HELENA — Many Montana families depend on free and reduced school meals. In Helena, there are several options to help students.
“Right now, it’s hard enough to pay for gas or pay for clothes or pay for anything. It’s so expensive. So, something like this helps them alleviate whether I should pay bills or I should buy food for my kids,” says Robert Worthy, Food Service Director for Helena Public Schools.
Schools in Montana are divided into Pricing schools and CEP schools. Pricing schools means that the school operates under the free and reduced lunch program providing free or reduced breakfasts and lunches to qualified families. Depending on a household’s income, the students may be eligible for either free or reduced-priced meals.
The federal CEP or Community Eligibility Provision program provides free breakfasts and lunches for all children in the school regardless of household income.
Four schools in Helena Public Schools are CEP schools including Central, Broadwater, Bryant, and Warren. The rest, along with all schools in East Helena, are Pricing schools.
In order to run a CEP program a school must meet or exceed the minimum identified student percentage (ISP) in the prior school year, that is the number of households using various federal benefit programs like SNAP.
The government has recently reduced the ISP from 40% to 25% to give states and schools greater flexibility in offering all students free meals.
If approved for a CEP program, the district can decide between CEP or Free and reduced for a school based on the budget and percentage of students who are eligible.
“So it has to be a certain high enough percentage for us to at least try to come close to breaking even so it’s a wash. But right now, we’re able to add that 4th school this year,” says Worthy.
Worthy says that applying for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program, even if your student attends a CEP school, is still important.
“The free reduced applications, when people fill that out it helps the school, even in the CEP school, it helps the district receive other monies to help them offset costs in the school,” says Worthy.
Whichever program is available to students, Worthy says that these programs are essential to keeping kids fed and ready for their learning.
“There are going to be a lot less problems in class because they’re not gonna want to act out because they’re hungry. So, having the nutrition in the morning and at lunchtime helps get them through the day,” says Worthy.
