Evaluating Lunch Plan Data in the St. Charles School District (SCSD)

The SCSD is a public school district in St. Charles, with, on average, 4500 students a year. The SCSD is subdivided into an early childhood center, six elementary schools, two intermediate (5-6,7-8) schools, and two high schools. Vocational schools are also within this district but were not included in this report. The SCSD is concerned with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their district’s population and on the number of students that needed assistance with lunch. They have asked Lindenwood’s 2024-25 PIC Math group to analyze their data from the years 2020-25 and identify any trends. Identifying these trends may help the client understand which areas in the school district are most likely to need financial aid, and which locations were most greatly impacted by the pandemic. So far, the group has analyzed the data to understand the retention rates and distribution of meal statuses and student populations across the 5-year period, as well as using ArcGIS and R programming software to generate various graphs and maps of the SCSD area. We focused our analysis and observations on these key areas employing statistical and data analysis skills to draw our conclusions.