I'm looking at the statistics of the pan handle area and it isn't making sense to me.
Real estate values, household incomes, ethnicities, crime rate, political views, bald eagles...

What's up with more than half the kids on free government school lunch programs?
It doesn't jive with the other statistics.

It's a rural area where most of the jobs used to be things like mining and timber and those have dried up.  Lots of poverty left. Maybe not terrible poverty, but enough to get people on subsidized school lunch programs. 

While there are plenty of rich people about, a lot of them don't have school age kids.

Thank you, that makes sense.

The unemployment rate seems low though.

At first I thought maybe it was the schools pushing for government funding and promoting free lunch programs.
Abusing the system.

If I understand the system correctly a parent would need to earn less than $20,000 a year to qualify and at 50%
Of the students it seams that poverty is higher than the statistics indicate. Maybe no middle class in this area.

In my experience, no, not a lot of middle class. Though I think you can earn more than that number to be qualified for reduced cost lunches.  But I'm not sure.