BELLE — Maries County R-2 Superintendent Dr. Lenice Basham informed the board of education on June 27 that its Community Eligibility (CEP) grant which allowed students to receive free meals over the last five years has expired.

“We currently do not meet the high participation rate to continue with this program,” Basham said in a community press release. “The eligibility is not based on how many of our students qualify for free and reduced meals by application but on the percentage of our student population that qualify for (meal assistance programs).”

Changes will take effect beginning in the new school year.

“All buildings will begin paying for breakfast and lunch in 2023-24 as we no longer qualify for CEP meals,” Basham said. “Because we have a positive balance in our SNP financial report, we are not required to raise the costs of student meals.”

The cost of student breakfast will now be $1.20 and $2 for lunches. Adults will pay $1.50 for breakfast and $2.85 for lunch.

The board voted to approve the cost of the meals.

The CEP grant, available through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, allowed the district to serve more meals in the previous school year because the middle and elementary school lunches were free. The high school continued to pay for their meals.

“We served 21,143 full price lunches, 13,265 full price breakfasts, 390 reduced price breakfasts and 35,306 free breakfasts from July 2022 to June 2023,” Basham said. “We anticipate that the number of meals served next school year will decrease due to the loss of the CEP free meal program.”

The CEP program began in 2018-19 and allowed every student in the elementary and middle schools to receive free meals. The program is awarded based on the number of free and reduced lunches in each building. To qualify, the district must have 40 percent of students in the building be eligible for meal assistance programs.

Since all meals are free for BES and BMS students, household applications for free and reduced lunches were not collected from either school for the first years. Basham said the district needs to get families back in the habit of filling out the forms, whether they qualify or not.

“The concern is no one has been required to fill out a free or reduced lunch form for so long that to make sure the percentage is high enough to continue the program (it will require implementing the free or reduced lunch forms again),” Basham said in a May 2022 article. “We need parents to fill out the free or reduced lunch application to see if they qualify. This is our final year and we will have to start again.”

The school met the qualifications of direct certification when more than 40 percent of students enrolled in the building qualified for free or reduced lunch.

Basham said the district has already mailed out free and reduced lunch forms to parents in hopes of getting a head start in collecting the information.

“We want to encourage all parents to complete the free/reduced lunch application that is being mailed to you,” she said. “We want all families eligible to receive free or reduced meal prices to receive their children’s meals at a reduced or free price. The free/reduced lunch application can be mailed to rwillis@mariesr2.org or dropped off at school. If you already receive one of the above listed programs (SNAP or TANF), you will be directly certified for free lunches and do not have to submit an application.

Foster children may be eligible regardless of the income of the household with whom they reside.

Belle Elementary School (BES) became part of CEP in April 2017. Then in 2018, the district learned they could combine the number of BES families who received state aid with the amount of BMS aid-recipient families to perhaps qualify the middle school for the program.

The middle school failed to qualify for the program by five students in 2018 — meaning the school was five students short of 40 percent on free or reduced lunch applications. However, BMS was included in the successful 2019-20 application.

The five year grant ended at the conclusion of the 2022-23 school year.

The application will be available after Aug. 1 online. To apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) program, you can apply online at https://mydss.mo.gov/food-assi...