Lincoln Public Schools is set to offer free school meals at more than a dozen additional elementary and middle schools starting this school year to help remove a burden many families face, district officials said.
For several years, LPS has been able to provide free breakfast and lunch to students at eight elementary schools — Belmont, Clinton, Elliott, Everett, Hartley, Huntington, McPhee and West Lincoln — through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Provision program.
Now, 15 more schools will be included in the program: Arnold, Brownell, Campbell, Lakeview, Norwood Park, Pershing, Prescott, Randolph, Riley and Saratoga elementaries; and Culler, Dawes, Goodrich, Park and Lefler middle schools.
Students enrolled at these schools will no longer have to fill out the application for the free and reduced-price meal program, which is open year-round, and will receive both breakfast and lunch at no cost to the families.
Schools are selected for the program annually based on a USDA formula that calculates need by looking at the percentage of students who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or Medicaid benefits, LPS Nutrition Services Director Andrew Ashelford said. The schools now included in the program are Title I schools, meaning they have a high percentage of low-income students.
The decision to enroll additional programs comes about six months after the Lincoln Board of Education voted to end a longtime practice of using outside debt collection agencies to help receive payment from families with outstanding lunch balances.
Last school year, LPS reported that more than 21,000 students, or half of the student body, participated in the free and reduced-price lunch program.
While not every school in the district is eligible for the federal program, Ashelford said LPS aims to make food as accessible to as many students districtwide as possible. The addition of 15 more schools to the program is just one step closer to that goal, he said.
Not only will the the USDA's CEP program provide free, healthy meals to students at the 23 schools, but it also will help remove meal stigma for students, decrease an administrative burden and ensure students are well nourished and ready to succeed in the classroom, Ashelford said.
“When students come to school, we want them to learn. Their focus should be on learning. We don't want them to have to worry about where their meal is coming from,†he said. “So when the students arrive to school at these 23 schools, we know that breakfast is going to be healthy and lunch is going to be healthy. So when they get their meal, they just have to worry about eating it and then excelling in the classroom.â€
Will Juilfs, who works for Lincoln Public Schools, delivers cartons of milk to the kitchen at Randolph Elementary School on Friday. LPS will offer free meals to all students at 15 additional schools this year as part of an expansion through the Community Eligibility Provision program.
Lincoln Public Schools Nutrition Services Director Andrew Ashelford speaks to reporters Friday at Randolph Elementary School about LPS' expansion of the Community Eligibility Provision. The expansion means the district will serve free meals to all students at an additional 15 elementary and middle schools, including Randolph.