More chil­dren than ever before use the free or reduced price lunches avail­able at US schools. The National School Lunch Pro­gram says that 31.2 mil­lion of the nation’s school chil­dren can­not afford the aver­age $2.95 a day for school lunches. School chil­dren whose par­ents can­not afford the money for school lunches can apply for reduced prices through the fed­eral government.

From the Char­lotte Observer, writer Bar­bara Bar­rett talks to nutri­tion experts about the stag­ger­ing num­ber of chil­dren enrolled in the program.

“It’s almost incon­ceiv­able to think, when we’re walk­ing around with our $4 lattes, that there are fam­i­lies who can’t afford $2 a day for a week,” said Cathy Schuchart, vice pres­i­dent of child nutri­tion and pol­icy with the School Nutri­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, an advo­cacy group based in Washington.

A USDA study this year found wide dis­par­i­ties among states in sign­ing up chil­dren who receive food stamps for the school lunch pro­gram. And although most fam­i­lies rou­tinely receive appli­ca­tions before school starts, many don’t know that they can sign up later if a par­ent loses a job or faces other hardships.

“I sus­pect there is more need than is indi­cated,” said Mau­reen Furr, prin­ci­pal at Charlotte’s South Meck­len­burg High School, where one in three chil­dren receive a free or reduced-price lunch. “There’s no ques­tion in my mind that peo­ple are in more dif­fi­cult circumstances.”

To qual­ify, a fam­ily of four must earn $28,665 or less for a free lunch; $40,793 or less to get lunch at a sharply reduced rate.

“Kids shouldn’t have to worry about that part of their lives,” said Kim Short, prin­ci­pal of Bal­len­tine Ele­men­tary School in Fuquay-Varina, where one in three stu­dents are on the pro­gram. “It’s cer­tainly a school issue. But it’s a com­mu­nity issue, too.”

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools hit an all-time high for pro­gram enroll­ment this year, with nearly 52 per­cent of stu­dents impov­er­ished enough to receive a free or reduced-price lunch.

“It has greater sig­nif­i­cance if you under­stand what it takes to qual­ify,” Furr said. “I think there’s the sense that poverty is more dis­tant from us than it is.”

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