Come September, all students in the Hazleton Area School District will be offered free lunch.
The district will join select major city districts, such as Boston, that now offer all students free lunch as part of a federal initiative to provide better nutrition for children, particularly those at high risk of malnutrition.
In 2010, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The program was designed to improve a nutritional safety net for children falling through the cracks of the program that was already in place, according the program’s website.
In order to receive free or reduced priced lunches, parents must fill out an eligibility form. Because in some homes parents cannot read materials sent home in English and in other households parents may choose not to read the materials or just plain ignore them, the USDA concluded that millions of children eligible and in need of free lunches simply were not getting them.
The agency’s conclusion was that is better to provide free lunches to all children, since this approach would assure that every needy child gets a lunch.
Of course, participation in this initiative is entirely up to school districts. There is no obligation to participate.
“We will at least break even, if not come out ahead because of federal reimbursement,” Craig Butler, superintendent of the Hazleton Area School District, said.
While it would seem that providing all children with lunch would cost districts more, the pilot federal initiative turns that assumption on its ear by encouraging school districts to move toward full participation in federally subsidized school lunch, through providing districts with reimbursements that will in fact absorb the cost of providing lunch to students of all income levels, whether they walk to school or if a chauffeur drives them.
Last year, the Hazleton Area School District invested in biometric software to track the usage of the program by students who receive free or reduced-cost lunches. Students’ thumbprints were scanned each time they received a lunch. This data provided by the biometrics was made available to the district and federal government for tracking purposes.