District: Free meal program has been success

Marquez Jackson, principal at Crookshank Elementary, saw a noticeable change at his school two years ago.

With the start of a new program in the district called the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) that provides all students with breakfast and lunch at no cost regardless of income, Jackson said he saw attendance increases along with improvements in student learning and morale.

“The program has been great,” Jackson told The Record on Friday. “It allows students to have access to free breakfast and lunch and not worry about what someone else might think. It levels the playing field for students who come from less fortunate backgrounds. Sadly, there are some kids that where the meals at school are the two only guaranteed meals of the day.”

Jackson said more students showed up early to school to eat breakfast which boosted attendance numbers and those who ate the meals were able to better focus on school work without the added worry of being hungry.

The federally funded program will enter its third year in St. Johns County when the 2019-20 school year starts on Aug. 12.

After starting with four schools two years ago, the program expanded to 10 of the 40 district schools last school year including Crookshank Elementary, Gamble Rogers Middle School, Otis A. Mason Elementary School, R. J. Murray Middle School, Osceola Elementary School, Sebastian Middle School, South Woods Elementary School, St. Johns Technical, Transition School at the Evelyn B. Hamblen Center and The Webster School. All are Title I schools, which include a large percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged.

The school district received a reimbursement from the federal government for $3.32 per lunch and a little over $2 for each breakfast, according to Sean Prevatt, the district’s Director for Food and Nutrition Services. In total, the district provided 335,374 breakfasts and 728,377 lunches to students last school year, he said.

“From an operational standpoint it’s really nice. Any student that shows up has access to food and we don't have to worry about money exchanges. Financially it’s good because you can plan and project because the numbers stay very consistent,” Prevatt said.

At the end of last school year, there was still over $33,000 of uncollected debt at other district schools related to school lunches. Prevatt said that number includes students still attending school and expects the number to go down as time goes on. There is also about $4,300 in outstanding lunch debt for students who are no longer in the school system, he said.

“[The debt] is really insignificant when it comes to operation. It’s really more of a social issue than it is a financial issue,” Prevatt said. “[CEP] does prevent lunch shaming. It takes away any of the debt issue that students could incur.”

The topic of “lunch shaming” has come into focus nationally following a high-profile case surrounding a Pennsylvania school district that threatened to put a group of students in foster care because their parents hadn’t paid their school lunch debts. A 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that in the 2011-12 school year, nearly half of all school districts allowed lunch shaming in one form or another to try to push parents to pay their children’s lunch bills, according to a report from The Washington Post. Now a number of states have passed laws to stop it including California, Hawaii, Oregon and Texas.

St. Johns County said it avoids such practices and, unlike some school districts that chose to give alternative meals to students in debt, St. Johns County offers the same meals to each student.

“Students at Southwoods have the same menu as Durbin Creek Elementary. Some districts do alternative meals but we don't do that because we just don’t feel like that’s appropriate,” Prevatt said.

Prevatt said parents are informed of any school lunch debt that may be outstanding, but the students are not involved.

But the CEP program could be changing soon if changes proposed by the Trump administration last month take hold. The administration has proposed changes in the rules to determine who qualifies for food stamps through SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) which, according to estimates, would result in 3.1 million Americans losing benefits. Critics have said that could result in more than 500,000 children no longer being automatically eligible for free school meals. Under current law, children whose families receive food stamps are automatically enrolled in a federal program that offers free breakfast and lunch at school.

The proposed change could also reshape which schools qualify for the CEP program.

Even if they proposed changes aren't implemented, Prevatt said the program, which is set for four years, might disappear from the schools that currently qualify due to the shifting demographics in the district. But, Prevatt said, even if a school loses its CEP status, students can still qualify for free meals individually.

According to data by Feeding America there are over 8,200 food insecure children in St. Johns County, which is defined as being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food.

Jackson said he would like to see the program expand to more schools in the district, even if they are not Title I schools.

"Even though someone lives in a nice neighborhood, that doesn’t mean family doesn't go through some kind of hardship. Could having free lunch and breakfast help everywhere? For sure. I think it could help all communities."