The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Ohio has 840,000 students getting school lunch aid

New pool at 'The Heights' opens
5/27/12
Huber Heights suing consultant for more than $50,000
5/26/12
4 arrested for OVI at Kettering checkpoint
5/26/12
Man found dead at bar; police seek suspect
5/26/12
Turner adopts role for Romney campaign
5/26/12
> More headlines

The Associated Press Updated 3:31 PM Sunday, January 15, 2012

COLUMBUS, Ohio — More than 840,000 students are getting subsidized meals at school this year, setting a record high, according to new data from the Ohio Department of Education.

That means nearly half of Ohio children in school are getting free or reduced-price lunches, The Columbus Dispatch (http://bit.ly/xCrX0V ) reported Sunday. The data show the percentage of students receiving lunch aid has climbed from just under 29 percent a decade ago to about 45 percent this school year.

Students can qualify for aid through the federal lunch program based on family income, making the data a good indicator of poverty or economic well-being among families with schoolchildren. Students can become eligible for free meals if their annual household income is less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $29,0000 for a family of four. Students whose families earn up to 185 percent of the poverty level, or about $41,300, can get reduced-cost lunches.

The number of students taking advantage of those provisions has increased as the recession battered family budgets when people lost jobs or income, the newspaper reported. Some school districts have responded by adding free or reduced-price breakfasts at school or offering other meals on weekends and during summer break.

In the Columbus area, much of the increased participation has occurred in the suburbs as some middle-class families found their income reduced for various reasons. Since 2001, the percentage of students in the program has at least tripled in eight suburban districts, the newspaper said.

In Worthington, for example, one in 20 students were enrolled in the program a decade ago. Today it's one in four.

"It's becoming a much more diverse community both socioeconomically and ethnically," Assistant Superintendent Trent Bowers said.

That's reflected in the number of people seeking help from the Worthington Food Pantry & Resource Center, which opened two years ago and now serves 300 families a month.

"We see people who never ever thought they would be coming to a pantry other than to be generous with their time or to write a check," executive director Debra Grey Boyd said. "Those people who did have professional careers and salaries, when you had $150,000 income and you had the lifestyle to go with it, you go underwater really, really, really fast, and you cannot eat your car."

___

Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, http://www.dispatch.com

___

January 15, 2012 08:29 PM EST

Share this article