SPRINGVILLE, NY (WKBW) — It's lunchtime inside the Springville Elementary School with all the smells of a school cafeteria. But students no longer need to worry about paying for their lunch.
“Every student has access to this and there's really nothing the families need to do,” explained James Bialasik, superintendent, Springville-Griffith Institute Central School District.
The district announced Monday that it would begin the free meals to students starting Tuesday, January 17.
Superintendent Bialasik tells me they noticed a big drop in students buying meals, so the school board unanimously passed a plan to provide free breakfast and lunch for all students starting Tuesday until the end of the school year in June.
“We saw a drop 33-percent of students less were getting breakfast. 25 percent less students were getting lunch on a day-to-day basis and so we are hoping we are going to see those numbers rebound,” remarked Bialasik.
“So we're amped up across the board and we're ready — very excited that we can offer this to families,” declared Laura Watson, director, district culinary services.
During the pandemic, schools were allowed to offer free meals, but that expired last June. In the meantime, grocery prices have skyrocketed and more families are facing poverty.
“This is definitely going to impact the community as well as far as social and economic status,” reflected Watson.
Watson says a lot of high schools students were skipping lunch or asking friends to buy them a meal.
“We are getting a huge influx of calls as far as students' accounts with parents asking what happened. What's going on? That I'm getting charged for second lunches and the kids are really taking care of their friends,” noted Watson.
Some students have been actually coming to school hungry even going down to the nurse's office asking for food.
“Kids are going in and asking for things after breakfast — coming in late — not being able to make it to lunch or worried about affecting mom and dad's wallets,” replied Watson.
“We do see families that are struggling — a good number of families that are struggling and it's difficult for them to pay for meals for their children,” said Bialasik. “We are actually pretty close to being able to provide free meals for at least one of our schools across the board based on our poverty rate — we're not quite there yet, but we are pretty close."
The federal government recently changed laws for how school lunch programs are governed allowing the district to offer free meals for now.
“So how do you cover that cost?” Buckley asked. “That's a great question — what we've seen - I think this is a need all over not just here in Springville and because of that the USDA actually allowed us to use excess funds in our school lunch program in order to subsidize meals prior to November 2022 — that was never an option,” Bialasik responded.
The superintendent calls this A "stop-gap" to provide families with some temporary relief, but he says he will advocate for state or federal help to offer all students free meals in future school years.
