“The State of Minnesota was nice enough to pass a free meals program that provides one free breakfast and one free complete lunch for each student who’d like one,” said Anoka-Hennepin’s child nutrition director Noah Atlas.
‘Complete lunch’ doesn’t mean absolutely everything. It means the basics: entrée, vegetable, fruit, milk, and grain. Extras are still available, but will come at a cost.
“If a student wants an extra entrée, or a student wants an extra potato, or a student wants a Gatorade, or a cookie, or some chips, then they would have to have money in their account and that still all works the same way,” said Atlas.
Even with the shift to free meals, the application for educational benefits is still important.
“Most families think that ‘well it’s free we’re all good we don’t have to do anything’ but now it’s more important than ever for families to fill out that application for educational benefits it provides reduced fees in school for labs and for field trips and things like that,” said Atlas.
And beyond giving the family some fee discounts, these applications also help distribute other dollars behind the scenes.
“But what it also does is it’ll help the state in the long run. So if the state’s going to pick up the bill for meals, they want the federal government to be able to pay to pay their share. And so if families don’t fill it out, that means that the state will end up paying more, which means less money for other programs.”
On top of that, there’s other federal dollars attached to the educational benefits- some dollars that go directly into the classroom.
“So if families are just thinking this form is only good for meals, it wasn’t, it’s good for everything that goes on in the school district,” said Atlas.
Atlas also said that the income guidelines do change from year to year, and he said that families who may have been declined in the past could qualify this year. The district encourages all families to apply.
