Loyal School District contemplates joining CEP lunch program

By Valorie Brecht The Loyal School District is contemplating joining the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, a federal program that allows schools with a high percentage of low-income families to provide free meals to all students. However, if the district were to join, it would not be reimbursed at a high enough rate to fully cover the cost of the program, leaving a $70,000 deficit.

At their Jan. 29 meeting, school board members discussed the merits and pitfalls of such a program, the main benefit being removing the burden of having to pay for meals from families, but the main drawback being that taxpayers would ultimately have to foot the $70,000 bill (minus donations to the program).

School districts can enroll in the CEP program if at least 25% of students are directly certified to receive free lunch. Directly certified means they already qualify for other government programs such as BadgerCare, SNAP, FoodShare, or meet certain qualifications such as being in foster care, a migrant, or runaway.

In Loyal, 35% of students, or 157 of 455 students, qualify for free meals by direct certification. The district also has 40 students receiving free or reduced meals because of income limitations, not through direct certification. These students do not get figured into the direct certification numbers.

For breakfast, under the CEP program, the school would receive $2.28 for those who qualify by direct certification (157), and $0.38 per student for all other students (298). For lunch, the district would receive $4.25 for students who qualify by direct certification (157) and $0.40 for all other students (298). That means that if all students ate breakfast in a day, the school would be reimbursed $357.96 for directly certified students and $113.24 for the rest. If all students ate lunch in a day, it would be reimbursed at $667.25 for directly certified students and $119.20 for the rest. That amounts to a total of $1,257.65 per day the district would receive from the program.

However, the reimbursement would not be enough to cover the cost of the program and the district would be looking at a roughly $70,000 deficit by the end of the year. Even though a district can participate as long as it has at least 25% of students directly certified, it would need about 65% of students to be directly certified in order to break even.

“So we’re looking at us either having to do a donation program and/or pulling (the $70,000) from our Fund 10 (general fund) budget,” said District Administrator Chris Lindner.

“What if we fell below that 35%? Then you wouldn’t qualify for the next year?” asked board member Dave Clintsman.

“No, I think once you’re in, you’re in for five years. Now for us it would be four because we chose not to do it this year,” said Lindner.

Although breakfast and lunch would be free for students, board member Derek Weyer pointed out that the meals would not strictly be “free,” in the sense that the school district would still have to pay up.

“It’s really kind of a play on words. It’s really not free. I mean the reality is we’re just paying for it with the school budget versus the parents of the students paying for it, right? Those that can. So, the whole, ‘Hey, this is free for people’ — well, it’s really not. We’re just getting it from the taxpayers as part of the school budget,” he said.

“Correct,” said Lindner. Loyal is not the only local district to consider this program. As an example, the Greenwood School District participated in the program last school year and ran a roughly $40,000 deficit. The reason their deficit is not as much as Loyal’s is they have fewer students and a higher number of directly certified students (about 42% of students qualify for free or reduced meals). They are trying the program again this year and have been asking families of students who do not qualify for free or reduced meals to make a donation between $200 and $400 to cover the cost of the program, along with reaching out to the community for donations.

“How is that working for Greenwood on the donation side?” asked board member Kirk Haslow.

“Fair,” said Lindner. “So it’s not covering everything?” asked Haslow.

“Not all of it,” replied Lindner. “But we have, what? A third of the year to go yet.”

Weyer asked how many families were currently in the red for their lunch account balance. Lindner estimated five to 10 families were in that situation. He said the rest were “pretty good,” meaning $50 or less in their account, and there were a handful of families that were over $100 in their account. He said by the time school ended last June, all the families were able to get their lunch account balances paid off.

One of the challenges school districts face is although directly certified students automatically qualify for free meals, there are other students that could qualify but don’t because their parents never complete the application. The annual income level for free student meals for a household of four is $40,560 or less per year. For reduced meals, it must be below $57,720.

“I guess the way I would look at it is, I think if the kids got breakfast and lunch, I think our temperament would be a whole lot better in our school because I don’t think they’d be hungry, you know? If they got both. I think that would help us out a lot and I think they’d learn better,” said board president Dennis Roehl.

There is an April 1 deadline for the school to opt in to the program or not. Lindner said he did not intend for the board to make a decision at the January meeting, but would bring it back to future meetings and they’d have to make a decision by the March meeting.

Lindner also extended his appreciation to the food service, saying they did an “awesome job” and parents were very happy with the quality of the food provided, including for example the meal they were served at the recent strategic planning task force meeting.