Lehighton Area School District’s board of directors tabled a decision Monday night on applying for a program that would allow it to offer free lunch for all students, citing a potential financial deficit.

Earlier this month, neighboring Jim Thorpe voted to opt into a Community Eligibility Provision which, according to the state Department of Education, is a reimbursement option for districts that wish to offer free meals to all children in high poverty schools.

According to the CEP program requirements, at least 40% of students in a district must be directly certified as having qualified for free or reduced lunch by an office such as Medicaid or something similar.

While Lehighton has 50.5% of its students directly certified, the CEP formula would only see the district reimbursed for around 80% of students coming through the lunch line.

“If we were to opt into CEP, we would not be reimbursed for 20% of our students, meaning we would have to come up with the remainder, which through March is around $208,000,” Business Manager Ed Rarick said. “This is a great program, but that’s a significant amount of money for the district to put up.”

According to Rarick, the district would need to hit around 62.5% direct certification to receive 100% meal reimbursement.

“We spent a lot of time running the calculations because I do think if the meals were free-for-all students, we would see increased participation,” Rarick said. “But at this point, the numbers just didn’t work.”

Despite the numbers provided by Rarick, board President Joy Beers said she would like to find a way to make the CEP program work for Lehighton.

“My concern is there are children from poor households, or households where they may not be cared for like they should, who are not eating,” Beers said. “I would be comfortable making the motion tonight to go forward with this.”

Jim Thorpe also has around 50% of its students directly certified for free lunches, but Olympian Business Manager Ken Marx said the district would actually see less of a food service budget loss under CEP.

According to figures presented by Marx, Jim Thorpe would be looking at an $87,709 loss in the 2023-24 food service budget under the CEP program as opposed to almost $118,000 under the current system.

Rarick said he would ask The Nutrition Group, the district’s food service provider, to run a budget showing directors the projected numbers.