Nationwide enrollment in the federal government’s free and reduced-lunch program is up by 16.5 million students compared with this time last year, reports USA Today.
North Carolina saw a 6.65 percent increase, from 486,263 students enrolled last year to 507,367 students enrolled this year.
But questions about the reliability of the program remain, as verifications taken from a 3 percent pool of applicants have revealed that some participants are not qualified to receive the benefits.
The two largest school systems in the state, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Wake County Schools, had potential fraud rates of 62 percent and 68 percent, respectively, for the 2008-2009 school year. Those numbers are largely unchanged from the previous school year.
Last year, the USDA threatened to cut off free and reduced-lunch funds to CMS if it conducted a more thorough audit of the program.
