Mecklenburg Schools are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the
district reported Nov. 18. That number is a slight increase over the
2008-2009 total of 48 percent.
The 40th-day enrollment count showed that 67,991, or 50.9 percent of
K-12 students, qualify for the subsidy. When pre-kindergarten students
are included, 51.6 percent of CMS students are eligible for the
subsidy. Eligibility is widely used by school districts as a proxy for
poverty in the student population.
The guidelines are set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which
gives a subsidy to school districts based on the number of free or
reduced-price lunch students. To qualify a student to receive free
lunch, a family of four can earn no more than $28,665 per year.
Students from a family of four earning more than $28,665 but less than
$40,793 receive school lunch for 40 cents, which is well below the $2
CMS charges for a student lunch.
Like other districts, CMS verifies eligibility for a sample of
families who apply for the subsidy. More than half of the district's
eligible students are referred to the program (and verified for it) by
the Department of Social Services. CMS verifies eligibility for three
percent of families who apply for the subsidy, said Cindy Hobbs, the
director of Child Nutrition for the district. Families chosen for
eligibility verification must provide proof of income, such as a pay
stub, she said.
The district uses the free and reduced-price lunch data to allocate
extra resources to schools with high concentrations of poverty. CMS
collects the data for each school, as well as for the entire district.
The 2009-2010 data shows that five schools had an increase of 10
percentage points or more in students eligible for free or reduced-
price lunch. Twenty-three schools showed declines in eligible
students, but none of the decreases were more than 10 percent, with
most below three percentage points.
