North Carolina district sees increased participation from new USDA program

MARION, N.C. — McDowell County Schools Child Nutrition is seeing an increase in breakfast and lunch participation at elementary schools across the district.

Director of Child Nutrition Jon Haynes attributes the growth to the district’s participation in the Community Eligibility Program (CEP), which is a federally-funded program that provides free breakfast and lunch to students.

Earlier in the year, the McDowell County Board of Education voted in favor of being part of CEP at the elementary level during the 2014-15 school year with the option of expanding to both middle schools and the high school if the program proved to be successful.

Numbers from the first week of school are showing that student meal participation is up.

“Our lunch participation through CEP has increased for elementary students by 12.44 percent,” said Haynes. “Across the board at breakfast we’ve seen a growth of 51.67 percent.”

Those increases are more than the 6 percent increase in lunch participation and 21 percent increase in breakfast participation that Haynes told the board were needed for CEP reimbursements to be more beneficial to the district than traditional free and reduced lunch reimbursements.