ECISD food program

A growling stomach doesn’t help a student learn, and the free and reduced lunch program in ECISD tries to make sure students stay fed.

Almost 12,000 students in Ector County Independent School District applied for free and reduced lunch last year, ECISD Food Services coordinator Terry Gooch said, and as the school district inches toward a new school year, the Food Services department is preparing to process thousands of free and reduced lunch applications again. There’s just one small problem — they don’t know who is going to qualify for the program because the qualification guidelines issued by the government are late.

Usually, parents can look at a chart on the application to find out if they qualify to put their children in the free and reduced lunch program. Qualification is based on income eligibility guidelines issued by the Department of Agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture normally releases income eligibility guidelines for the free and reduced lunch programs in February or March, but the guidelines are late this year. Income eligibility guidelines are based on the poverty guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in January.

This year, the poverty guidelines still haven’t been issued, because of a drop in the Consumer Price Index on which they are based. Congress has delayed issuing the poverty guidelines three times this year, according to a memo from the Department of Agriculture.

School lunch programs offering students free or reduced price meals have been in place since the Works Progress Administration created a hot meal program during the Great Depression. The National School Lunch Program has been in existence since 1946. More than 30 million children across the country are served by it. State agricultural departments administer the program, but the Department of Agriculture runs it.

Every year, applications go out to every student in ECISD, Gooch said.

“There’s an application for every child who registers for school because, of course, we can’t determine who needs to be in the program and who doesn’t just by looking at them, and we don’t want any child going hungry,” Gooch said. It’s the first time the department has been late getting the requirements out in the 23 years that Gooch has worked for Food Services he said.

Agencies find themselves stuck playing the waiting game, as they get closer to the new school year. In May, a Department of Agriculture memo was issued, authorizing local agencies to print free and reduced lunch applications without including the guidelines. In June, the Department of Agriculture issued another memo authorizing state and local agencies to base income eligibility on those issued in 2009-’10 until new ones are issued.

Members of the food services department were scheduled to begin processing applications at the end of this week, but they received word from the Texas Department of Agriculture to wait on processing applications until next week, because new income guidelines may be issued by then, Gooch said.

In the meantime, all anyone can do is wait.

ECISD meal specialist coordinator Andrea Madrid will have thousands of applications to process before school starts.

“It really affects me because it puts a hold on everything I have to do,” Madrid said. Once the qualification requirements are released, Madrid will be able to find out how many students will be fed through the program next year.

Once they have the income guidelines, things can move pretty quickly, Gooch said. Using special software, each application is scanned by a scanner that pulls the pertinent information including the size of a household and household income from the form, determining whether the applicant will be approved. Letters telling whether they have qualified or not are sent out to parents within three days of receiving the application.

“If the (Department of Agriculture) changes the guidelines, it’ll be just a quick software update, and then we’re good to go,” Gooch said.

Gooch said, he hopes those in need of assistance will use the program because no one wants to see children going hungry, and that’s what the program is all about.

“It ensures that they’ll get nutritious meals. Even if they don’t have the money to pay for it, they won’t go hungry,” Gooch said.