43
City school students may get free lunches this fall
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
It turns out there is such a thing as a free lunch.
All city school students will get a free lunch beginning this fall if the district’s application for a new program is approved.
The Community Eligibility Option provides free reimbursement to districts for all students if the district includes 62.5 percent students who are directly certified as eligible through food stamps. In the city school district, 76 percent of students are directly certified while 93 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunches under federal guidelines.
“That should increase revenue when it comes to the food-service fund,” said Superintendent Connie Hathorn. “The food-service fund always operates in the black, but it’s great that we have a program like this. Now we can feed all of the kids.”
Donna Smaldino, food- services director for the school district, said $15,000 is a conservative estimate of the additional money the district expects to receive in reimbursement through the program. That’s if participation remains the same. If student participation in the lunch program increases, the reimbursement will increase, too.
The district serves 4,200 lunches per day.
Smaldino stressed that the district can only get reimbursed for meals that are served.
“Just because they [students] qualify, doesn’t mean we get reimbursed,” she said. “We actually have to serve a meal to a child to get reimbursement.”
Though the Ohio Department of Education hasn’t notified the district that its application has been approved, Patrick Gallaway, an ODE spokesman, said in an email that his understanding is if a district meets the program criteria, it qualifies.
The program will operate for four years.
Ohio was selected for the initiative by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The District of Columbia, New York and West Virginia also were chosen to participate and Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan were the first states selected to participate last school year.
It’s designed to reduce administrative costs and paperwork and to make it easier for children in low-income areas to receive free meals, according to a news release from ODE.
The Community Eligibility Option was one of the elements of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.