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player ready...There was a time, principal Dave Larsen recalls, when the free-lunch program in suburban District 59 was a dozen cold sandwiches stuffed inside a small cardboard box.
Now, when the lunch bell rings at Larsen’s John Jay Elementary School in Mt. Prospect, more than half of the 410 students standing in the cafeteria line will eat for free. Their families, surrounded by suburban prosperity, live in near-poverty, qualifying them for federally subsidized lunches.
And their ranks are growing.
Population increases, new immigration patterns and retooling of the American workplace have all added to the challenges facing suburban schools such as John Jay Elementary.
Once considered a refuge by parents fleeing city problems, suburban schools now face a more complex reality.
Administrators who once focused mainly on standardized test scores and college-preparation classes now must turn attention to more fundamental needs: feeding hungry children.
“I suspect that, sometimes, the free lunch is the biggest meal the kids have all day,” said Larsen.
What is happening in District 59 is echoing throughout the suburbs and Illinois, puzzling state and federal officials who run the school lunch program.
Illinois, like much of the rest of the nation, is supposed to be in an economic boom. The suburbs, often viewed as well-to-do enclaves, are supposed to be doing even better than most.
The economic forecasts were so strong that Illinois education officials projected a drop in the demand for free lunches this year. Instead, demand increased by nearly 4 percent over last year.
The number of free lunches distributed in Illinois will jump by 1.2 million this year, to nearly 90 million, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. Reduced-price lunches, offered to moderate-income families, jumped by 1.5 million. Paid lunches, bought at full price by students who can afford them, dropped by nearly 1 million meals.
“We were surprised by it,” said Jim Burke, director of the State Board of Education’s outreach services division. “The school lunch program is not showing that we’re in a boom economy.”
The trend is similar nationally.
In the late 1980s, while the country was in the grips of a recession, less than half of the schoolchildren who got their lunch at school qualified for a free meal. Today, 57 percent qualify, despite a muscular economy, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program.
Increased demand for free lunches can be partially explained by soaring school enrollments, particularly in the suburbs, officials said.
A simplification of the lunch program’s enrollment process and the perception that children no longer feel stigmatized by participating in the program also have contributed to increased participation, they said.
But such changes alone could not account for such large increases, officials said. They attribute most of the growth to increased immigration in the suburbs and a changing workplace, in which more people are working, but for lower wages, making it harder for them to lift themselves out of poverty.
Such social shifts are apparent in the community around John Jay Elementary.
A cluster of apartments in the neighborhood, which were home to senior citizens and singles in the 1970s and 1980s, now are rented almost exclusively by low-income families.
In contrast, at nearby Clearmont School in Elk Grove Village, which is surrounded by single-family homes, 21 of 573 students are eligible for a free lunch.
The shift in demographics in Mt. Prospect and other northwest suburbs, including Des Plaines, Palatine and Schaumburg, has carved out pockets of poverty alongside affluent neighborhoods.
At Palatine School District 15, officials said roughly 20 percent of students are eligible for free lunches, as well as a free breakfast served at six of the district’s 19 schools.
Yet many suburban school districts are still wrestling with the new challenges these demographic shifts have wrought.
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Joyce Graetz, the school lunch coordinator at District 59, recalls the problems the district encountered when it attempted to expand on the free-lunch program at Friendship Junior High in Mt. Prospect by offering free breakfasts to children from low-income families.
While 112 students at Friendship receive a free lunch, only two students showed up for breakfast. The problem, the district quickly determined, was that the students had no way to get to school early enough to eat breakfast.
“We really needed parents to bring the students to school before classes started, and most of the kids in the federal program don’t have transportation,” Graetz said. “They take the bus, and by the time they got to school, breakfast was over.”
Still, some parents, like Dawn Gonzalez of Mt. Prospect, are convinced the free lunch program is one of the most user-friendly and effective social-service programs available to struggling families.
Gonzalez, 28, said she and her husband, John, enrolled in the program four years ago while they wrestled with the difficulties of raising three children younger than 6.
“The free-lunch program makes a big difference for kids,” said Gonzalez, who no longer uses the program since she and her husband have traded in low-paying retail jobs for full-time work in a Vernon Hills factory.
“In a lot of cases, I don’t know how well the kids are eating at home,” she said. “With the school lunch program, they get to try a green bean, or spinach.”