CHAMPAIGN — The Champaign Unit 4 School District has brought back income restrictions on free meals at its high schools.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the district offered breakfast and lunch for free to all students. But now that federal COVID relief has run out and the district is tight on money again, high schoolers have to qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on their family income.
Superintendent Geovanny Ponce said at Monday’s school board meeting, families should email him if they cannot afford to pay for those meals.
“If they want to make sure that the children eat without having to tell anybody because children, especially at that age, don’t want to share that. They can totally email me and I will make sure that they eat,” Ponce said.
Unit 4 Chief Business Officer Ray Toliver Jr. said that staff will also look for a more efficient process than having families email the superintendent.
Complicated bus routes also weighing down budget
The Champaign Unit 4 School District is looking into a state grant that could help cover the costs of its expensive school bus routes.
Unit 4 runs many overlapping bus routes because it uses a “schools of choice” model where families rank which schools they want their children to go to.
The method is supposed to reduce segregation in schools relative to Champaign neighborhoods.
Toliver joined Unit 4 this summer as the district’s new chief business officer and was struck by the bus map.
“In my career, I have never seen anything like this,” he said.
Toliver said Champaign spends more on transportation than similarly sized districts like the district in Aurora west of Chicago.
He said he hopes to apply for a state grant to reduce transportation costs. Tolivar also thinks the district could improve efficiency in busing in the future.
Ponce said Monday that the “schools of choice” system is the root of the problem and said the community will have to consider how to fix it.
When the board tried to change the choice model four years ago, most parents opposed it, because they didn’t want their children to be assigned to different schools.