OCEAN CITY – More students on the lower Eastern Shore are living at or below the poverty line than ever before, forcing school systems to dedicate more resources toward feeding kids in addition to educating them.
According to state and county data, 44 percent of students in Worcester County are living in households struggling with poverty and thusly qualify for the FARMS program, or Free and Reduced Meals Services. That figure is up 11 percent from 2003-04 and exceeds the state average of 38 percent.
In neighboring Wicomico and Somerset counties, the number of students struggling with poverty is even higher.
In Wicomico, almost 60 percent of students qualify for free and reduced meals, up almost 17 percent from 2003-04, and in Somerset County, an astonishing 89 percent of students qualify for the FARMS program, which is up 31 percent from 2003-04.
“What we offer is free and reduced meals at breakfast and lunch for the children who qualify and sign up”, said Worcester County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry Wilson. “Also in our afterschool programs, students have the opportunity for a light meal before they leave school. So we are taking different steps for providing meals for the students who need it.”
Last year, Somerset County became the first county in the state to provide free meals to all its public school students.
“How we started was by looking at each and every school in our county and examining the poverty rate and realizing that poverty was through the roof county-wide,” said Somerset Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Gaddis. “Poverty doesn’t know race or color and we couldn’t just pick a few schools over the others so each one of our students, all 2,967 of them last year, received a lunch and a breakfast at no charge.”
The Community Eligibility Program (CEP) helped Somerset County provide at least two meals per day to children who were living in the state’s poorest county, and one that had long struggled with high unemployment rates and the community impacts of Superstorm Sandy.
“Poverty for us is the lowest family median income, the lowest individual income, the highest childhood obesity rate, and one of the highest high school dropout rates in Maryland,” said Gaddis. “We heard from so many families who were constantly trying to scramble to find lunch money each day, even if they were in the reduced meals program, so we knew we had to do it across the board.”
The CEP saved families approximately $657 a year, or about $3.65 daily (breakfast and lunch combine price per student), and reversed the five-digit deficit that Somerset’s food service division was operating under due to the CEP’s reimbursement program.
Tracy Sahler, public information officer at Wicomico County Public Schools, notes that while the numbers are rising for students who qualify for free and reduced meals, some schools see higher participation numbers than others.
“It really fluctuates,” said Sahler. “Some of our schools see almost 70 percent of students on free and reduced meals, while others have much lower numbers.”
In Worcester County, that fluctuation is even more profound.
Wilson notes that the income levels in the northern part of the county differ drastically from the southern end of the county, which is why there is a much higher participation rate for the FARMS program in Pocomoke and Snow Hill.
“We have some targeted areas in our area where we reach out beyond the school site to provide places in which a meal can be provided to students who need it,” he said.
Gaddis, who used to be the assistant superintendent in Worcester, believes that there is a stigma attached to the FARMS program.
“There are many people and families who could really benefit from the program who don’t want anyone to know that they are eligible for it,” said Gaddis. “People in Somerset are incredibly proud, too, and no one wants others to think they are getting handouts, but in some cases, school was the only for-sure meal many of these kids were getting a day.”
This year, Somerset is serving thousands of more free meals, according to Gaddis, and the program’s success prompted Baltimore City to pick up the CEP program as well this year. In Wicomico and Worcester, there has been an uptick in FARMS program participation amongst middle school and high school students.
Studies show a connection between academic learning, classroom behavior and malnourishment, so for school systems here on the Lower Shore, making sure kids have a full belly so they can better fill their brains with knowledge, has become a much higher priority in recent years.
“If kids are coming to school hungry, they are not attentive, they can have behavioral issues, and they have trouble learning,” said Gaddis. “We have to pay attention to social issues like poverty, because for us in Somerset, as I imagine it is in Worcester and Wicomico on a smaller scale, this is an opportunity to do something that has economic, educational and nutritional impact.”