Cafe worker Amelia Newhouse slices cucumbers a day before the start of classes Tuesday at Greenwood Community High School. Noah Crenshaw | Daily Journal
Parents of students at Greenwood Community Schools have one less thing to worry about as classes start Wednesday.
For the 2024-25 school year, all K-12 students will be provided with one complete breakfast and one complete lunch each day, free of charge. Students will still be able to purchase extras and à la carte items separately, the school district announced Friday.
The free meals were made possible after Greenwood applied and qualified for the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Indiana Department of Education. Families will not have to take any further action to get these free meals. They will be provided to all students without having to pay a fee or submit an application, district officials said.
“It’s a game changer for a lot of our families. It really will benefit them,” said Terry Terhune, superintendent.
The CEP is a non-pricing meal service option for schools and districts in low-income areas, allowing them to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students categorically eligible for free meals and based on their participation in other specific means-tested programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, according to the USDA.
To be eligible for CEP, one or a group of schools must have a 25% or greater population of students in need as determined by April 1, according to the Indiana Department of Education. All of Greenwood’s schools had estimated percentages above the 25% threshold, with the lowest estimated percentage being 39.16%, according to IDOE.
Greenwood is one of several Indiana school districts that qualified for CEP for the upcoming school year. Elkhart Community Schools in northern Indiana and the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township also qualified, according to news reports.
Lesli Hicks, Greenwood’s food service director, applied for the CEP because of the need within the community. She wanted to help families who may not be able to afford meals for their children who go to Greenwood schools, she said.
The application process started back before spring break, last school year. There was a lot of “back and forth” about enrollment and eligibility, along with working with the IDOE and its Food Service Department to see if Greenwood qualified, Hicks said.
District officials also had to crunch the numbers to see if they could handle it from the financial side and break even so that they were not losing money with the reimbursements, Terhune said. They don’t think they will, at least for the first year.
“We can always reevaluate after the first year if it’s not successful,” he said. “And then after this year, we’ll reevaluate, see where we’re at, and then either continue on with the program or make changes as we need.”
Greenwood is locked into the program for at least four years, and would have to reevaluate every four years in the future, Hicks and Terhune said. The 2024-25 school year is just the start.
“We don’t anticipate there being a problem,” Terhune said. “We have run multiple scenarios here to try to make sure we’re doing what’s best for our kids and our districts.”
So far, the feedback from parents has been good, Terhune and Hicks said.
“A lot of parents are relieved. They’re really appreciative of the program,” Hicks said.
Terhune said Hicks has worked hard on making this possible. He’s thankful Greenwood was able to do it.
“It will do nothing but help our kids, our community, our schools,” Terhune said. “Our kids are going to learn better just because they have an opportunity to have good meals.”
