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PENDLETON, Ore. (AP) — No student at the Umatilla School District will be charged for lunch anymore.
The school district announced its free lunch program is beginning this year. The district hasn't sent letters out to parents about the new program yet, but school officials are seeing fewer home-made lunches, The East Oregonian reports (http://bit.ly/1wduu0l).
"We're still seeing some kids bringing in a sack lunch, but I do think cold lunches are going to decrease this year," nutrition director Rikkilynn Larsen said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is footing the bill for the free lunches under the Community Eligibility Provision program. Under that program, school districts with more than 40 percent of students automatically qualifying for free lunches can get reimbursed for 1.6 times that number if they offer free lunch to every student.
Larsen said her department already served 3,891 lunches during the first four days of school, compared to 3,662 during the same time period last year. That number would be even higher, she said, but the district's 200 or so preschoolers and kindergarteners are starting a week late this year.
Larsen said she has had plenty of parents thank her for the offering, which saves them approximately $450 per child per year if their income didn't already qualify them for free or reduced lunch.
"I had a staff member who came up and hugged me and said, 'Thank you so much for doing this. I didn't qualify by $25 and was going to have to come up with the money for my three kids this year,'" Larsen said.
Larsen said the program cuts down on a lot of work for the district.
"We're not going to be adding staff to serve the extra lunches," she said. "It ends up evening out because we don't have the same paperwork burden anymore and don't have to try to collect the money and make those phone calls."
She said the district has made the decision not to refuse students lunch if their parents are behind on the bill, resulting in about $11,000 in uncollected lunch money at the end of the last school year.
Some people may see the free lunches as taxpayer money going toward another middle class entitlement. But Larsen said in Umatilla even families who miss the cutoff for free lunch are generally in a position where money is tight. She said that's why the school board and superintendent were 100 percent behind her decision to apply for the Community Eligibility Provision.
"They are really about the families and what we can do in this economy to help them," she said.
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Information from: East Oregonian, http://www.eastoregonian.info
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