Buckeye Reporter

Restrictions on the availability of free or reduced-price lunches for students enrolled at online schools are leaving parents in the lurch. 

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) offers meal assistance for schoolchildren in public and nonprofit private schools, and even those in residential child care institutions. but the benefit doesn't apply to families who enroll their children in full-time online public schools, a limitation that is frustrating some parents.

"What income we make is what income we make," said Stefanie Fincham, whose children attend Ohio Virtual Academy. "My husband's job doesn't decide to pay him more because his kids go to online school."

Fincham made the change to online learning for her youngsters after COVID-19 forced all Ohio schools to implement distance-learning plans in the spring of 2020. The next fall, coronavirus protocols were up in the air. She also told the Buckeye Reporter that the public school's computer-based education program was ineffective for her family.

"When the school year ended and they didn't state what their plans were for the following year we decided that if we were going to do a virtual option we would rather go with a  school that had been doing it for 20 years than a school that only had three months to figure it out," Fincham said.

The family chose a public online school because it was a tuition-free option that would allow the children to learn at their own pace. 

Every student at a brick-and-mortar public school is eligible to receive free lunches for the 2021-2022 school year, no matter their family's income level, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fincham's family was eligible for 30-cent breakfasts and 40-cent lunches, she said, but students taking advantage of full-time virtual learning aren't covered by the NSLP. 

When public schools went to distance-learning during the pandemic, they maintained the free lunch plan by allowing parents to pick up five days' worth of bag lunches once a week, Fincham said. She'd like to see prepaid EBT cards offered to income-eligible parents who choose to send their children to online academies.

"It makes no difference if my kids jump on a bus or boot up a computer to sign in," Fincham said, adding that her family has so far managed to get by without the aid. "I  feel bad for the families that are worse than us and have to use lunch as a deciding factor for what school they go to. If anything, that feels like a way to pressure families to not choose online school."