In the News
Aiming for free lunches
Survey is under way to pinpoint eligible schools
Tony Schmidt
Philadelphia Inquirer, February 8, 2007
The School District of Philadelphia is conducting a survey to determine which schools can provide free meals without requiring families to apply for them.
The idea is that for a free meal program to work well, you don't want to advertise that the recipients are poor, said Yvette Nunez, a consultant to the survey.
So if the survey shows that at least 65 percent of a school's students are eligible for free meals, then meals for all students in those schools will be free, she said.
Nunez says the school district is the only one in the nation that does not require free-lunch applications once 65 percent of a school's population is eligible.
This goes back to the early '90s, when then- Superintendent Constance Clayton got the U.S. Department of Agriculture to approve the free-lunch plan as a pilot program, said Ira Goldstein, director of public policy for the Reinvestment Fund.
It is designed to reduce the stigma associated with applying for free meals, a stigma associated with students in grades 6 and higher.
"Kids, particularly in higher grades, would rather go hungry than apply for a free lunch, or stand in the free-lunch line and be deemed 'poor' by their peers," Nunez said.
The district has embarked on the survey in partnership with the Reinvestment Fund and Philadelphia Health Management Corp. to assess household income and other qualifying factors for the lunch program, Nunez said. The last survey was conducted in 1994.
The first step is for surveyors to contact 2,000 homes by phone and seek information about a family's income. Households are randomly selected from those in ZIP codes with the highest rate of program participation.
After the phone interviews, 700 of the 2,000 households contacted are asked to meet with interviewers and answer more questions about eligibility.
"If they don't want to meet in their own homes, we'll meet with them in a school, community center or church," said Wayne Grasela, director of food and nutrition services for the district.
He said the district is offering $35 gift cards to a supermarket of the family's choice if the family successfully completes the interview.