All students in the DeKalb County School System, regardless of income, will again have access to free breakfasts and lunches when school begins in August. However, teachers, staff and other adults who eat breakfast and lunch at school will have to pay a little more.
Meal prices for the adults are increasing by twenty five cents for breakfast and twenty five cents for lunch.
The Board of Education Thursday night approved the increases as recommended by Amy Lattimore, School Nutrition Supervisor. Adults have been paying $1.25 for breakfast and $2.50 for lunch.
“The USDA requires that adult meals including for teachers and staff be paid by them. We can’t use federal funding to pay for their meals. We haven’t gone up on the prices for adults in quite a while but it’s gotten to the point now where meal costs have eclipsed our price point. We just need to go up a little bit. I would like for us to go up by twenty five cents this year for breakfast and twenty five cents for lunch. Next year we may need to look at going up some more. It may be enough or it may not be but its really comparable with what other counties around us charge,” said Lattimore.
Meanwhile, Lattimore said the free breakfast and lunch program for students continues to be successful.
“It is still going really well. We still have a couple more years on that first track that we started. At that point we’ll have to look at it again but for right now it’s going really well. We’re pleased with it,” said Lattimore.
The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that allows schools and local educational agencies (LEAs) with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. CEP eliminates the burden of collecting household applications to determine eligibility for school meals, relying instead on information from other means-tested programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The school system had already been offering free breakfasts under the Universal Breakfast Program but opted into the free lunch program during the fall of 2015 hoping to get more students to participate. Under CEP, the school system is reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students identified as eligible for free meals. To keep the program financially self supporting, the number of students taking part must remain at a higher level.
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