Last year, the free lunches introduced to LCHS were a success among the student body. “I really liked the free lunches!” Sarah Anda (11) stated. “I used to be in severe lunch debt. My parents couldn’t figure out how to put money into the account!”
This school year, the free meal program is expanding, and in addition to free lunches, free breakfast will be provided to LCHS students!
Breakfast will be available from 7:45 am to 8:15 am before classes start, giving students a chance to get some fuel into their system before starting lessons–provided they come to campus early enough.
“I’m very grateful to have that addition to the school. It gives someone like me, who leaves early for school with little time to eat breakfast, a chance to have one,” Stasya Easley (12) noted.
According to the district website, “All students enrolled in the district are eligible to receive a healthy breakfast and lunch at no charge. No further action is necessary.” Luckily, for parents who are concerned about the bureaucracy of accessing the free meals, the district has said that “children will be able to participate in this program without having to pay a fee or submit a meal application.”
But the new meal plan isn’t for the high school alone. It’s part of a program being applied all across the school district and all over California. Implemented at the start of the 2022-2023 school year, according to the Director of Fiscal Services for LCUSD, Gretchen Bergstrom, “the free breakfast and lunch [program] is [actually] a new State Mandate.”
The referenced mandate is the California Universal Meals program. According to the California Department of Education (CDE), beginning in the 2022-2023 school year, “California will become the first state to implement a statewide Universal Meals Program for school children.” The program aims to build on the foundations set by earlier student lunch programs, like the federally funded National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program.
As explained by the spokesperson for the California Department of Education, Nicholas Filipas, the program is “designed to help students heal, recover, and thrive while maximizing this once-in-a-generation opportunity to break the educational inequity, including nutrition insecurity.”
As Filipas highlighted, food insecurity has long been linked to academic decline within student populations. As one study, published by the Cambridge University Press, explains, “Psychosocial health may be an important mechanism through which food insecurity affects academic performance among college and university students. Multicomponent interventions that address immediate food security needs as well as co-occurring mental health and academic concerns are needed to ensure student success.” As LCUSD begins to implement the program in its schools, the hope is that it will ensure that more students from more diverse backgrounds than ever, have a better chance to academically succeed.
In addition to the changes at the statewide level, there are some changes to the way the program is handled at LCHS. Starting this year, students at LCHS are required to input their student ID when they receive lunch. As Bergstrom explained, “The difference between this year and last year is accountability. Last year, we could keep count of the number of meals served. This year, the meals must be tracked by student, hence we require a student’s [ID] number when picking up either breakfast or lunch. The meal is free, but we need to know who received it.”
This has caused the previous problem of long lunch lines to worsen. As an experiment, I waited in line with my friend to get lunch and used the stopwatch function on my phone to see how long it took. The entire process, the overwhelming majority of which was waiting in line, took over nine minutes. That is almost a third of the entire time that students are allotted for their lunch break.
Other students reflect similarly on the long lunch lines. Stasya noted, “I don’t like the fact that when I get back from waiting in line for lunch, I have ten minutes left of lunch time to eat it. They could probably be more expedient on the line.”
However, despite the new challenges this school year, the new free meals program is likely to be another rousing success.
“I think the free lunches are definitely encouraging me to actually have a meal every day and be healthier instead of skipping when I forget to pack it,” Stasya added. “I use the system every day, along with my friends, and have since the start of junior year. I just think it’s nice to not have to pay for lunch. I think they’ve definitely been a positive addition!”
Easy access to food throughout the school day means that less students will have to struggle through their classes because of it; no student should have to suffer in school because they can’t find enough to eat. Hopefully the California Universal Meals Program is here to stay, and LCHS students will continue to enjoy the benefits of free school meals from 2022 and beyond.
