AUBURN — Hot lunch at Park Avenue Elementary School on Thursday was burritos, brown rice, pineapple, corn and milk. The price: $1.55.

Starting Monday, the Auburn School Department will be among the first districts in Maine to offer free lunches to all students at schools that have high numbers of students from low-income families.

The Auburn schools are Park Avenue, Washburn, Walton and Sherwood Heights elementary schools. For a family paying for school lunch every day for one child, that will be a savings of $7.55 a week.

The policy change will not cost Auburn taxpayers, school officials said. The four schools qualify because they have 40 percent or more of students from families that receive food stamps. Students at Franklin, the School Department’s alternative school, also will be offered free meals. Lunch money that parents now pay, but won’t after Monday, will be made up by more money from the federal government.

Students at East Auburn, Fairview, Auburn Middle School and Edward Little High School will still pay for lunches because those populations are not at the 40 percent threshold.

Free lunches at the four schools are possible because of the Healthy Hunger-Free Act of 2010, a federal program that encourages schools to ensure no student goes hungry.

The Auburn School Committee voted 5-1 Wednesday to approve the so-called community eligibility program.

“The biggest advantage is that all kids will be eating for free,” Food Services Director Paula Rouillard said.

It will give students more time to eat because they won’t have to line up to pay, he said. School personnel will not have to chase parents to pay lunch bills. The program will provide Auburn schools with a guaranteed income for lunches.

The program will start as a pilot and be reviewed in December. “If you don’t think it’s working out, you can opt out,” Rouillard said.

Before committee members voted Wednesday night, Rouillard showed them that last year, Auburn received $350,383 from the state and federal governments for lunch reimbursements at the four schools and Franklin. The federal government paid $2.93 per meal for a student receiving free lunch, $2.53 for reduced, and 28 cents for students whose parents pay $1.55.

Under the new program, projections show Auburn will receive $41,087 more than last year, for the four schools and Franklin. When subtracting money from parents who now pay, the result is a gain of about $1,500 a year, which school officials called a wash.

Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin said debt from parents who did not, or could not, pay for their children’s meals had accrued to $16,000.

“We noticed families were struggling to pay their lunch bills,” Grondin said, adding that the new program should take pressure off families. Rouillard learned about the program, researched it and recommended it, Grondin said. “For us it’s a win-win.”

School Committee members Bonnie Hayes, Larry Pelletier, Tom Kendall, Laurie Tannenbaum and new member Peter Letourneau voted in favor of the program. Ron Potvin voted against it, saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

“I can’t do this,” Potvin said. The cost of the lunches will come out of taxpayers’ pockets, he said. Schools are enabling parents to do less, he said. “We’ve had way too much about this.”

Letourneau disagreed, telling school administrators they did a “wonderful job” of presenting the recommendation to the committee. “I will support it,” he said.

Park Avenue Principal Vickie Gaylord said she was delighted that all of her students will receive free lunches.

“We know, and research shows, how important healthy, nutritious food is to children’s development,” Gaylord said.

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Free lunches for all students new in Maine

AUGUSTA — Offering free lunches to all students in schools with a certain percentage of low-income students is new in Maine, according to the Maine Department of Education.

For three years, the federal Healthy Hunger-Free Act of 2010 allowed only a few states to pilot community eligibility, the program that offers free lunches to all students.

But beginning this year, all states are allowed, said David Hartley of Child Nutrition Services at the Maine Department of Education. “We don’t have that many schools doing it this year.” Many schools are taking a wait-and-see-what-happens attitude, he said.

Under the law, schools with 40 percent of students from families who receive food stamps through the Maine Department of Health and Human Services qualify to offer all students free lunch.

Offering lunch to all students “is a great program for our children,” said Walter Beesley, School Nutrition Coordinator for the Maine Department of Education.

Maine schools that have signed up for community eligibility include schools in Skowhegan, Howland, Caswell Elementary School in Aroostook County, and one school in Rockland.

“In talking to other states that have had pilot programs, they’ve found the first year to be the roughest,” Beesley said. “A lot of schools are nervous. They can’t afford to lose money.”

In the second year the numbers jump, Beesley said, adding that he expects that to happen in Maine.

In Lewiston, only one school, Longley Elementary, has community eligibility.

Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster said his school district could expand the program to other schools because several have high enough numbers of low-income families.

But, “it would mean we could no longer use ‘Free/Reduced Lunch’ applications to quality for Title I,” he said.

Title I provides extra services and state money to districts to support low-income families. If families refused to fill out the Title I forms, which document how many low-income families a district has, that would mean “a significant loss of Title I funds in Lewiston,” Webster said. “This has happened elsewhere as families often see no benefit to filling out the income form if they are already receiving the lunch benefit.”

That is a fear in school districts, Beesley said. “They could lose money. It could be substantial.”

Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin said Auburn schools will work hard at encouraging families to fill out the Title I forms by contacting them through various means.