TOPEKA ? Seventeen percent of students eating free lunch in public schools are ineligible for the program, costing the state millions of dollars, according to a state audit released today.

The lunches are paid for by the federal government, but state officials are concerned because state funding for so-called at-risk students is directly linked to the number of free lunch students in each school district.

The Legislative Division of Post Audit took a random sample of 500 free-lunch students of the 135,092 students who receive free meals.

Of that sample, the audit found that 17 percent who qualified for the meals because of low-income, actually came from households that earned more than the free-lunch limit.

The audit stated that in the current school year, the state may have spent $19 million more on at-risk funding based on the number of students who should have been ineligible for free lunches

But other officials said the audit results were inconclusive.

Of those households that earned too much money, most were close to the poverty level, and their incomes may have just been misreported, state Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, said.

Rochelle Chronister, head of the 2010 commission on education, had a number of problems with the audit.

The sample size was too small and it relied, in part, on Census Bureau information, which is known to undercount rural areas and poor people, she said.

But some lawmakers said the audit showed that they needed to change the way at-risk funds are linked to free-lunch numbers.