“With bread all sorrows are less.” – Sancho Panza, from the novel “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes

If you ever were to survey high school seniors about what their favorite subject in school is, you would likely get a healthy split between two popular answers of P.E. and lunch with a paltry smattering of the book-learnin’ subjects rounding out the responses.

Lunch not being an actual educational subject notwithstanding, provision of school meals – which now includes breakfast in most schools – is an area we often tend to take for granted, but for some kids, school meals represent their only reliable meals of the day.

Those of you with school-age kids likely already noticed you no longer have to pin their lunch money to their shirts before school. This is thanks to a federal government program offered through the U.S. Agriculture Department known as the Community Eligibility Program, or CEP for short.

You may be thinking, “Didn’t we already have an option for free and reduced lunch?” The answer is yes. You are thinking of the National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, which is also administered by the Agriculture Department and has been in place for decades.

The main difference is schools under CEP provide free lunches to all students, regardless of family income. Under NSLP, students can apply to receive free or reduced-cost lunches if their families’ incomes are under thresholds based on the federal poverty level.

Verifying eligibility is also different between the two programs. While NSLP requires parents or guardians to submit paperwork to confirm their children are eligible based on family income, no paperwork is required for parents under CEP. The burden falls to the schools or school systems themselves to prove eligibility.

Under CEP, schools have to show a significant percentage of students’ families receive at least one form of social services such as Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program – what many people still refer to as food stamps. Migrant, foster care and homeless students who may not use social services also count toward eligibility.

Last year the threshold for a school or school system to be eligible for CEP was dropped from 40 percent to only 25 percent of students identified as meeting the requirements. This drop led many more schools to adopt CEP and drop NSLP.

Schools are awarded funding based on a formula. Basically, the higher percentage of students meeting the requirements of CEP, the greater number of meals is covered by the federal government.

The federal government may fully fund meals in schools with a high percentage of students who meet the requirements while schools with fewer students meeting the requirements will likely have to cover some costs from their own budgets since no income comes from students buying their meals.

Positives for CEP include it is simpler for students and their families with no paperwork and allows meals to be served more efficiently without students visiting a cash register in the cafeteria.

In addition, CEP may remove any stigma or embarrassment kids who were on free or reduced lunch may feel when checking out with their lunch.

Also, while the verification process for CEP is likely labor intensive and costly on the front end for school administrators, once a school or school system is qualified, the administration has the option to wait four years until they are required to submit qualifications for CEP again.

The cons include what many would consider government waste as tax dollars are spent to cover meals for children whose families may be amply able to afford paying for their meals.

Under NSLP, only students who demonstrated financial need were eligible, although a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office found improper payments for meals and lack of eligibility verification to be significant issues with NSLP.

There are also worries about repercussions on schools and students if the federal government defunded CEP, since the program is not yet as well-established as the NSLP, and about CEP furthering dependence on government itself.

Both sides make convincing arguments, but I find the CEP program to be the better option. Schools provide amenities such as books and, in more recent years, technology products such as Chromebooks for students. Meals had not been included before but seem to be a natural extension.

Furthermore, studies show more than half of Alabama students were on free and reduced meal plans anyway, so if you view this as furthering government dependence, dependence is already well-established through NSLP.

Now I just need to figure out where I can get my hands on one of those rectangular slices of pizza to see if they are still as tasty as I remember.