Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Two Cape Cods: Hidden Poverty on the Cape and Islands - Part 6

At a large table in the cafeteria kitchen at the Matacheese Middle School in Yarmouth, Laurel Visceglio and two of her fellow workers wrap baked chicken sandwiches in aluminum foil.

Laurel Visceglio: "Today we have rotini with meat sauce with Caesar salad, garlic bread. And we have chicken sandwiches. We always have a variety of sandwiches, salads and bagels."

These lunch ladies are from the community. They know the families of the children who eat here. They also know, says food service coordinator Garth Petracca, that this lunch may be the only real meal many of the school's children will eat today.

Garth Petracca: "For a lot of kids, not only is it the highlight of the day, but it's also, nutritionally, the most important meal of their day because for a lot of kids, especially here, they're not really getting very, very much at home. And sometimes, unless they are making it themselves, they're really not getting anything at home. Unless it's opening a bag of something."

About one-third of the students in the Dennis-Yarmouth School District receive a free lunch or one at a reduced price. That's about 1,300 needy students.

Garth Petracca: "In all honesty, it's probably a lot higher than that. It's tough sometimes to get people, you know, based on social stigmas, based on pride, whatever, the kids not wanting to ... it's just getting the people to fill out the applications and submit them."

Dennis and Yarmouth are not considered poor communities. According to 2000 census reports, Dennis has a poverty rate of only 5.4% and Yarmouth only 5.2%. These rates are much lower than the 12% national poverty rate. But if more than one-third of the school population is asking for food assistance, it would seem that current poverty statistics aren't telling the whole story.

Steve Brown of the Barnstable County Department of Human Services says there are a lot of problems with federal poverty statistics. One key issue is that Families often hide their money problems from the government.

Steve Brown: "No one wants to say, I'm poor. There is a stigma in this country. And perhaps it is something having to do with human kind, but it is particularly true in this country. And its even more true in resort communities such as Cape Cod, where there is an image of this as a prosperous community. And those of us who live in the community buy into that image whether we are personally prosperous or not ... so there is a stigma claiming ourselves poor, even though we are."

Economists have complained for decades that federal poverty rates are misleading and problematic. This is an important issue because the statistics determine what services and programs individuals are qualified to receive, including free and reduced lunch programs.

In Dennis-Yarmouth, for example, the free and reduced lunch program qualification is based on 130% of the federal poverty level. Therefore, a family of four must earn less than $25,000 a year before taxed in order to qualify for free or reduced lunch.

Garth Petracca is no economist. He wears black checkered pants and a white chef's coat to work each day. But he knows that more than 5% of the students he feeds come from struggling families and that some of the families that don't meet the guidelines for the free and reduced lunch program really need the help. He knows this not from their completed applications, but from the school's secretaries, the lunch ladies, and the teachers.

Garth Petracca: "They are the ones a lot of time that tell us. We know that the numbers on the application aren't really working with what the guidelines are but here's the situation at home with these people, they just got kicked out of their house, things that don't show up on here. It's based just on numbers. It's not being based on being evicted out of your house. There's no line that says, I was evicted, please feed my child."

There may be no perfect way to measure poverty. The federal government looks at household income while Barnstable County's methodology is to survey people about their needs, not their pay. When other pieces of such as free and reduced lunch program are added, the picture becomes a bit more clear. And in Dennis and Yarmouth, the image it reveals is one of families struggling to get by.