Free school lunch rules weighed

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003 | 11:29 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

More than a fourth of the 28 million children who eat free or discounted school lunches may be ineligible, and the Bush administration is considering rules to reserve the meal programs for children of families who prove their low incomes.

The number of children enrolled in the program nationwide exceeds the number in low-income families who would be eligible for it, based on a comparison of the school lunch enrollment figures with an annual survey by the Census Bureau, said Jean Daniel, an Agriculture Department spokeswoman.

Officials have calculated that as many as 27 percent of children now getting free or reduced-price meals are ineligible, she said.

Should the estimate be correct, the government may have spent about $1.8 billion last year buying lunches for children whose family income would have disqualified them. The Agriculture Department spent $6.8 billion on school lunches last year.

Eric Bost, the department's undersecretary for food and nutrition, said he thinks the 27 percent estimate of ineligibility is too high, but that the problem is significant.

Advocates for the poor accuse the department of inflating the number of ineligibles to come up with new criteria that will result in removing children from the program.

Jim Weill, president of a Washington advocacy group, the Food Research and Action Center, said a tougher verification process would scare away families of children whose low incomes would qualify. He said he suspects the problem is that some children who qualify for discount-priced lunches are instead getting free ones.

"But you should not willy-nilly make it harder for schools to operate just because a minor number of kids are given free lunches instead of reduced-price lunches," he said.

Under current program guidelines, children in a family of four with an income of less than $23,530 a year qualify for free lunches. Children in a four-member family with a total annual income less than $33,485 qualify for reduced-price meals, costing up to 40 cents per lunch.

Many schools now approve children for free and reduced-price lunches based solely on applications in which parents self-report monthly income and household size. Some also use as criteria whether families are on food stamps or are on temporary assistance for needy families, a welfare program.

Sue Hoggan, spokeswoman for the Clark County School District's food services department, said parents must fill out lengthy application forms in order to have their children added to the program. One percent of applications are verified and of those, half are denied, Hoggan said.

About 61,000 Clark County students, or about 35 percent of all elementary and middle school students, receive free lunches. Still, Hoggan said, the cost of verifying every application would exceed any savings from the cost of providing the meals.

"I don't see how you save money by making things more complicated," Hoggan said this morning. "The bottom line for us is we're here to feed hungry kids."

It's already difficult enough to convince parents to sign up their children for the program, said Nicole Gordon, a senior food service worker at Booker Elementary School in Las Vegas, where 73 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced meals.

"Sometimes we have to remind the parents three or four times to turn in the forms," Gordon said. "For some of them it's a question of pride, but I say what's more important, your pride or your kid?"