Fulton Eyes Free School Meals Program

by Mikayla Kemp | February 26, 2018 8:35 pm

FULTON, NY – Fulton City School District officials are eyeing a possibility to enter a program allowing free breakfast and lunches for all students in the district.

The Community Eligibility Provision under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 allows high-poverty schools or entire districts to offer all students breakfast and lunch for no charge due to funding from state and federal sources.

While one neighboring Oswego County school district, Hannibal CSD, applied for and implemented the program in the 2017-2018 school year, Superintendent of Fulton schools Brian Pulvino said FCSD waited to observe the outcome of putting the program into effect.

“It almost sounded too good to be true,” Pulvino said. “So, we decided to take a year to better understand it and watch Hannibal’s venture with the program.”

FCSD Food Service Director Terry Warwick said, “Hannibal’s forecast went above what was expected.”

Superintendent of Schools for Hannibal Central School District Christopher Staats confirmed the program’s success in the first year of implementation thus far.

“We have seen a major increase in the number of students participating in breakfast and lunch,” Staats said, noting that an increase of 5,000 breakfast and lunches had been administered in the first semester under the Community Eligibility Provision.

The results had surpassed his expectations. “We had hypothesised more students would participate, but when we looked at the numbers we were shocked by truly how many more we were seeing. People are embracing it. It’s been very easy for the staff to prepare the food and have made accommodations to keep up with the pace. Every single staff member in our district just loves the context of this program,” he said.

While Hannibal provides free lunches to qualifying grades kindergarten through eighth grade, Staats said next year the program will grow to include the high school grade levels to encompass the entire district.

In Fulton, calculated qualifications show the entire district would be eligible for the program pending approval.

According to CEP criteria, at least 40 percent of the district’s students must qualify as “Identified Students” – the population of students that qualify for free or reduced meals without an application.

These children are directly certified, or eligible for free or reduced school meals without and application, because data matches indicate they live in a household that participates in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP,) Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Cash Assistance (TANF,) Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR,) or Medicaid, if identified as receiving benefits as part of the Direct Certification Matching Process.

Other qualifying students include those who are directly certified because they are in foster care, homeless, migrant, living in a group home as a ward of the state, or in Headstart.

According to Warwick, Fulton’s percentage of Identified Students surpasses the required 40 percent, currently estimated at roughly 52 percent of the district’s student population.

The reimbursement rate for the program is determined by a calculation including the Identified Student Percentage.

FCSD business manager Kathy Nichols explained the reimbursement criteria. The amount of free meal reimbursement, paid at $3.37 per lunch meal and $2.19 for breakfast meal, would be roughly 84 percent for FCSD based on current numbers.

Likewise, the remaining almost 16 percent would be reimbursed by the paid meal rate of $0.45 per lunch meal and $0.30 per breakfast meal.

The district will then simply keep track of how many total meals have been distributed under the CEP. In order to continue tracking data for additional funding sources, students that do not fall in the Identified Students Percentage will collect family income information using an alternate form.

The CEP allows food service employees to lessen administrative work and improve efficiency and meal quality. The program eliminates unpaid meal fees and, as exemplified in Hannibal, participation is expected to increase.

“Increasing food challenges is a problem nationwide, it’s not restrictive to this area. This would be a viable program for our community. It would eliminate the stigma associated to receiving free meals,” Superintendent Pulvino said.

After meal requirements changed rather significantly under previous federal administration, participation numbers had lessened. Warwick and the food services department have worked to structure new meals that students favor while still adhering to nutritional standards.

As such, participation numbers have increased in the 2017-18 school year, Warwick said.

“We’ve taken the time to build a stronger foundation,” Pulvino said. This way, if implementing free meals, students will be willing to participate knowing the meals taste good.

District officials will be preparing the district’s application form to be submitted in April. If approved, free meals for all students will be implemented at the start of the 2018-19 school year and would run for a period of four years before requiring reapplication.

“I’m very excited about this. This is something I think would be wonderful for our community,” Warwick said.

Source URL: https://oswegocountytoday.com/news/fulton/fulton-eyes-free-school-meals-program/

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