Students aren’t eating the healthier, free meals

NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Free lunches are available to all students in the Wilkes County schools for the first time this year, but fewer are taking advantage of this than expected due to dissatisfaction with food served under new federal nutrition standards.

As a result, the school system’s child nutrition program is losing money, said Wilkes School Finance Director Seth Prevette during the Wilkes Board of Education meeting Monday night.

“As long as students eat the meals, we get reimbursed from the federal government,” said Prevette. Fewer students than anticipated are eating the meals because they don’t like what is served under new federal healthy food standards, he said.

Some other school systems nationwide have had similar experiences since the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 overhauled school nutrition requirements. Some school systems dropped out of the federal school lunch program because their reimbursements weren’t enough to offset losses from students bringing food from home or simply not eating.

The new standards require a greater variety of fruits and vegetables, whole-wheat grains, no artificial sweeteners and similar food. They limit burgers, traditional French fries and certain other a la carte items that were popular in the past.

“The free meals have caused participation rates to rise compared to previous years, which is great,” said Prevette. “However, we expected the participation rates to rise more than they have because the cost for children is free.”

Prevette said that with 100 percent participation, federal reimbursements generate a profit for the child nutrition department. The school system’s eligibility for the free lunch program is based on economic factors.

“If we buy food to feed all the students, but not all of them partake, then the profitability suffers because we don’t get reimbursed for the food that was bought and prepared but not taken by the students,” he said.

The participation rate needed to make the system profitable through federal reimbursements work is very challenging, Prevette added.

“What we’re seeing at this point in the year is that participation in the (child nutrition) program is dropping slightly. That is causing us to not receive as much of a reimbursement from the federal government as we were anticipating.”

Prevette said Dr. Vickie Hugger, Wilkes schools child nutrition director, is doing the best she can with new nutrition mandates, but many food items served in the past aren’t available under new nutrition standards.

He said Mrs. Hugger tried to boost revenue this year by tweaking supplemental food sales, which brought the Wilkes schools about $1 million in revenue last year. Many popular supplemental food items also can no longer be sold in the Wilkes schools due to stricter nutrition standards.