Free and reduced lunches on the rise at county schools

“We’ve always had a fairly high free and reduced lunch rate, but it’s getting extremely high in some areas,” Madison County Schools Superintendent Mitch McGhee said.

At 72 percent, Hull-Sanford has the highest concentration of students needing free and reduced lunches.

Meanwhile, this is the first time that 50 percent of the student body at Madison County High School is seeking free and reduced lunches.

The other rates are as follows: Ila Elementary, 54 percent; Comer Elementary, 56 percent; Colbert Elementary, 60 percent; Danielsville Elementary, 60 percent; and Madison County Middle School, 56 percent.

“And a lot of this is new applications,” McGhee said. “Folks have lost their jobs … It’s not so much people moving in. It’s current folks that are in need.”

McGhee said there’s usually an inverse relation regarding free and reduced lunch rates and student achievement. The higher one is, the lower the other tends to be.

“That has not been the case here in Madison County,” McGhee said. “And that’s a credit to the teachers in the schools. Our free and reduced rates are going up, we have less resources from the state, less funding from the state, yet our teachers are really doing a great job.”