OWENSVILLE — Gasconade County R-2 Superintendent Dr. Jeri Kay Hardy said the district was awarded a free breakfast and lunch program application on Friday. The board of education voted 7-0  during an Aug. 29 emergency meeting to submit the cost-share application through the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) food services program.

Hardy attended a superintendent meeting on Aug. 28 where applications for Provision 2, the food services program, were discussed. The application submission deadline had already passed. Hardy contacted board members to see if they would be interested in applying for the program.

“DESE has given us an extended deadline to get that in,” Hardy said. “I have to get approval from the board because it is going to cost the district some money if we approve it. So I had to get approval to even send the application.”

Provision 2 would require the district to pay one percent of its annual budget toward the program, which is about $220,000 according to Hardy.

“It would allow all of our students to eat free breakfast and free lunch,” Hardy said. “The extended deadline is coming up so we have to have approval now.”

If their application is chosen, the district has approval to participate in the Provision 2 program for four years. The board’s motion, however, approves the application for the 2024-25 school year only.

“This is a co-op program between DESE and USDA,” Hardy said. “They’ve not really advertised it. They had a superintendents meeting (Wednesday) and it was mentioned by some of the other superintendents, which led us to look into the program more.”

Hardy isn’t sure when the program recipients will be announced.

“I would assume it would be pretty quick,” she said. “It is for four years, but you can opt out if something changes drastically in the community. If our application is awarded for Provision 2 it would allow all students in the district to have both breakfast and lunch free which would help alleviate the cost for the families in the district for paying for breakfast and lunch and help take some of the burden off of some of our families.”

The emergency meeting was posted at 11:59 a.m. on Aug. 29 to take place at 12:01 p.m. the same day via email.

According to the meeting notice, “this meeting is being conducted with less than 24-hours notice so that the board of education can consider an urgent deadline for application processing.