Feeding the youth

About the time students’ stomachs start rumbling, the smell of school lunch, a blend of steak fingers and taco meat, and the sweetish smell of fruit cocktail, wafts from the cafeteria. It’s time to eat.

The students at Blackshear Magnet School go through the line picking out what they want, and as they swipe their identification cards to check out the only person that knows some of them are getting free or reduced price lunches is the cafeteria worker that runs the register.

School lunch programs offering students meals that are either free or reduced in price have been in place in some form since the Works Progress Administration created a hot lunch program during the Great Depression. The modern National School Lunch program was created in 1946. It now serves more than 30 million children across the country.

As the country continues to crawl through a modern economic downturn — labeled the Great Recession by some — 60 percent of the students in Ector County Independent School District qualify for free or reduced price lunches, ECISD nutrition director Terry Gooch said.

ECISD has seen a high number of students — nearly half — qualify for aid in the past five years, but the number rose suddenly last spring, Gooch said.

At first, the economic difficulties being reported around the rest of the country weren’t being felt here, Gooch said, but when the oil field layoffs began in December 2008, the Food Services program saw the number of students in need of help steadily increasing by the following February.

"We’re feeding a lot more kids on the free or reduced lunch, and it’s not just because people qualify for it. They are accepting it because they really need it," Gooch said.

ECISD pays for the lunches and is reimbursed by the federal government once a month. Schools are currently reimbursed $2.68 per free lunch and $2.28 per reduced price lunch. Those who qualify for reduced lunch cannot be charged more than 40 cents for a lunch, by law, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture website.

Students qualify for the program based on how much money their parents make and how many people they are supporting. Parents have the opportunity to apply at the beginning of the school year and can apply anytime online.

There is a gap though, Gooch admits.

"If they don’t qualify financially, it’s a parent problem, and there’s nothing I can do about it," he said.

The school district tracks the number of students who receive free lunch or breakfast or snacks daily, but no one knows who the children are personally outside of the cafeteria worker who checks the child out and the administrator who files the application.

"It’s very confidential, very private," ECISD cafeteria manager Lielie McMillan said.

Strict confidentiality is employed because the school district doesn’t want anyone who qualifies going hungry out of embarrassment, Gooch said.

That’s important because the difference between a hungry child and one who is fed and ready to learn can have a huge impact on education, teachers and principals agree.

"At least they get a nutritious meal. It helps in the classroom," Zavala Elementary School principal Yesenia Sandoval said.

Blackshear Elementary School interventionist Rachel Ortega echoed those sentiments.

"It helps them concentrate because they have food in their stomachs which otherwise might not happen," Ortega said.