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Confusion over school lunch follows end of two-year universal free meal program

Riley Board
/
KDLL

The end of a two-year federal free school lunch program is causing confusion and stress among students and parents at Kenai Peninsula Borough District Schools.

Free and reduced lunch is still available at district schools, but the transition back from the universal free lunch program hasn’t been without its challenges. District officials are reminding parents that free and reduced-fee lunches are still available to families with certain income restraints.

Before the pandemic, students who fell into certain income categories were eligible for free and reduced lunch at school. But over the past two years, COVID-19 relief money from the United States Department of Agriculture has supported free lunches for all students at KPBSD schools.

According to Kevin Lyon, director of planning and operations for the district, that means schools haven’t collected any money from students for food in two years.

He explained while the program was running, the district provided somewhere around 6,000 free meals a day. He said at some schools, that meant every single student was taking advantage of the free lunches.

“We were serving a lot of kids,” he said. “We served a lot of meals.”

Over the summer, that program came to an end. At that time, KPBSD announced the end of the universal free lunch program and encouraged parents to fill out an online application to request free or reduced lunch if they qualified for it.

But word didn’t make it to everyone in the district. Recent posts on Facebook falsely suggested it was the district that had removed the free lunch program — not the federal government — and community members chided the district for their failure to support the students.

Nathan Erfurth, president of the local teachers’ union, said he first heard about the issue when he got an email from his kindergartener’s school.

“The school sent out an email notifying parents that ‘60 students at the school were not prepared to have lunch today’. ‘Therefore you need to get your pay accounts funded, you need to make sure you’ve got your free and reduced lunch paperwork completed, that takes time to process, or else kids will have to be denied lunch,’” he said. “I thought that was quite a large number of students.”

After several schools sent out similar announcements, Erfurth said he saw pushback and confusion from parents and school employees on social media.

He said the miscommunication comes down to a couple of key factors.

One was confusion over the application timeline for the lunch program.

“Typically, parents who are on the free and reduced lunch program have roughly a month between when school starts and when their last year’s application expires. So that means that there’s a couple of weeks when they’ve got their kids in school, and the school can remind them ‘You’ve got to fill out this form,” Erfurth said.

However, because the universal free lunch program has been in place for the past two years, he said, no such rollover grace period existed.

Erfurth said the second issue is that the district has moved to a new, entirely online application for free and reduced lunch. He said in past years, that application went home in an introductory packet to parents at the beginning of the year. This year, the form was not included in the packet.

According to the KPBSD website, all applications are being accepted this year through a new online portal. The site does say that if someone does not have access to the internet, each school will have a few paper applications on hand.

Erfurth said he was struck by the fact that students are only allowed to charge — that is, incur debt for lunch — for up to two days of meals. On top of that, students are only allowed to do these charges if their parents have filled out an opt-in form in advance. Students cannot charge any further meals until the amount is paid back.

“We know food is at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy. Everyone has to be able to eat to do anything beyond that. You have to be able to have a calm stomach if you’re gonna learn,” he said. “That’s a fundamental function that our schools serve these days.”

Lyon said the charge policy exists so parents know how many meals their students are getting from the school. The district also offers an option where parents can be notified if their student’s balance drops to a certain low level.

“We’ve got all kinds of things we do to make sure the kids are fed, cause if the kids are fed they do better in school. But we also want to work with parents so that they're able to be in charge of what their child does. We don’t want them charging up a bill that mom and dad didn’t even know about,” he said.

Lyon explains that, to allow parents to readjust to the old school nutrition system, the credit option has been extended until Sept. 6. He said that the schools have sent out notices to parents after many students showed up to school on the first day expecting lunch to be free. The free and reduced lunch application can be filled out at any point in the year.

This year, for students approved for free and reduced meals, breakfast will be free, and lunch will be $0.40. For those not approved, breakfast is $2.50, and lunch is $3.50 for K-6 students and $6 for those in 7th grade and up.

Riley Board is a Report For America participant and senior reporter at KDLL covering rural communities on the central Kenai Peninsula.
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