By a 3-2 commissioners’ vote, Macon County will fund up to $200,000 for free lunches for Franklin High School and Highlands K-12 School in the 2024-25 school year.
Along with the other nine public schools in Macon County already qualifying for the North Carolina Community Eligibility Provision, this funding will ensure all kids eat lunch for free this school year.
Commissioners Gary Shields, Danny Antoine and Josh Young voted in favor, while Paul Higdon and John Shearl voted against at the Macon County Board of Commissioners meeting on Aug. 13.
Macon County Schools Nutrition Director David Lightner presented the request, unanimously approved by the school board at its July meeting.
Lightner talked about how the other nine schools got universal free lunch last year and the hope was Franklin High and Highlands would qualify this year. Commissioners Chair Gary Shields asked why the request was coming in after the budget. Lightner said the data process to determine if a school qualifies for free lunches took through the summer and MCS found out in July that Highlands School and FHS didn’t qualify. The county budget had to be approved by June 30 to begin the new fiscal year on July 1.
Franklin High’s free/reduced lunch qualification percentage was 54.1% and Highlands’ was 44.4%. Shields, a former FHS principal, said many parents won’t sign up for free/reduced lunches out of pride, even if they’re eligible, leading to those kids borrowing and stealing food.
“There are a lot of families that are borderline that fall outside of the range…there are a lot of families that pay for multiple students and it’s burdensome, especially since COVID,” Lightner told the commissioners. “We have a lot of students raised by their grandparents [who are] using their retirement money to pay for kids to eat at school.”
Lightner said free lunches help school attendance, increase student focus in the classrooms, decrease student incidents and save instructional money from paying unpaid lunch debt. Lightner said in 2023-24, the unpaid student lunch debt was $8,162, most of that from FHS. Before COVID, lunch debt for all 11 schools would be no more than $2,000.
If the paid lunch plan for both schools went forward, MCS already approved raising prices from $3.75 and $3.85 for K-4 and 5-12 grades, respectively, to $4 across the board.
Some pre-COVID options are gradually returning due to suppliers offering them. For instance, FHS will have a salad bar this coming school year.
Higdon asked what the MCS undesignated fund balance was. The answer from School Board Chair Jim Breedlove was $2 million. Breedlove then explained that operating MCS for one month would cost $800,000.
Antoine said funding the free lunch mandate was “not a question for him,” saying he works with families in the community whose kids go home hungry.
“It’s in the best interest for the child and in the best interest for the family,” Shields said.
Shearl said nothing is free and someone is paying for it, asking the hypothetical question “What if the food bank came in here and said that we need $200,000 to buy food boxes to supply food for all these families that don’t have dinner on their table tonight, that don’t have kids in the school system?”
Shearl went on to say his family asked for free lunches when he was growing up.
“One thing that caught my attention here was ‘decrease financial burden on families.’ How are you decreasing the burden on a family when they don’t have kids and they can’t afford to buy groceries and medicine? Isn’t that passing that burden on to that family?” Shearl said, adding that the county funding free lunches wouldn’t be fair to childless families.
“Surely to God you can find $200,000,” Shearl told the school representatives, believing there was money to find elsewhere. Shearl also said parents who don’t qualify for free or reduced lunches can afford lunches for their kids.
Earlier in the presentation, Board of Education member Hilary Wilkes said the school system reached out to different organizations to fund the free lunch mandate but was told it “wasn’t in their scope” by those groups.
Shearl said something he read “in the newspaper” about taking out the paperwork “caught him the wrong way,” saying it sounded to him like the school board didn’t want to process the paperwork. School Board Member Diedre Breeden explained that Jackson County’s free-lunch vote included funding to avoid having parents fill out free lunch paperwork. MCS officials have repeatedly said they would work to have parents/guardians fill out free lunch paperwork so they can qualify as a school system next year. Despite this explanation, Shearl questioned whether that was true.
Higdon said he couldn’t support the ask since it’s happening outside of the budget process, saying the commissioners are running the county like a business.
Young said the county feeds people in jail and feeds the seniors, so while it was a tough decision for him, he was in favor. Young also asked the school system to pursue applications to find funding.
As part of the county’s approval, Lightner will provide monthly lunch figures to Macon County throughout the 2024-25 school year.