^ it doesn’t get him/her any automatic legal help, but providing context for his/her junior grades will make the difference, assuming the freshman -sophomore grades were good. A sudden drop in academic performance needs an explanation; when there’s none, it raises questions. Being homeless is the explanation that also excuses any drop in grades, pretty much. It’s essential information to analyze the academic record.
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This is just to make things clear because I’m not sure about other states, but in TN all students in any school are given free lunch and breakfast.
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Unless the state of Tenn has their own free lunch program, this doesn’t sound accurate. The typical free breakfast/free lunch program if the FEDERAL one and a state couldn’t just decide that everyone gets it unless the STATE paid for the ones who don’t qualify for fed meals.
I actually did a Google for free lunch in TN, as indeed, many districts offer free breakfast and lunch to,all students.
But to the OP…this is different than meeting the financial,qualifications for a means tested benefit like federal free or reduced lunch. If your family income is LOW and you meet certain incime thresholds,you don’t have to report assets…if you also qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Some districts or schools have the majority of their students qualify for free lunch, and therefore everyone gets it. It would be more spent in paperwork qualifying all those students than it costs to just give everyone the free food. Some also have programs funded in other ways. Every student in Denver Public schools gets free breakfast, but not free lunch (some schools are 100% free lunch too). Many schools are open all summer and anyone can eat breakfast and lunch for free or low cost (adults). Rec centers also have free snacks and lunches all summer. Schools send home food for the weekend. Schools are rarely closed for snow days because then the kids don’t eat, and if they are, the elementary schools try to open for meals for those who can get there.
I think all schools should have free lunch. They are children, feed them. I don’t care if a few millionaire kids take advantage of free lunches that were intended for poor children. The paperwork for the free lunch programs and all the notices to parents that the student has no money in the account and even the cash registers would be eliminated. I also think all children should have a snack of milk and perhaps a graham cracker mid-morning. We had milk in the mornings in grade school (you have to love Wisconsin) and were weren’t ravenous by lunch.
When I’m king, that’s the first think I’m going to do. Free food for children.
@twoinanddone-I couldn’t agree with you more re: offering free lunches to all children. Those who qualify obviously need them. Those who don’t exactly qualify may still need them. And those who don’t qualify- well, typically they don’t like/approve of what is offered in the free lunches anyway and will bring their own “better” lunches (and therefore won’t abuse the system).
In some places, children are shamed if they need free lunch. In others, children go without lunch and/or are shamed if the parents can’t pay for lunch and their accounts get frozen.
If it is offered to everyone, no shame. And we’d have well-fed students who can pay attention better in school.
@ChiCasa myadvice to you, as a social worker, is to stop looking for advice here on CC. You desperately need to be talking one-on-one with your school social worker and guidance counselor who can point you in the right direction. Be bluntly honest and let them know exactly what your circumstances are. If you are truly homeless and haven’t had any support or true communication with your dad, they need to know these things, because the upside is the potential benefits available to you as a student searching for colleges. There are many posters here that can assist you with the financial aspects and college search but until you are sure where things stand legally all this information is worthless because it is all based on the “what ifs”.
My only other advice to you is to stay the course…keep your grades up, take the tests and do as well as you possibly can, and then when you have found out legally where you stand on the financial aid status, come back and we can all help you find the best school for you given your particular circumstances. At this time, you have all you can handle.
Best of luck to you! Sounds like you’ve had a difficult time and for that I am sorry.
This is the advice that i give my kids;
Every every student should apply for free/reduced lunch. Some students do not even realize that they are eligible.
It does not matter if you don’t eat or don’t like the free free; apply and see if you are eligible.
There are a lot of programs available to you in your school if you qualify for free lunch;
Academic intervention services, which are connected to Title I monies,
fee waivers for testing, applications and the CSS profile,
based on your parents income, the ability to qualified for simplified needs or automatic 0 EFC.
