DILLON,SC (WBTW) – In South Carolina more than 500 schools are high-poverty.
This means school districts are eligible to use a tool known as community eligibility.
Community eligibility helps ensure that low-income children, whose families are often struggling to put food on the table, have access to healthy meals at school.
The funds for the program come through the national school lunch and school breakfast programs.
Because of the high poverty rate across South Carolina more than fifty-percent of schools qualify for community eligibility including each of the eight schools in Dillon School District Four.
School officials say the district feeds about 4800 kids each day for breakfast and lunch.
Food Service Coordinator Dawn Bailey says the district was introduced to the program three years ago.
Community eligibility also helps schools and school districts streamline their operations and reduce paperwork.
“So that means parents do not have to fill out applications for their kids to see if they’re eligible for free or reduced lunch, so there is no more applications that they have to worry with and they just go in grab a tray at breakfast and at lunch and they all eat free,” mentioned Bailry.
In May of 2015, each state was required to publish a list of schools eligible for the program for this school year.
In South Carolina 657 schools qualify for community eligibility.
According to the South Carolina Department of Education more than twenty-percent of households with children lack access to adequate food.
