8 Waukesha Schools Not Offering Free Breakfast

WAUKESHA, WI — Students at eight Waukesha schools are not receiving free breakfast, despite a board-approved meal plan that allows two free meals per student.

Patch reached out to the district and superintendent on Friday and Monday for more information. Neither responded to requests for comment.

The Finance and Facilities Committee will discuss the matter at 5:30 p.m. Monday.

On Aug. 30, the school board voted to go back to the Seamless Summer Option, or SSO, a federal program that provides free lunch and breakfast to all students without income requirements.

Greg Deets, a school board member, requested the topic be on the committee's agenda.

The following schools, Deets said, do not offer breakfast:

• Meadowbrook Elementary School
• Summit View elementary School
• Bethesda Elementary School
• Rose Glen Elementary School
• Hillcrest Elementary School
• Prairie Elementary School
• Randall STEM Elementary School
• Saratoga STEM Middle School

Deets said superintendent James Sebert would only need to submit a form to the Department of Public Instruction to rectify the situation.

"It is the decision of superintendent and business manager. If they decided to submit a form, it would be fixed in days," he said.

Deets said there haven't been complaints, but parents may have assumed they don't qualify for free breakfast.

"On those school websites it says this site doesn't offer breakfast. People are trusting what they think is true," he said.

Deets said he plans to question Sebert Monday to understand the rationale of leaving out the eight schools.

This is not the first time the district has raised eyebrows. School board members, in August, reversed their June decision in a 5-4 vote to leave a federal free meals program during a special School of Education meeting.

The special meeting was announced after national backlash over the board's decision to opt out of an extension of the Seamless Summer Option. Waukesha was the only district in the state to opt out of the federal program.