By Patti Rigby, Carbon School District Nutritional Director
Recently, parents have been asking how breakfast could be free to all students but free and reduced lunch is dependent on parent income levels. The answer is they are differently funded programs from the federal government.
Our breakfast program receives reimbursement amounts based on a student’s status: free, reduced or full pay. Since we are in a “severely disadvantaged” economic area, we get higher reimbursement rates than some districts. This allows funds from the full pay students to be subsidized by the free and reduced students to be used for breakfast.
Lunch has different regulations though, so the free and reduced students are not allowed to subsidize the full pay program. This is called lunch equity. This regulation was put into place in 2010 by the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. It is to ensure that children of families that have low enough incomes to qualify for free or reduced lunch don’t go hungry. An example of an income qualification for reduced lunch is a family of four making under $45,500.
So, since we have this opportunity to offer free breakfast to all because it isn’t as stringent on income requirements, we encourage families to take full advantage of it.