“Say It With Me—Free Breakfast, Free Lunch”: DPS Enters the School Year With Healthy, Accessible New Menus

“Free breakfast, free lunch,” Anthony Lewis, Durham Public Schools’ new superintendent, said at his first Board of Education meeting in August, announcing that any public school student can now receive two free meals a day, no questions asked.

“Say it with me,” Lewis said as the audience broke into applause. “Free breakfast, free lunch.”

It truly is hard not to applaud a program that has led to an increase of about 3,000 more free daily meals (about 1,000 more breakfasts and 2,000 more lunches for a total of about 11,000 breakfasts and 14,000 lunches) served to Durham children, all without requiring their parents to jump paperwork hurdles to prove eligibility.

And, counterintuitively, serving more free meals is actually set to save the district $1.5 million this year.

While Lewis just started his new job, the school board opted into the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in the spring. CEP is a federal meal service program that provides reimbursement for free breakfasts and lunches in high-poverty areas. By relying on district-wide data rather than individual household applications, CEP eliminates the district costs in printing and processing applications.

Administrators say that the ease of participation is the main reason for the increase in the number of kids served this year. And they hope that as more students continue to try the school lunches, the stigma of receiving a free lunch will be further reduced.

But there’s another shift going on at the same time, which Durham Public Schools (DPS) officials hope will drive that number of students served even higher—the food at DPS is simply getting better this year.

Just look at the menu . Instead of hot dogs, pizza, and chicken nuggets, students have options like Chana Masala, Chicken Teriyaki, and a build-your-own bowl.

“This is part of a much larger shift in school nutrition,” Linden Thayer, assistant director of food systems planning for DPS, tells INDY.

Artificial colors and flavors, items individually heated in plastic, and high fructose corn syrup are out. Culturally relevant meals, food cooked from scratch, and locally sourced ingredients are all in. Some middle and high schoolers have been involved in this process through the youth food policy council, meeting several times a year to give feedback on DPS nutrition.

The expanded free meals program has not been without its challenges, however.

The district used to receive Title I funding based on those free and reduced lunch applications, so Thayer says that coordinators had worried about eliminating the applications. Without those applications, though, Title I funding can still be determined through data on students already eligible for initiatives like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“I think there are other districts [in which] Title I folks have concerns,” says Thayer, adding that, if done correctly, the switch should not result in any loss of funding.

The menu switch also involves new training for staff.

“It is harder, it is more work,” says Thayer. “It’s asking a lot of our people and our systems that are not fully prepared. We’re asking them to just take a leap of faith with us.”

Ultimately, Thayer sees this next school year’s transitions as a stepping stone toward even more “lofty goals.”

“People for the last 50 years have seen school food as a poverty program, but it was founded as something much more than that,” says Thayer. “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.”

Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at chase@indyweek.com . Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com .

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