Increased F&R lunch applicants

If you missed last week's article, Wake may have to raise school breakfast and lunch prices.

Food and labor costs are going up, according to Marilyn Moody, senior director for child nutrition. She said there's also been a big drop in sales of a la carte items, the things that balance the budget.

But the reason that drew the most questions at a school board committee meeting earlier this month is that more families are applying for federally subsidized lunches.

Moody told board members that Wake is seeing a doubling in the number of applications for free and reduced lunch. It's a factor as Wake gets reimbursed $2.57 for each free lunch student while it costs $2.91 to make the meal.

The increase in lunch applicants drew questions from school board member Ron Margiotta. He asked Moody about articles in the Carolina Journal that reported that a school district audit resulted in 64 percent of families losing or getting reduced lunch benefits.

Click here for a July article from the Carolina Journal and here for a November article. The Carolina Journal is a publication owned by the conservative John Locke Foundation.

Margiotta's questions drew an indignant response from Moody, who said she had "found a lot of fallacies in the reporting."

The audit, which is required of all school districts, looks at a random sample of people whose income is close to the eligibility limits. Click here to see the income limits.

Some people had their benefits reduced because the audit found that they had underreported their income. Others were affected because they didn't respond to requests for more information.

Moody said the people who were audited were an "error prone group." She said you would be "making assumptions" to say that it was due to fraud that those people lost their benefits.

Moody said some people might not have responded because they had felt intimidated.

For people who undereported income, she said they may have marked the wrong column on the application form.

Moody said people might have rounded off their income with no intention of committing fraud. She said that leaving out the cents changed their eligibility.

Moody said you can't assume the audit findings for these people represent the entire population of F&R families.

The validity of the F&R data is important because Wake uses it to determine which elementary schools will get funding for Title I and other programs. It's also used in reassignment to help balance schools.