Some schools across Ventura County offer free breakfast and lunch to all students
No child should go hungry; that’s the simple idea behind a program implemented in schools across Ventura County that open up free breakfast and lunch to every student on campus — no special form required.
Schools in Santa Paula, Fillmore, Hueneme, Oxnard and Ventura will offer the meals to all students this year under a program designed to help students in low-income communities.
The Community Eligibility Provision provides school nutrition programs an alternative method for claiming student meals in high poverty areas. Essentially, the provision is a way to reduce paperwork and other administrative burdens at the local level by simplifying procedures to get students the meals they need.
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A school must meet a certain percentage of its population that qualifies for free or reduced-price meals to apply for and open up the free meals to the campus.
“It’s a relatively new program utilizing data from the state and county that identifies families in your community that receive or benefit from state or local level aid,” said Suzanne Lugotoff, director of child nutrition in the Oxnard School District. “The Community Eligibility Provision is an avenue to help families who don’t have the resources to provide their families with nutritionally sound meals daily. The scientific data strongly promotes good nutrition is integral for students success.”
In the Santa Paula, Hueneme, Fillmore, Oxnard Union High School and Oxnard school districts, those criteria apply to nearly all or all of their school sites. In the Ventura Unified School District, it’s available at five schools — E.P. Foster, Montalvo, Sheridan Way, Will Rogers and Pacific High School. Some districts have been utilizing this provision for a while, but for the Oxnard schools, this is the first year.
That doesn’t mean every student enrolled at those campuses is utilizing the free meals — but it does open the meals to them. Districts and schools hope it removes the stigma that’s long been associated with getting free or reduced-price lunch at school and increases the number of students accessing the meals.
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The California Department of Education highly encourages participation in the provision for a school or group of schools at which more than 40 percent of their population qualifies to receive a meal at no cost through direct certification, including students who are homeless, runaways, migrants, foster, children enrolled in a federally funded Head Start program and non-applicant students approved by the district.
No application necessary
The Oxnard School District saw an increase at its middle schools in the number of students who accessed meals in just the first couple days students were back from summer break.
“Yes, kids are getting fed, but the long-range goal is that they aren’t thinking about where they are getting their next meal from,” Lugotoff said.
Now, under the new provision, families in these areas don’t need to fill out a meal application and the school’s front office doesn’t have to process hundreds of applications.
The districts are reimbursed with federal dollars under the Community Eligibility Provision.
“First and foremost, powerful schools equal powerful communities,” said Karen Sher, a trustee in the Oxnard Union High School District and a middle school teacher in Oxnard. “We want a powerful future for every single student and also for our community.”
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Sher said as a teacher, she’s seen food insecurity “a lot” over the years.
“I know myself and other teachers have fed students over the years,” Sher said. “In those circumstances, those kids don’t have an equal playing field with their peers. ... I can’t wait to see it in action. This way, no one is singled out because they have a special card.
“There’s no shame in eating, which I think there has been for a long time,” Sher said. “Powerful things will happen when students are fed and feel safe, and then they can learn. We talk a lot about safety and security, and food security is part of that.”