After two years of the federal government providing funding for free meals in public schools, that service is no longer going to be in effect.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture extended its free meals program for the last two school years because of the covid pandemic. The USDA said earlier this year that they will no longer support that for the upcoming school year. Greene County Schools Superintendent Brett Abbotts says they had to follow the federal standards since their meal funding comes from the federal government.

“It is really, really unfortunate that given the state of our economy, and given the state of inflation that this is getting put back in place. So this would be my big encouragement for those who believe that they may qualify, and even if you think you might not, to apply for free and reduced lunch.”     

Because of the change, the School Board approved at their regular July meeting to increase student breakfast and lunch prices, including breakfast going from $1.15 to $1.20 and lunch prices will be $2.55, which is a $.10 increase previously. Free and reduced lunch prices remain the same at $0.40. 

Abbotts says another opportunity to help kids and parents is a federal Community Eligibility Provisions grant that was used when he was the building principal at Roosevelt Elementary in Council Bluffs. He points out the grant paid for meals for all students, regardless of their eligibility for free and reduced lunch.

“So students never actually paid for lunch unless they got an extra milk. That is another federal grant that I am going to be looking into to see if we could qualify for that or we could even be eligible for that. I just know the impact that had on our kids (in Roosevelt). No student ever went hungry, they always had a meal. That for me is really important, you know kids need to be fed, they need to have full stomachs.”  

Click the link below for the free and reduced lunch application.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1umWJnpotstCnptEG38NMFk7a4u4suCQP/view