Free lunch program prospers at Oregon school district

UMATILLA, Ore. — Students in Umatilla are eating more hot meals than ever thanks to the Umatilla School District’s decision to offer free lunch to every student this year.

Rikkilynn Larsen, Umatilla’s child nutrition director, said the district is serving an average of 1,100 hot lunches a day in a district of about 1,300 students.

“Most of them have been taking advantage of it,” she said. “We still have a few bringing lunches from home but not many.”

The district also offers free breakfast in the mornings. It gets reimbursed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for meals served in both programs.

Larsen said the school served 19,900 lunches last month, an extra 2,700 lunches compared to January 2013.

“Every month we’ve just seen participation go up and up,” she said.

Kevin Concannon, the USDA’s undersecretary of food, nutrition and consumer services, said Umatilla is a good example of a district where the department’s new Community Eligibility Program is working how it should.

The CEP program allows high-poverty districts to forgo the high volumes of paperwork and staff time needed to keep track of income-based free and reduced lunch programs in favor of offering free meals to every student.

The USDA reimburses the school district $3 per meal served, and each meal costs the district about $1.70. The rest is used to cover overhead expenses.

Some people see the program as a middle class entitlement, but Concannon said many families in those high-poverty districts made just barely enough money not to qualify for free or reduced lunch but still struggled to make ends meet.

“The rationale behind that is to simplify the administrative process for school staff and to feed those students,” he said.

Concannon said CEP schools across the country are reporting fewer absent or late students and fewer trips to the nurse’s office with a headache or stomachache.