How will every Oklahoma school district fund free lunches? Walters says they must make it a priority
By Meghan Mosley
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Oklahoma (KOCO) — Every student in Oklahoma will be eating free lunch during the upcoming school year, according to a new directive sent out Monday by State Superintendent Ryan Walters.
Hundreds of schools in the state already use federal funds to pay for their students’ lunches. But this order means no Oklahoma student will be paying for lunch.
“What we’re talking about here is there’s plenty of money in our public schools. Money is not the problem. It’s how the money is spent,” Walters said.
Walters surprised parents and school districts with the memo on Monday. He said every Oklahoma school district must fully fund student meals starting this school year.
“I’m tired of watching parents pay for school lunches when they’ve already paid for lunches twice through their taxpayer dollars locally for school lunches and federally through school lunch programs,” Walters said.
Districts like Oklahoma City Public Schools have been providing school meals for nearly a decade through the Community Eligibility Provision. CEP is for schools in high-poverty areas to offer free meals to those who are eligible.
This is also something districts, like Putnam City, Mid-Del, Moore and Norman already do. But for schools that don’t qualify, they now have to figure out how to fund this on their own.
“The first thing districts need to do is take care of those kids. They need to look at the money they have, make sure they have enough to pay for lunches and then they need to look at the educational materials, academic materials, then make decisions from there,” Walters said.
Walters said districts may have to scale back to make this work.
“The reality is, I’ll be honest with you, it’s not overly complicated. Don’t hire as many administrative staff, and put the money in school lunches first,” Walters said.
If a district doesn’t have a zero balance on student lunches, he said there will be action.
“If they send me a budget and it doesn’t have school lunches paid for, I’m sending it back to them and telling them they won’t be accredited until they get that figured out,” Walters said.
Walters’ media spokesperson told KOCO that the deadline to submit line-item budgets is Oct. 1.
KOCO reached out to several impacted districts on Monday, and they said they learned about this order at the same time the media did. They don’t have a plan in place yet.
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