Some schools have opportunity programs for academically/economically disadvantaged students. One of the first things that has to be done on the school end is verify that student is eligible for free reduced lunch.
Your school must keep records for everyone who is eligible for free reduced lunch.
If you are homeless, even if you are not an unaccompanied minor, you must inform your should. There are usually set aside funding for students who are in transitional housing; monies for school supplies, clothes for PE, eye glasses, winter coats, senior dues, etc.
The application paperwork that I have seen for free/reduced school meals clearly states the eligibility criteria based on family size and income. If you are sure that you will not be eligible based on the published criteria, there are plenty of reasons not to submit the paperwork, not the least of which is to keep personal financial information out of the hands of school bureaucrats.
Not to mention how you would look “applying” for something you clearly don’t qualify for. Personally, we work hard so that we don’t need charity.
A family of 5 making $52,614 would qualify for reduced lunch in school year 2016/17.
Those families definitely work since that is about the average family income in the US.
I am not talking about people who obviously know they don’t qualify. But that is not the case for most high school kids especially those who live in low income school districts or state their parents don’t make a lot of money
Op definitely should apply
She says that everyone in her school get free lunch (would not be suprised) if they are a title one school
My kids went to a camp and everyone had to fill out the application for free lunch. The camp was reimbursed for the food if the the family qualified. It took about 5 minutes to complete.
Not that it matters, but I was 7 years old in 1967 when my 19-year-old brother was drafted and subsequently sent to Germany. And I have a kid roughly the same age as the OP, so I’m not sure why that particular part of the OP’s story got so much attention.
I really hope you can get some answers from your social worker as @NEPatsGirl suggested, and then come back so folks here can offer you more specific advice, @ChiCasa. Fingers crossed for you!
I’m sure that there are also hard-working people who do need charity.
If everyone who attends the high school gets a free lunch and OP attends the school, why wouldn’t she qualify?
The reason we have free lunch and other public assistance programs is to help those who need it. When we (purposely or otherwise) embarrass those who need help, it has the unhappy tendency of making them too embarrassed to apply for it. What useful purpose does that serve?
I have no doubt OP’s mom has been working very hard. Holding down a full-time job while making sure her daughter gets to school everyday, arranging care for her mentally ill son, driving 90 minutes every weekend so OP can stay with her grandmother and driving another 90 minutes to get her back to school on Monday, all while living in her car (and without any assistance from her children’s dad) has to have been difficult. I’m so glad she’s been able to find an apartment. I wish her well.
I’ve been in a situation before where we were told that we “had to” complete the free lunch/snack application, even though I knew we weren’t close to being eligible. I refused to provide the requested financial information just so that someone could get the required check in the box for administrative inspection purposes (this was a government run day care on a military base).
^^But I’m nice. This was a camp run through Catholic Charities and they were taking my kids for a week, giving them transportation to the camp, feeding them, and returning them. They wanted the paperwork completed, and I completed it.
^^
I guess you’re saying that I’m not nice. And if refusing to unnecessarily fill out paperwork that divulges personal financial information in order to fulfill someone else’s administrative inspection criteria makes me not nice, then I’ll live with that. (But I declined to complete the paperwork in a “nice” way.)
States can do a ‘direct certification’ for many students bypassing the need for the household survey. If a child’s household receives SNAP benefits- they will qualify for free/reduced lunch. Beginning last year, the feds offered a program where school districts with high levels of poverty can provide free lunch to all. The household surveys and direct certification processes are often still completed to identify those who qualify for other services such as fee waivers for ACT, SAT, and AP tests.
@chicasa- check your PMs and/or respond to mine-- I would be happy to help you contact a TN Achieves mentor who can assist you with the college application process.
Programs that say they require everyone to apply for free lunch might be doing so to make sure they don’t miss anyone. It’s sometimes easier to get families who need the assistance to apply if everyone has to fill out the forms because then it doesn’t make them feel like they’re being singled out. Families who know they won’t qualify can quietly dispose of the papers.