The Mehlville Board of Education unanimously approved a universal free breakfast program at Beasley, Bierbaum and Forder Elementary Schools for the 2024-2025 school year at the board’s June 27 meeting.

A universal free breakfast program is a complete breakfast available at no cost to all students, with meals claimed for federal reimbursement according to income category – free, reduced or full pay.

Reimbursement rates to the district per meal in 2023-2024 were $2.73 for free, $2.43 for reduced and 38 cents for full pay, said School Food and Nutrition Services Director Katie Gegg. The 2024-2025 rates have not been released.

Mehlville launched a universal free breakfast program at Beasley in 2017 and voted to extend it through the remainder of the 2017-2018 school year, and the entirety of the following school year, along with expanding the program to Forder in 2019.

There are two different ways a district qualifies for the program. One is the community eligibility program, or CEP, where a certain percentage of students in a district must directly qualify through the state as being a part of households receiving benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Because Mehlville is not a CEP district, it can implement the program as long as the school has a free and reduced rate of around 45% or higher. 

Beasley, Bierbaum and Forder are historically the schools in the district with the highest rates of qualifying students for free and reduced lunch. 

“In order to have a successful program, we need to have about 45% or more of the students at the school qualify for free and reduced-priced meals,” Gegg said. 

Data from the 2023-2024 school year shows breakfast participation was 50% at Beasley, 45% at Bierbaum and 48% at Forder. 

Other Mehlville schools are close to qualifying for the program. Data from Trautwein Elementary shows that between 40% to 42% of students last year were on free/reduced meals, while Buerkle Middle’s free/reduced meal percentage was 47% to 49%. 

SFNS staff plans to observe breakfast services at the two schools to see if their food service could handle universal free breakfast. A cost analysis will be used to determine if universal free breakfast is feasible at the schools, even with the potential of having to hire more labor. 

“I just want to say, there’s a lot of things that the district does that I’m very proud of, and this is near the top of the list. To think that we can provide free breakfast to communities and students with a high percentage of free and reduced lunch population is just wonderful,” Director Scott Huegerich said. “Not only do I think that we want to care for communities like that, but I would have to imagine from an academic standpoint, those students perform better if they’re nourished in the morning. So I just think this is a great win and I thank everybody for so diligently making it happen.”

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