No free lunch?

Carbon County School District (CCSD) No. 2, at last count, had 607 students enrolled in seven schools. Of those, approximately 247 students, or 41 percent, receive free or reduced lunches at school. The program, which is federally funded, is at risk of disappearing due to the partial government shutdown that recently surpassed the one month mark.

“The information we have is that the money is available through March,” said CCSD No. 2 Superintendent Jim Copeland. “Now, I don’t expect it to go that long, but we are in bizarre times. I, just, would hope that we wouldn’t have all of that partial shutdown go that far.”

When Copeland says the funding for free or reduced lunches is good through March, that doesn’t exactly mean that they are funded until the end of that month.

“When I say it goes through March, our claim in March actually covers the February lunch records. We would be talking about covering March, April and May,” Copeland said.

With the shutdown extending day-by-day, Copeland and the staff at CCSD No. 2 Central Office ran some numbers and came up with a contingency plan. According to the superintendent, it is estimated that it would cost the school district between $50,000 and $70,000 to fund the reduced lunch program on their own for a three month period. Copeland admits, however, that the number is a broad estimate and is taken from the use of the program last year.

“It would be my intent, if we get to that point, to go to the board and say ‘Look, can we amend the budget to move some money around to cover that?’ Obviously, we do not want our students going hungry and we’re not going to say ‘Sorry, you don’t get to eat today because of the federal government partial shutdown,’ but it would mean we would have to amend and move some money around to cover,” said Copeland.

According to Copeland, should he need to approach the CCSD No. 2 Board of Trustees about a budget amendment to allocate funding for the program, he doesn’t expect much pushback — if at all. Many of the board members are parents who have children in one of the seven schools or care about the health and safety of the students.

“That’s why they’re on the board,” Copeland said.

The superintendent stated that, ideally, he would hope that when the government shutdown ended the school district would be reimbursed for the lunches covered with local funds.

“Although, I guess technically there’s no guarantee of that. That would be my expectation, but even if we didn’t I would certainly move forward anyway with saying ‘We’ve got to come up with a backup plan on these lunches,’” said Copeland. “Whether it would be fund balance or whether it’s some area where we can move money and reduce spending somewhere, put something off until next school year. In a $15 million budget, we would hope to be able to find up to $70,000 because it’s not that big of percentage of the $15 million and we’re certainly not going to let any of our students go hungry.”

For the time being, the free or reduced lunch program is funded and Copeland is holding out hope that the government will reopen before the funding runs out. If it doesn’t, though, Copeland, and the school district, have their plan in place and the wellbeing of the students in mind.

Update: As of Jan. 25, a three-week funding measure had been passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, keeping the government open until February.