A new pilot program launching next week at seven Hawaii public schools will provide lunches free of charge to more than 1,600 students regardless of their family’s ability to pay.

By providing free meals for entire schools, the program aims to increase access to nutritious school meals by helping remove the stigma for low-income children to participate.

The meals will be provided through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Program, which allows schools serving high-poverty areas to participate in the National School Lunch Program without having to collect and process individual meal applications.

Eligibility is instead determined by relying on information from other programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, and the Temporary Assistance Program for Needy Families, or welfare.

To qualify for the federal program, at least 40 percent of a school’s students must be eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a key indicator of poverty.

Under federal income guidelines for Hawaii for the upcoming school year, a family of four cannot earn more than $51,597 to qualify for the reduced rate, while a family of four earning $36,257 or less qualifies for free meals.

The pilot schools include one each on Oahu and Hawaii island — Linapuni Elementary in Kalihi, where 99 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and Mountain View Elementary, where 93 percent of students receive free or reduced meals.

Molokai’s five regular public schools will participate in the pilot program, meaning the majority of students on the island will be provided free school meals for the 2015-16 school year. (Kualapuu School, a public charter school, is not participating.)

State Rep. Lynn DeCoite, whose district includes Molokai, said the program stands to benefit families struggling with the particularly high cost of living in rural communities.

“The cost of living on an island like Molokai is challenging — the high cost of gas, transportation and electricity are some of the highest in the nation,” said DeCoite, a Molokai High graduate. “To have the five DOE public schools on Molokai qualify as a pilot program is huge.”

“This pilot program will help to take the burden off of families that have to pay for lunch, and will give relief to the families that do not qualify for the free or reduced-price lunches,” she added. “This will also make all students and families feel equal. Everyone will get free lunch; there won’t be any speculation as to who gets and who does not.”

She added that she hopes the program can be expanded to more schools.

Jamil Ahmadia, principal of Mountain View Elementary, said many of the school’s families are struggling to make ends meet. Some students in the impoverished area view school lunches as their only guaranteed meal.

“They come to school so they can have lunch,” he said. “So far the community, the parents, they are so thankful, so surprised to see something like this can happen.”

Under the pilot program, the USDA will reimburse the state at a higher rate for all lunches served at the pilot schools, meaning the state will be able to recoup more of its costs.

The DOE, which serves 107,000 lunches a day, spends $5.51 to prepare a lunch including food costs, labor and utilities. Nearly 60 percent of lunches are free or served at a reduced price.

Under a price increase approved by the Board of Education, schools will be charging elementary students $2.50 for lunch and high school students $2.75 this year. The reduced-price rate is 40 cents for all grades.

Typically the federal government reimburses the state $3.67 for every free lunch served and $3.26 per reduced-price lunch served. The reimbursement rate is 40 cents for every full-price meal served. But under the federal pilot program, the DOE says all students in a pilot school would qualify for the higher $3.67 reimbursement.

“It’s free for the students, but not free for the DOE,” department spokesman Brent Suyama said. “What it means is that we get a higher reimbursement rate.”

Nationally, more than 14,000 high-poverty schools serving more than 6 million students adopted the USDA program last school year. The program, which was established by Congress as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, became available nationwide for the first time this past school year after being piloted in 11 states.

The program is credited with double-digit increases in students eating school meals at participating schools, according to a 2013 analysis of the program by the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Food Research and Action Center.

The report cited such benefits to low-income students and families as:

» Families’ financial burden is eased when students eat school meals.

» Families don’t face language, literacy or other issues with access due to application barriers.

» Students who have access to better nutrition tend to perform better academically.

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