Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Published: 9/1/2021 5:22:50 PM
As local schools open amidst the pandemic for the second year in a row, the plan to offer free meals to students will continue in most districts.
Through federal funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, districts continue to have the ability to provide free breakfast and lunch to students throughout the upcoming school year, alleviating potential pressure on those families facing economic hardship due to the pandemic.
All local districts including the Mascenic, Wilton-Lyndeborough, Jaffrey-Rindge, and ConVal will be providing free meals thanks to this program. Mason Elementary School also expects to do so, but is awaiting formal approval.
Along with these free meals, however, districts are requesting that parents fill out the USDA’s form for Free and Reduced Lunch – regardless of whether they believe their family will qualify.
“While meals will be provided for free, we are still encouraging all families to fill out the Free and Reduced Meal Application,” said Nick Handy, Jaffrey-Rindge’s Communications Coordinator. “Having families fill out this form allows our district to have better access to state and federal funding.”
“The data on free and reduced lunches is used to determine a portion of the adequacy funding we receive from the state and has impacts on eligibility for the district, towns, counties, et cetera on other federal funding,” said ConVal School Board Chair Tim Theberge.
Mason Elementary School Principal and Superintendent Kristen Kivela made the same request of district parents. “The more students we have qualify for free and reduced meals, the more grant funds we receive,” she said in a back-to-school letter to the district.
The number of students qualifying for Free and Reduced Lunch in local districts has fluctuated over the past decade, with some districts remaining close to the state average but with others consistently hovering above. The Jaffrey-Rindge district has stayed above the state average, with an average of 33% of students qualifying each year since 2010, compared to the state average of 26.5% over the same period of time.
Jaffrey-Rindge’s high was 34.6% of students being eligible in the 2014-2015 school year, while the state average that year was 28.9%.
Mascenic has also trended higher than the state average, with an average of 32% of students being eligible each year since 2010. Mascenic’s high was 38%, also during the 2014-2015 school year.
Other local districts trend closer to the state average, such as ConVal, with 27% of their students being eligible on average each year. Wilton-Lyndeborough had similar percentages of eligible students, with an average of 25% each year.
Mason Elementary School, with its small population, saw more fluctuation due to sample size, but its highest year of eligibility was the 2016-2017 school year, with 28.8% of its students eligible.
Additionally, while all the local districts saw a decline in total enrollment over the years since 2010, the number of students eligible for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program remained comparable. ConVal, for example, saw a decrease in enrollment from 2,542 students district-wide during the 2009-2010 school year to 1,844 enrolled in the 2020-21 school year. The number of students in the ConVal district who qualified for Free and Reduced Lunch in 2010 was 644, while the number last year was 487.
While local districts’ numbers did not deviate much over the 2020-2021 school year when the policy of free meals for all students was first in place, officials in these districts would like to ensure that funding does not get affected by having all district families fill out the eligibility survey.
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