The schools with the most low-income students are also the ones where the most students miss school and get suspended. 70 schools show 3 or more warning signs, and 48,863 students go to them. The Angel Fund pays off students' unpaid lunch balances, but donations have not kept up with the debt. Published research links free meals for every student to small gains in attendance and behavior, mostly after the first year; this page does not test that.
Source: NC DPI School Report Cards, 2023-24 · 197 Wake County public schools · a map of patterns, not a study of causes. The free-meals and count panels also use NC DPI's statewide report-card files, DPI's CEP eligibility report (identified student percentages), DPI's low-income counts by collection date, DPI's January 2026 report on the CEP Meal Program Incentive, and the Wake free-meal school lists published by WRAL and WCPSS in August 2024. How it was built
Where the need is
The poorest zip codes run east from Raleigh through Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon. The least poor sit in Cary, Apex and Holly Springs.
By neighborhood
By school
Poverty is not spread evenly across the county. Most schools are under 40%, while a smaller group of 44 schools sits at 60% or more. That 60% line is the one fixed cutoff in the need score.
Schools with more poverty have worse outcomes
Elementary and middle schools are measured by state test scores, and high schools by their graduation rate. I keep the two apart so no school is judged on a test it does not take.
Who misses the most school
Low-income students, the ones most likely to owe lunch money, miss school at 35.0% against 12.5% for White students. Each bar is a group average across the whole district.
Which schools need help most
Each school gets one point for each warning sign. Schools with three or four are the place to look first.
Every school, ranked
| School | Type | Low-income % | Often absent % | Suspensions per 1,000 | Test scores or graduation % | Warning signs | Was | State grade | Federal list |
|---|
A filled box in the tray means that warning sign is on. For high schools, "scores" means the graduation rate, and a rate the state hides as "over 95%" counts as good. A high score puts a school on the list to look at first. It does not by itself prove the school needs help.
Does the score make sense?
The average score climbs from 0.04 at A to 4.00 at F without ever dipping. Six schools have no state grade; they average 3.33 and get their own bar.
Federal improvement list
This is a second check on the score. Schools with more warning signs are much more likely to be on the federal list already.
Lunch went free. The count fell.
At schools that started free meals for everyone, fewer families filled in meal forms, so the state counted fewer low-income students. The children did not change.
Low-income share, by count date
| School | Spring 2024 | Spring 2025 | ISP |
|---|
ISP: the share of students found through SNAP and Medicaid records; it does not depend on meal forms.
This page uses the higher of a free-meal school's reported count and its last count before free meals (spring 2024). The state could publish the ISP beside the count.
How it connects
Schools with more low-income students tend to have more students missing school. It is a pattern across schools, not proof of a cause.
Poverty and missing school
The r value says how closely two things move together, from −1 to 1. Each dot is a whole school, so the pattern says nothing about any one student, and a tight link on its own does not tell us what causes what. The other pairs are listed on the right.
When one goes up, what happens to the other?
Gaps between students
In high-poverty schools every group misses more school, White students included.
In high-poverty schools, everyone misses more school
In high-poverty schools even White students reach 25.1%, above the district average of 20.6%. The gap between low-income and all students looks smaller there only because most of the students are low-income, which is why low-income versus White is the fairer comparison.
Who gets suspended most
These are the state's published numbers, shown as reported. Why the gaps exist is a question this page cannot answer.
Over time, and free meals
Absences are still about double their level before the pandemic. The first year of free meals shows no clear change yet.
Students often absent, 2018 to 2024
The rate is still about double what it was before the pandemic. Any judgment of the Angel Fund has to allow for that, which rules out a simple before-and-after comparison.
Free meals for all: what year one shows
Schools that started free meals in 2024-25 did not show a measurable change in attendance or suspensions compared with similar schools that kept charging. Research finds effects in the second and third years, not the first.
Same schools, one year later
The Angel Fund ran short
In 2024-25 it paid $152,170 toward lunch debt and took in $134,672. By January 2026 unpaid charges stood at $153,695.
Money in vs. money out
| 2024-2512 months | 2025-26July to January, 7 months | |
|---|---|---|
| Donations received (flow) | $134,672 | $81,137 |
| Paid toward students' lunch debt (flow) | $152,170 | $87,451 |
| Per month: donations / paid | $11,223 / $12,681 | $11,591 / $12,493 |
| Paid out more than received (flow) | −$17,498 | −$6,314 |
| Unpaid lunch charges (balance) | $47,892 | $153,695 |
| Accounts over the 3-meal charge limit (balance) | $5,779 | $84,669 |
Flows are totals over the period. Balances are the amount owed on one day: 30 September 2025 for 2024-25, when that year's charges were cleared, and 15 January 2026 for 2025-26.
The district projects unpaid charges to pass $255,733 a year and proposed enforcing the 3-meal limit from 17 February 2026, with a basic fruit-and-vegetable meal after that. School-by-school numbers have not been released.
Which schools carry the debt
When these numbers arrive, this panel will lay them over the need ranking above. I expect a surprise here. The poorest schools often already serve free meals to everyone, so the debt may sit with families who earn a little too much to qualify but still struggle to pay.
Photographs: U.S. Department of Agriculture, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. They show school meals in general, not Wake County schools.