Wake County school board member Ron Margiotta brought up a Carolina Journal article on potential free and reduced-lunch cheating at a recent school board meeting. The News & Observer of Raleigh covered it here (scroll down to near the end of the article) and here.

During the meeting, Margiotta asked Marilyn Moody, Wake?s senior director of child nutrition, whether she had ?any concern to research any further or request further audits.? Moody replied:

No. Our verification program is very complete, it?s thorough. It?s 3 percent of error prone families. We pick out families who are likely to make a mistake, randomly select from them 3 percent. So, I find a lot of fallacies in the [Carolina Journal] reporting. And I realize that there are some ? as you know in income tax, people are not always honest, and we have audits of individual income tax for that purpose. But you can find any way to fraudulently provide information in any federal program, I?m sure, if you have a reason. What we want to know is why would you deprive a child who is hungry of $2.57 a day times 180 school days?

A verification from Wake County Schools for the 2007-2008 school year found that 64 percent of a targeted sample of F&R lunch applicants could not or would not provide proof of income to justify their participation in the program.