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Keystone Mission distributes food to more than 1,100 families in need

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Mindy Kaling brings back NEPA connection in movie

<p>KINGSTON &#8212; The obvious news may have been that, in a zealous effort to get more than $20,000 owed for student lunches, Wyoming Valley West School District sent out letters to parents warning of a potential court date that, theoretically, could lead to children being placed in foster care.</p><p>But another big issue emerged in the saga: WVW&#8217;s enrollment of low-income students has apparently grown enough to qualify for a federal program offering free breakfasts and lunches to all students.</p><p>School Board President Joe Mazur confirmed both the collection letters and the eligibility for the program Wednesday.</p><p>Mazur conceded the letters were &#8220;threatening and a little strong,&#8221; primarily because they warned that the district could take legal action to force payment, including going to &#8220;dependency court,&#8221; where a judge could hypothetical decide the parent failed to provide a child with proper nutrition, prompting foster placement.</p><p>But he also defended the effort. &#8220;We have people that owe money for a year, some maybe more, and we tried all kinds of ways to contact them. We sent letters, emails, robo-calls, trying to make arrangements to pay. The last letter sent out was a nice letter saying come in, we need to discuss this, and it didn&#8217;t get one return.&#8221;</p><p>Mazur said he didn&#8217;t see the threatening letter before it was sent out by Federal Programs Director Joseph Muth, who was out of the office Wednesday. But Mazur insisted the letter &#8220;certainly did the job&#8221; in generating responses. &#8220;We took a drastic measure. It probably wasn&#8217;t very popular, but it never is when you try to collect payment.</p><p>&#8220;This was an attempt to collect money that is owed us. I think it&#8217;s time that people who can afford to pay, pay. Those who can&#8217;t, we certainly will work with them.&#8221;</p><p>There may be cases where the families are eligible to participate in the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, he added, but have not applied.</p><p>That could become a moot point this fall, he added, saying Muth had gone through the records to find out how many students were eligible, and that this year for the first time &#8220;We are over the threshold, so for the next five years every child can get a free meal.&#8221;</p><p>Mazur wasn&#8217;t certain of the program providing those meals, but it appears he was referring to the Community Eligible Provision, or CEP, first offered in 2014 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the free and reduced lunch program.</p><p>If a district has at least 40 percent of students in families living at or below the federal poverty level, it is eligible for CEP, but there&#8217;s a financial risk.</p><p>Under CEP, rather than getting reimbursed per meal served to eligible students, the government pays for enough meals to feed all those who are eligible and 60 percent more than that. That&#8217;s because an analysis showed that, on average, for every 10 students identified as eligible, there are another six who are also eligible but didn&#8217;t apply for the free meals.</p><p>The risk: If the federal reimbursement doesn&#8217;t cover all the students who get free meals, the district has to cover the additional cost.</p><p>In practical terms, that means districts will likely lose money under CEP unless it has at least 60 percent eligible students. There are, broadly, two ways to determine if a family is eligible for free and reduced lunch: direct federal certification of eligibility because they qualify for other federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and eligibility through the application process at the school.</p><p>When CEP was first introduced, Wilkes-Barre Area School Board voted to join the program that year. Superintendent Brian Costello said Wednesday that it has worked out very well for the district. According to state data, in 2018-19 the district had 50.33 percent enrollment directly certified eligible, and 77.5 percent deemed economically disadvantaged &#8212; an indicator of eligibility for the free and reduced lunch program.</p><p>Greater Nanticoke Area, on the other hand, has not taken advantage of CEP despite meeting the 40 percent poverty threshold. Superintendent Ronald Grevera said the district falls shy of the 60 percent eligible point where CEP pays for all meals. If the district did opt for CEP, he estimated it would have to spend about $150,000 a year for meals served for free that weren&#8217;t covered by the federal reimbursement. &#8220;It&#8217;s just not economically feasible.&#8221;</p><p>According to state data, two other Luzerne County Districts are participating in CEP along with Wilkes-Barre Area: Hanover Area and Hazleton Area.</p><p>Wyoming Valley West has been near eligibility for years, the data shows, with 64.2 percent of students deemed economically disadvantaged, and 32 percent directly certified eligible for the free lunch program in 2019.</p><p>If Mazur&#8217;s statement that the district is newly eligible to offer free meals to all students refers to CEP, the good news is that every student can get a free meal, and the problem of collecting payments will disappear.</p><p>The bad news: The poverty rate has risen among students.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Chester Street Elementary school in Kingston. Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/web1_TTL071819WVW2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Chester Street Elementary school in Kingston. Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div>

WVW school board president defends threatening collection letters