By Susan Koomar
More families are applying for free- and reduced-price lunches as federal officials cite the country’s highest rate of “food insecurity” since 1995.
A sampling of Valley school districts shows more participation in the National School Lunch Program, which serves 31 million children in 100,000 schools nationwide. Applications in Milton Area School District began to rise toward the end of last school year, “which is unusual,” said Sharon Adami, school foods director.
“That signifies that people had a change in status,” she said.
More than half of Milton’s 2,265 students benefit from the program.
That’s an increase of about 5 percent over last year.
Families can apply for the program throughout the school year. “Some are close (to meeting the guidelines) and don’t make it. The guidelines do change every year. We encourage them to apply again,” Adami said.
$300 savings
In Milton, the free lunch program saves parents of an elementary school student about $300 per year. That’s 182 lunches. The discount program cuts a lunch price from $1.50 to 40 cents.
A new report out this week from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows 17 million households —14.6 percent — had trouble putting food on the table last year. That number is the highest since federal officials began surveying food “security” in 1995.
The report shows that one or more children don’t get enough to eat in more than 500,000 families. Families have had to cut the size of meals, skip meals or go more than a day without food.
The Obama Administration’s 2010 budget includes $10 billion in new spending on federal Child Nutrition Programs — including school lunches — over the next 10 years.
About 27 percent of Selinsgrove’s 2,658 students receive free or discounted lunches. For high schoolers, that saves $1.90 per day or $332 per year — “plus the benefit of having a hot meal most days,” said Kevin J. Oswald, director of food service.
Federal officials say school lunch and breakfast programs provide the only healthy food that some children eat all day.
Selinsgrove policy
In Selinsgrove, it’s not unusual for families to submit requests for subsidized lunches throughout the year. Oswald processes the applications by entering information into a software program that shows whether a family is approved. Then he sends a letter to the family. A student can become enrolled in the program in just a few days.
One trend Oswald noted is students moving from reduced-price to free lunches as two-income families shrink to one income.
In general, the overall increase in applications is about 15 percent, said Oswald. The district’s Web site offers extensive lunch program information, including applications that can be printed.
Empty wallets and bare cupboards are likely forcing more status-conscious teens to swallow the lingering stigma of getting a free lunch — even though school officials have taken pains to make sure there’s no way for the student in line behind them to know.
All students — paying or subsidized — get a personal identification number that they enter on a key pad.
“There’s truly no way to know if it’s for a free- or reduced-price lunch,” said Pamela Burrows, food service director of Danville Area School District. “I think sometimes the high school kids shy away from handing in the application (because of the perception).”
About 800 of Danville’s 2,440 students are in the school lunch program. Burrows estimates there has been a 30 percent increase in applications across the district.
Lewisburg participation
In Lewisburg, district officials report that while there has been a modest increase in the number of children receiving free lunch — from 316 in 2008 to 325 this year — it was offset by a decrease in the number receiving reduced lunch — from 74 in 2008 to 54 this year. In all, students receiving free- and reduced-price lunches went from 21 percent of the district’s 1882 students in 2008 to 20 percent of the district’s 1,914 students this year.
Data from the National Center for Children in Poverty shows about 35 percent of children in Pennsylvania live in poverty. Young children are especially likely to live in low-income families, the center says.
Pennsylvania families receiving food stamps increased by about 43,000 from July to August 2009. That brought the number to more than 1.4 million.
