Source: Indy Week
For the 2024-2024 school year, Durham Public Schools students will receive two free meals a day.
Back in March, the Durham Public Schools Board of Education unanimously approved the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which provides free breakfasts and lunches to all students, regardless of their family’s income, where they attend school, or where they live.
Established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, CEP is a non-pricing meal service option for schools and school districts in low-income areas. According to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service website, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of eligible students for free meals based on their participation in other programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
According to Indy Week, the decision to serve free meals is set to save Durham Public Schools more than $1.5 million this year.
“We are very pleased to be able to move forward with our planning that will provide free breakfasts and lunches for all of our 35,000 students beginning next year,” James Keaten, Executive Director for DPS Child Nutrition Services, stated in a press release. “Not only will this ensure that every student who enters our doors will have access to two healthy and nutritious meals each day, but the cost savings will have a positive impact for our district and community.”
In addition to the free meals, students will be able to pick from a school food menu with healthier options. Indy Week reports that Durham middle and high schoolers have been involved in the process of updating the menu through the youth food policy council. DPS will have healthier, culturally relevant meals, and locally sourced meals.
“People for the last 50 years have seen school food as a poverty program, but it was founded as something much more than that,” Linden Thayer, assistant director of food systems planning for DPS, told INDY. “We can get back to this idea that—just like you go to science class, and you go to English class—you should just go to lunch class and be nourished and then keep going with your day. And it’s going to take a long time to make that culture shift.”
