When State Superintendent Ryan Walters made his demand a few weeks back that Oklahoma school districts feed all their kids for free, Kingfisher Public Schools didn’t bat an eye.

That’s because the district was well ahead of the game and working on a way to do just that.

And the district recently received great news for those efforts.

All KPS students will receive breakfast and lunches for free during the 202526 school year.

“This has been a ten month process and we are all glad to be able to offer this service to our families,” said Superintendent Andy Evans.

The district has been accepted into the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, which is administered by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Criteria for eligibility includes having at least 25 percent of enrolled students who qualify for free or reduced lunches.

According to data provided by KPS, some 57 percent of Kingfisher’s students fall into that category.

That includes 62 percent at Gilmour, 65 percent at Heritage, 58 percent at the upper elementary, 54 percent at the junior high and 52 percent at the high school.

KPS staff have been working on such data and much more information - for several months in order to determine its eligibility for the program, which eventually led to its acceptance.

Evans said Gilmour Principal Makylah Tollefson suggested the district look into the program.

Dawn Tollefson, the district’s financial director, joined Makylah Tollefson and the child nutrition department staff in working on the process to become a part of the program for much of the past year.

CEP was implemented nationally in the 2014-15 school year. It was authorized by the Healthy, Hunger- Free Kids Act of 2010.

Prior to that, it was phased in over a three-year period in pilot states.

The first three were Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan and 665 schools participated the first year.

New York, Ohio, West Virginia and the District of Columbia joined the ranks the following year.

In 2013-14, the last of the phase-in years, it expanded to Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Massachusetts.

Initially, the minimum percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced meals sat at 40 percent to be eligible for the program.

That number was reduced to 25 percent in 2023.

“As a result, more students, households and schools have the opportunity to experience CEP’s benefits, such as increasing access to school meals at no cost, eliminating unpaid meal charges, minimizing stigma and streamlining meal service operations,” according to information provided by the USDA on the CEP program.

The USDA touts other benefits, including improving the learning of students.

“By offering all students nutritious meals at no cost, CEP helps participating schools ensure their students enter classrooms well-nourished and ready to learn,” according to the literature.

That information and more was derived from a study from the 2016-17 school year and then was released in March 2022.

Despite every child in the district now being eligible for free meals, Evans reminds parents that the need to fill out the “free and reduced form” in the enrollment packets is still very necessary to be filled out and submitted.

Information derived from those forms affects everything from state aid to federal grants.

“We still have those forms in our enrollment packets to help us keep our eligibility for grants as well as student counts for state aid,” Evans said.