TOPEKA — In Vicki Schumacher’s nutrition services office at Wichita Public Schools, staff spend roughly two hours verifying one free lunch application from start to finish.
Under proposed legislation, the office could see its work increase twentyfold.
Current federal law requires schools to verify free and reduced lunch eligibility for a random sample amounting to 3% or 3,000 of recipients — whichever is less — but a bill sponsored by Republican Sen. Doug Shane requires verifying the gross household income of every student who receives a free lunch.
For Schumacher, who supervises the financial and technical aspects of Wichita Public Schools’ nutrition services, Senate Bill 387 would turn two months of work into a year-round responsibility.
“It would turn the focus of our office into an auditing firm rather than feeding children,” she said, testifying virtually at a Thursday hearing before the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency, or COGE.
Shane, a veterinarian and professor from Louisburg, was one of three proponents who submitted testimony, and Schumacher was one of about 35 opponents.
To Shane, the change is not an unreasonable ask. The bill’s focus is broader than income verification for households receiving free and reduced lunch, which is a U.S. Department of Agriculture program.
Kansas schools are eligible for at-risk funding that is calculated based on the number of students who apply for free lunch. At-risk funding, which comes from the state, is meant to address kids who are at risk of academic failure and does not automatically apply to students participating in free lunch programs.
The free lunch data is a proxy for determining at-risk funding levels, said Frank Harwood, deputy commissioner for the Kansas State Department of Education.
At-risk funds can only be used for a specific set of programs approved by the state board of education. For 2025, some of them included phonics and literacy practice, math instruction, suicide prevention, writing workshops, after school homework help and character development programs.
At least 12 of the programs support English language learners.
“This bill simply seeks to make sure that we are sustainably funding and fully funding our at-risk obligations, and ensuring that obligation is going to the students that really qualify and really need it,” Shane said.
The stage for the bill was set by an audit published in July, which found that the number of students who were used to determine at-risk funding levels appeared to be “significantly more” than the number of students eligible for the free lunch program.
The House Welfare Reform Committee discussed the audit Jan. 20, honing in on a finding that estimated 54% to 72% of students who qualified for the free lunch program in Kansas were likely ineligible during the 2023-2024 academic year. Auditors said the USDA may have overpaid Kansas school districts between $10 million and $14 million that year, and the state may have overpaid between $38 million and $53 million in at-risk funding.
The audit, however, contained caveats that noted unverified data and data from sources outside the state education department. It found school districts and the state are limited in their ability to verify the accuracy of the list of students automatically enrolled in free lunch. Auditors couldn’t independently verify household income or size.
“The lack of income verification means the free lunch program is at high risk of fraud, waste and abuse,” the audit said.
