“Free breakfast, free lunch,” Anthony Lewis, Durham Public Schools’ new superintendent, said at his first Board of Education meeting in August, announcing that any public school student can now receive two free meals a day, no questions asked.
“Say it with me,” Lewis said as the audience broke into applause. “Free breakfast, free lunch.”
It truly is hard not to applaud a program that has led to an increase of about 3,000 more free daily meals (about 1,000 more breakfasts and 2,000 more lunches for a total of about 11,000 breakfasts and 14,000 lunches) served to Durham children, all without requiring their parents to jump paperwork hurdles to prove eligibility.
And, counterintuitively, serving more free meals is actually set to save the district $1.5 million this year.
While Lewis just started his new job, the school board opted into the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in the spring. CEP is a federal meal service program that provides reimbursement for free breakfasts and lunches in high-poverty areas. By relying on district-wide data rather than individual household applications, CEP eliminates the district costs in printing and processing applications.