Audit finds Kansas free-lunch counts may overstate at-risk student totals; committee schedules bill hearing

Heidi Zimmerman, principal auditor for the legislative post-audit division, told a legislative committee the number of students the state counts as eligible for free lunch — and used to allocate at-risk funding — “appears to be significantly more than the number of students who may be eligible for the free lunch program.”

Zimmerman summarized a verification exercise from the office’s 2024 audit of the National School Lunch Program in Kansas. Auditors reviewed a statistically valid sample of 122 students from 55 districts who had qualified for free lunch by submitting a household application and sought income corroboration through Kansas Department of Revenue tax records and Department of Labor wage files. Of the 108 applicants for whom auditors could find income records, 68 “did not appear to meet the income eligibility for free lunch,” Zimmerman said. Projecting those results, the audit estimates that between 54% and 72% of all applicants who qualified by application were likely ineligible — roughly 18,400 to 24,600 students.

“That means the financial…