More schools to offer lunches
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on June 5, 2015 1:46 PM
Students at 13 public schools in Wayne County will receive free breakfast and lunch next year, with one school added to the current program adopted by the school board.
Wayne County Public Schools became a participant in 2014 in the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, a national initiative that provides free meals to students in areas of high poverty.
To qualify, a district must have more than 40 percent identified free lunch students. Wayne County meets that criterion, officials said, but only 70 percent of those students received free lunch. To offer free meals at every school, while participating in the CEP, would cost around $1 million, a shortfall the district was not equipped to absorb.
So instead, the school board voted to go with the 12 identified schools, at no additional cost for the district.
The 12 schools that have participated in the program this year included Brogden Middle, Brogden Primary, Carver Elementary, Carver Heights, Dillard Middle, Eastern Wayne Elementary, Fremont, Goldsboro High School, School Street School, Spring Creek Elementary, North Drive Elementary and Wayne Academy.
Dewana Faison, director child nutrition, said her department did a calculation of the CEP schools to see if any new ones now qualified to be added and discovered Mount Olive Middle School fell into that category.
While the district would ideally like to have free meals available for all students, at this point it comes down to dollars and cents and how much can be reimbursed.
Ms. Faison laid out several options for the finance committee and then the full board.
She said Mount Olive Middle could be added at no cost to the district.
To add MOM and Tommy's Road Elementary would cost the school system $43,654, while incrementally adding to the point of including 29 of the 31 schools -- Wayne Early/Middle and Wayne School of Engineering were excluded because they don't serve breakfast -- it could cost the district $1.4 million.
Her recommendation at this point was to add Mount Olive Middle. The board approved that proposal at its June meeting.