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Show Free school lunch guidelines set By G.BRETT HART FARMINGTON The Davis County School District has announced an-nounced its 1990-91, free and reduced school lunch program for qualifying families. According to District Food Service Ser-vice Director Lynn Trenbeath, the 1990-91 policy remains unchanged from last year's program except for the federally mandated income requirements. re-quirements. Davis schools expect almost 24 percent of its students to qualify for the reduced or free lunces. If current estimates are correct, over 13,000 of the district's approximate approx-imate 55,000 students are expected : to participate in the program. Trenbeath said this figure is up from last year. Over 1 1 ,000 of the district's 53,247 students had free or reduced lunches during the 1989-90 1989-90 school year. Income guidelines are determined deter-mined by the federal government and change from year to year. For example, last year, children from a family of four with an annual an-nual income ranging from $15,730 to 22,385 qu ali fed for reduced price lunches. Children of families with an annual an-nual income of less than $15,730 received free lunches. This year's income requirement for a family of four ranges from $16,510 to 23,495. Trenbeath attributes the increase in income requirement to the rate of inflation. According to Trenbeath, only one application per family is required regardless of the number of children a given family may have in the Davis School system. Trenbeath also indicated that the school lunch program is not funded by the district and is required to be self-sufficient. School lunch regularly costs 85 cents for elementary students and $ 1 for secondary school lunches. "Our cost ranges from $1.09 to $1.40 to prepare the meals. We receive federal and state funds to subsidize the price of the lunch. Besides these funds, the Davis County School lunch program receives $1 million in USDA commodities com-modities each year. The state liquor tax is also devoted to the school lunch program. pro-gram. "We have a $9 million budget which funds the 6 million lunches served every year in Davis County schools and the 464 employees and equipment involved in serving 34,000 school lunches a day, said Trenbeath. "Wc receive $1.50 from the government for every free lunch and $1.10 for reduced price lunches. lun-ches. This money is fed back into the budget, and, hopefully, we come out in the black at the end of the year. |