Southern to Offer Free Lunches and Free Breakfast Pre-K-8

RACINE, OHIO-A goal of the Southern Local Board of Education and Southern Superintendent Tony Deem came to fruition with the official stamp approval at Wednesday night’s board meeting. “Free Lunches for all students Pre-K to 8” for the next four years became reality with Southern qualifying for the Community Eligibility Provision or CEP.

Community Eligibility is a provision that helps schools and districts in high poverty communities meet eligibility to serve no-cost lunches and breakfasts to all their students. Interested schools and districts must apply for Community Eligibility through the Ohio Department of Education, Office for Child Nutrition.

“What this means is that all students in Southern Elementary will receive free lunches regardless of their economic status,” said superintendent Deem. “What it also means is that no elementary parents will have to fill out the Free and Reduced lunch forms through the 8th grade. All Southern High School students will receive lunch and make payments as they have done in the past. The grant is for the elementary only.”

Southern High School students will fill out lunch forms as they have in the past to receive a free lunch, a reduced lunch rate, or with non-qualifying families paying the full lunch price.

Deem explained, “The CEP does not include the high school, because the high school numbers of direct certification did not meet the grant requirements. This will be a question many of our high school parents will ask and that is the reason, “free for all” does not extend to the high school. We would certainly do it if we had the numbers.”

“We hope that more kids will take advantage of this unique situation,” said newly hired Food Service Director Scott Wolfe. “The more kids that eat, the more the district is reimbursed. We hope this frees up some money for families and students, and additionally, we hope that students will take advantage of purchasing “a la carte” items.”

With Deem’s input, Wolfe and outgoing Food Service Director and EMIS Coordinator Tim Thoren crunched the numbers and found that going with the CEP would be viable for Southern Local and also found that Southern Elementary did indeed qualify.

A La Carte items such as an extra sandwich, a salad, fruit, or nutritious snacks will still be available, but will have to be purchased. Only the lunch, which includes free milk, will be free.

School eligibility is based on the number of students who meet the “identified” definition: Certified free using methods other than a paper Free and Reduced Meal application. These include students who are: Directly certified for free meals on the basis of their participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Ohio Works First (OWF) and the extension of benefits to students within the same household. Homeless, Runaway, Migrant, Head Start, or Foster children with court papers.

Although that criteria is the qualifying guide to receive CEP funding, ‘every child eats free’ regardless of income.

Many schools qualify for CEP, but the decision to go with CEP generally lies with whether or not the district will lose money, break even, or make a minimal trend toward being in the black. For Southern, it was the latter. Wolfe explained, “We are locked in for the next four years. Our numbers can increase, thus our percentage of reimbursement could increase, but it can’t be reduced. With the 1.6 mulitiplying factor we will be locked in at 71.28% reimbursement. Based on last year’s numbers for a typical month, the district would see an increase of around $1,600 a month per month in the food service program.”

“We hope that more kids will eat lunch,” said Wolfe. “The more that eat, the more the program is beneficial to the district. More importantly, we know that healthy kids and kids that are not hungry learn better. We urge all kids to eat every day and we encourage all parents to persuade their children to eat a healthy school lunch and a school breakfast.”

The evidence is mounting that healthy kids are better learners. Schools play an important role in shaping our children’s health and wellness. The Healthy Kids website notes that improved nutrition and increasing physical activity at school can create an environment that supports our children’s readiness to learn.

Research shows that regular access to better nutrition — starting with breakfast — coupled with increased opportunities for physical activity helps students reach their potential throughout the school day and throughout the school year. Research shows that this leads to better performance in the classroom, at testing time, and beyond.

What the 71.28% means is that Southern will receive remimbursement for 71.28% of its meals at $2.95 per meal and the remaining perecentage or 28.72 percent at 30 cents per meal. The district will still qualify for other Nutritional Programs as well.

Deem had explored the CEP closely over the past few months and with the information he gathered, found provisions not previously explored to meet the CEP criteria.

“We really wanted to get this for our families,” said Deem. “We think this offers our clients, the families and students that we serve, a great opporunity.”

“I gave Mr. Wolfe the information and had him and Mr. Thoren go to work. Working closely with the ODE consultants, they found that Southern did qualify. Not only that we qualified and the worksheet that ODE provides lit up green. Many schools qualify but go in the red, so CEP is not for them. It works for us at the elementary and that was a great thing.”

Deem reiterated that at this time the numbers did not work for Southern with the demographics at the high school.

“I had the knowledge of working with grants, and Tim (Thoren) through EMIS had the numbers,” said Scott Wolfe. “We just all put our heads together and spent a lot of time researching the guidelines. Having the Pre-School in-house and identifying eligible households through direct certification takes some time, but our numbers were there at the end. It’s a win-win for Southern Local and Southern students.”

The practice of directly certifying students is not new to the NSLP (National School Lunch Program), as direct certification data previously has been used in conjunction with household applications to determine the amount of Federal reimbursement a school receives. Under Community Eligibility, however, a primary difference is that a Community Eligibility school uses only direct certification data on identified students and no longer collects any household applications to determine the amount of Federal reimbursement.

Implementation of Community Eligibility began in the 2011–2012 school year in eligible local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools in Illinois, Kentucky, and Michigan. In the 2012–2013 school year, the USDA added the District of Columbia, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia to implement Community Eligibility. Community Eligibility became available in Maryland, Massachusetts, Florida, and Georgia in the 2013–2014 school year and will be available in all States in the 2014–2015 school year.

High School lunch prices at Southern were recently posted at $2.45 and teacher/adult lunches set at $3.25. A la carte items vary per item.