Hamden Considers Free Meals For All Students

Five Hamden elementary schools may soon serve free meals to all of their students, regardless of socio-economic status.

The Hamden Board of Education (BOE) is considering participation in a federal program that would allow some of its elementary schools to offer every student, not just those who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, free breakfast and lunch.

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is available to districts where 40 percent of students or more are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, or to individual schools or groups of schools within a district that meet that threshold. As of June, 48 percent of students in the Hamden school district qualified for free or reduced-price meals. New Haven Public Schools already participates in the program.

At a meeting last week, the BOE directed the administration to look into applying for the program in five district elementary schools for the 2020 – 2021 school year. The Church Street, Dunbar Hill, Helen Street, Ridge Hill, and Shepherd Glen schools are all Title I schools, meaning they qualify for federal funding because of a high proportion of low-income students.

The Hamden school district has stark wealth disparities between its elementary schools. At Church street, for instance, 82 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. On the other end of the spectrum, and of the town, 20 percent of students at West Woods do.

“This has been a longstanding food security taskforce goal,” said Hamden Community Development Manager Adam Sendroff, who is also a part of the Hamden Food Security Taskforce. One of the benefits, he said, is that ​“individual families don’t have to fill out those forms.” The forms, he said, can be an obstacle to participation. ​“Sometimes there’s a stigma about free lunch,” he explained, and sometimes people don’t feel comfortable giving out financial information. The forms are also extremely complicated, he added. 

In the CEP program, the federal government reimburses the district for free meals it provides, based on the proportion of students who the district identifies as qualifying for free or reduced-price meals. In non-CEP schools, families must apply for free or reduced-price meals themselves. In a CEP school, family applications are not necessary. The district uses factors other than direct free or reduced-price meal applications to determine the percentage of students that are eligible, including whether a student receives Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or is homeless.

The district creates a list of ​“identified students” who qualify for free or reduced-price meals and multiplies it by 1.6, in order to account for unidentified students who may still qualify. The federal government then uses the product to determine what percentage of meals it will reimburse.

Hamden Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Tom Ariola presented to the board last week on what it would cost the district to participate in the program. He originally proposed starting the program in just three schools: Church Street, Helen Street, and Ridge Hill.

“What I’ve seen from everybody is start on the smaller side,” he said.

With such a high percentage of students at Church Street who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, federal reimbursement would actually earn the district money, offsetting the costs from other schools. Feeding every student at Church Street, Helen Street, and Ridge Hill for free, he calculated, would end up only costing the town around $4,600 annually. Adding Shepherd Glen to the mix, he calculated, would bring the total cost of the school year to $34,500.

Board members, however, opted to look into spending a little more in order to bring the program to all five of the town’s Title 1 schools. Including Hamden’s other Title 1 school (Dunbar Hill) would bring the total cost to around $60,000, Ariola estimated.

If the district decides to apply for the program, it must submit a list of ​“identified students” to the state by April 1, 2020.