on the education department\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe availability of free or reduced school meals may depend on the public school district in which your family is located and which programs the district participates in.<\/p>\n
For instance, Butler Area School District participates in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, allowing all students the ability to apply for free or reduced breakfast or lunch. In addition, six Butler Area schools \u2014 Broad Street Elementary, Emily Brittain Elementary, McQuistion Elementary, Northwest Elementary, Summit Elementary and Center Avenue Community School \u2014 provide 100% free lunch for all students through the USDA\u2019s Community Eligibility Provision program.<\/p>\n
According to Butler Area food service representative Brian Beauregard, 42% of students across the district were eligible for free school meals, while 2.8% were eligible for reduced-price meals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did have an increase\u00a0in lunch participation in the CEP schools by 1%,\u201d Beauregard said. \u201cHowever, there are less students overall who are eligible. We started the school year with 2,628 \u2018free\u2019 eligible students, but by the end of the year we were down to 2,372.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karns City Area School District also provides free lunch to all students in the school district through the Community Eligibility Provision.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt allows us to provide a free lunch to all students, kindergarten through 12th grade,\u201d said Karns City superintendent Eric Ritzert. \u201cIt is our desire as a district to try to continue to offer free lunch and free breakfast to all students, because we feel it’s a great benefit to the students themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seneca Valley School District participates in the National School Lunch Program. According to communications manager Ian Hunter, nearly a fifth of students across the district \u2014 1,503 students in total \u2014 qualified for the program last year, with 160,505 free or reduced lunches served.<\/p>\n
For Mars Area School District, only elementary students are eligible for free or reduced school lunches through the National School Lunch Program. Neither the middle nor high schools participate in the program. According to business manager Debbie Brandstetter, 185 elementary students participated in the program during the 2025-26 school year \u2014 less than 10% of the student population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cafeteria Manager Krissy Wissinger hands out Mardi Gras themed cupcakes to students at lunch during a Mardi Gras…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3035,3027,3022,3042,3048,3051,1610,3030,3028,31,3029,3034,3025,3047,3041,3024,3045,3033,3023,3036,182,3049,3039,139,3026,28,30,29,3040,39,3031,3044,3043,3032,3050,3038,3037,3046],"class_list":["post-246565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-bruin","tag-butler","tag-butler-eagle","tag-cabot","tag-callery","tag-cherry-valley","tag-community-news","tag-connoquenessing","tag-cranberry","tag-crime","tag-east-butler","tag-eau-claire","tag-education-news","tag-evans-city","tag-fairview","tag-government-news","tag-harmony","tag-harrisville","tag-high-school-sports-news","tag-karns-city","tag-local-news","tag-mars","tag-mount-chesnut","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-petrolia","tag-political-news","tag-portersville","tag-sarver","tag-saxonburg","tag-slippery-rock","tag-valencia","tag-west-liberty","tag-west-sunbury","tag-zelienople"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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