Program to be in place for 2024-2025 academic year
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Beaufort County students will all now be eligible for free lunch and breakfast in the upcoming school year.
All Beaufort County School District (BCSD) schools will offer one breakfast and lunch to every student at no charge during the 2024-2025 school year, according to a release from the district.
Every year a district policy requires the district to analyze the calculations of the Community Eligibility Provision to see if any schools are eligible, and this year all the schools in Beaufort County are eligible for free breakfast and lunch, said Tonya Crosby, the chief financial officer for Beaufort County School District.
Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, enables schools to be able to provide meals to students free of charge.
In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 20 of the schools in Beaufort County that have the highest number low-income students qualified to provide meals to their students, but for the first time since the COVID pandemic all district schools will be able to provide free meals.
While right now only the upcoming school year is eligible, according to Crosby the district plans for this to be a recurring program going forward.
“Students would select a meal that is USDA compliant, they would work through the line to the cashier, provide their student ID number and the Point-of-Sale software is automatically programmed to know that that school is free for one breakfast and one lunch for each student for each day,” Crosby said about the process of redeeming the free lunch.
She went on to say that anything beyond that – a second meal, a-la-carte items – would require the students to pay for them from their account.
“We are going to encourage parents to leave a balance on their student’s account so that they are able to pay for those extra items that they may want,” said Crosby.
Students will still have the option of bringing their own lunch if they choose to.
Crosby said that students who have special dietary needs, such as allergies and diabetes, will be able to work with the school to accommodate their individual needs.
While the school district first released this information at the end of June, they are working on a communication campaign through the schools and to the parents to try and answer some of their questions and let them know about the no cost meals being offered in the upcoming school year.
Crosby said they expect to really start rolling out that campaign closer to the start of the 2024-2025 school year, which for public schools is on August 7.
“I’m very excited about it,” Crosby said. “It’s something we’ve been looking at for years and it’s something that many school districts across the state are doing. We think it only benefits our students and ensures that they will have the opportunity to have a healthy meal every day, and that’s really the prime priority of this decision.”
While the reaction from parents in the community seems to be mostly positive, there are some who expressed on social media that they are concerned about the nutritional value of the meals and quality of food provided to students at school.
“Making sure that our students are fed and making sure that they have the nutrition that they need is important to us,” Superintendent Frank Rodriguez said. “It’s a critical part of their learning and their learning experience. We just want to make sure, when this is possible, that our students have the opportunity for it.”
Crosby followed by saying that this not only benefits the students, but it also benefits the administration as well because when individual students need to apply for free or reduced lunch, it requires a lot of paperwork and time.
“There is a huge burden put on the [administrative] staff that is just taken away,” Crosby said about the program.
According to district spokesperson Candace Bruder, to her knowledge this does not extend to Riverview Charter School because they are a separate legal entity with their own food service program, but the district is in the process of confirming this information.
Any parents or guardians who do not want their children to participate in the CEP program can contact Virginia Weekly at 843-322-0806 or email her at virginia.weekly@beaufort.k12.sc.us, according to the release.
Formal appeals can be made by contacting Tonya Crosby at tonya.crosby@beaufort.k12.sc.us or by mail at P.O. Box 755, Beaufort, S.C. 29901
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
