More Clark County students to get free lunches

The Clark County School Board on Thursday extended free lunches to 20,000 more public school students for the remainder of the school year.

The School Board decided to extend free lunches to students who qualify for reduced lunch prices under federal poverty guidelines.

Those students were paying 40 cents for a lunch that normally costs $1.75 for elementary students and $3 for secondary students in the Clark County School District.

Because of the depressed economy, many low-income students couldn't afford the cost and were skipping meals, said Charles Anderson, director of the district's food service department.

As a pilot program, Clark High School, 4291 Pennwood Ave., east of Arville Street, has been offering free meals to students since Jan. 4.

Clark student Calvin Ni, 16, said the lunch lines "have become long" and the atmosphere "upbeat."

"I want to say on behalf of all our students, thank you," Ni told the School Board on Thursday.

The district provided no figures on how much the expansion of the free lunch program would cost, but Anderson said the district could afford it through savings based on volume, or economies of scale.

He also noted that Congress is considering eliminating the reduced price category in legislation for the renewal of the National School Lunch Program, which reimburses school districts for the cost of free and reduced lunch.

As of October, the free and reduced lunch program served 140,064 district students.

In other business, School Board President Terri Janison had school police officers remove community activists Marzette Lewis and Beatrice Turner from the meeting at the Greer Education Center for disrupting proceedings with loud talk.

Both are members of WAAK-UP, the Westside Action Alliance Korps, Uplifting People, and have been demanding the district replace 31 portable classrooms at West Prep Academy, near Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards.

"I gave them fair warning," Janison said.

Contact reporter James Haug at jhaug@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4686.