes go hungry when school is closed in the summer.

“You assume they’d go to a neighbor’s or to an aunt’s or something. But you don’t know,” said Food Service Director Paula Rouillard.

School officials decided this summer to try a three-week pilot program. From Aug. 2 to Aug. 20, Walton Elementary School will open its doors to any child who wants a meal. Breakfast will be served from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. and lunch will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The school system pays for the food with help from the state.

Officials sent letters to all Walton students and placed fliers around the city advertising the free meals. But on Monday, the first day of the program, no one showed up for breakfast. Few arrived for lunch.

Rouillard hopes eventually to see 30 to 50 kids getting meals at the school every day. She dreams of a program as big as Augusta’s: more than 400 kids all summer long.

“I would love it,” she said. “We hope it’s successful.”