Waitsburg School Board Ponders Meal Policy Changes

WAITSBURG – “I love the idea of kids starting the day well-fed, and I love the idea of older students eating alongside younger students. The more I think about this, the more excited I get!”

Those were the words of Waitsburg junior high and high school principal Stephanie Wooderchak during a discussion on food service at the April 19 school board meeting.

Food Services Manager Susan Wildey approached school board members at their March 15 meeting requesting that they consider participating in the Provision 2 food program. The program provides free breakfast and lunches to all children, regardless of economic eligibility.

While Provision 2 allows all students to receive free meals, the school would only be reimbursed for students that qualify for free or reduced meals. The base is established in year one, but Wildey said she didn’t have the information necessary to determine how much the program would cost the district.

Wildey said that, of those who filled out free/reduced lunch applications, 63% of elementary school students, 56% of Preston Hall students and 33% of high school students are currently eligible for free/reduced lunches. The problem, she said, is getting everyone to fill out the forms, especially the high school students.

Wildey said that once the data is collected and submitted for the base year, there are no further requirements to collect data such as free/reduced applications, audits or state assistance records, which is less work for food service. She said it would also remove the need to collect money from families that don’t pay their bills.

“That just takes a lot of time. It’s also imperative, I feel, that every child receives a nutritious meal for breakfast and lunch,” Wildey said. She said that she has seen students arrive with packed lunches consisting solely of a bag of chips or a package of saltines.

Wildey said the District has seen an increase in the number of students who don’t eat breakfast at all. She said Provision 2 would allow the district to implement a Breakfast After the Bell program, where all students eat in the cafeteria after school has started, or meals are delivered to the classroom.

“I also think the program encourages students to stay on campus. As a parent, I would require my child to eat at the school if it was free,” she said.

Following that meeting, Wooderchak did her best to collect forms from high school students. She visited each high school classroom, explaining the need for students to return the reduced lunch forms, and offered candy bars as reward for completed forms returned.

In spite of incentives, only 33 high school students returned the forms, which was not enough to provide a good estimate of how much the District would be reimbursed through the program.

“All I can suggest is that we try it for a year, see if it works, and review the financials then. I think it would be a very positive thing for our community,” Wildey told the board.

While enthusiastic about the idea, board members were reluctant to approve the program without a clear idea of the costs. After discussion, they expressed a strong desire to implement a Breakfast After the Bell program and requested that Wildey return in May with best guess figures to operate the program for breakfast-only in 2018-19.

Wildey agreed and said a decision would need to be made by the end of May so that she could apply in June.