POTTSTOWN — There really is such a thing as a free lunch — and free breakfast, too.
The federal government recently approved the Pottstown School District’s application to provide free breakfasts and lunches to every student in the district starting with the 2014-15 school year.
“We’re pleased to announced that every one of our students will now have the opportunity to have a nutritious breakfast and lunch to enable them to perform at the highest academic level,” said John Armato, the district’s director of community relations.
The decision comes in the wake of the March school board vote to apply for the free program given the high rate of poverty in Pottstown, as illustrated by the fact that Pottstown as many as 2,270 of the district 3,110 students qualify for the federally funded free-and-reduced-lunch program.
On Monday, building principals began alerting parents to the change with emails alerting them that “all students are automatically eligible to participate for both meals as listed on the monthly menu. No applications are required.”
Leroy Merkel, director of food services for the district, said the district will receive a reimbursement from the government for 95 percent of the cost of the lunches.
The district will get reimbursed at a price of $3.05 per meal.
“The remaining 5 percent of the cost will be covered by the cost of the a la carte food,” he said.
Merkel explained that the free lunches apply to “the meal as menued. So if a student just wants a piece of pizza, or a water or a soft pretzel — and that happens mostly at the secondary level — then they have to pay for that and that should more than cover the remaining costs,” he said.
The meals on the menu comply with the new federal regulations to make school means more nutritious.
The 2010 re-authorization of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act also significantly tightened the nutritional requirements for the school lunches, Merkel said.
“For example, the K-8 lunch menu has to be between 600 and 650 calories and it has minimums and maximums for grains and proteins as well,” Merkel said.
“It’s all aimed at combating childhood obesity,” said Merkel.
The district has been preparing for the change, Merkel said, particularly given that in the seven or eight states where this program was piloted, schools reported seeing a 25 percent increase in students coming in for breakfast and a 13 percent increase of those getting lunch.
“Our numbers were already on the high side already, so I would guess we’re going to see an increase of between 8-to-10 percent,” he said.
Even with that increase, the district is prepared for the start of the program at the start of school, on Sept. 2, Merkel said.
“We’re ready to go,” he said.
