In March 2023, when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz walked the halls of Webster Elementary, students stopped to chat with him and give him high fives. Walz was there to sign the Free School Meals for Kids bill into law, and the noisy excitement in the halls reflected the governor’s mood.
“No more lunch tickets,” he said to a woman standing in the hallway.
When Walz held up the signed bill in the crowded school cafeteria, the room erupted into applause as children hugged the former coach’s neck.
“As a former teacher, I know that providing free breakfast and lunch for our students is one of the best investments we can make to lower costs, support Minnesota’s working families, and care for our young learners and the future of our state,” Walz said in a press release on the legislation. “This bill puts us one step closer to making Minnesota the best state for kids to grow up, and I am grateful to all of the legislators and advocates for making it happen.”
The law reimbursed public school districts, charter schools, and non-public schools for meals purchased through the National School Lunch and the School Breakfast Programs. The state-funded Free School Meals for Kids program also provides reimbursement for meals served to students who do not qualify for free or reduced-price meals so all students receive the meals at no cost. The program is estimated to cost the state about $400 million over a two-year budget period.
“Based on the latest data from the Department of Education, lunch participation was up about 19 percent and breakfast participation was up 41 percent,” says Sophia Lenarz-Coy, executive director of the Food Group, which is focused on increasing access to healthy, locally grown food in Minnesota. “We can see that students are just better prepared. They’re better able to learn and focus.”
Minnesota could be setting the framework for adoption on the federal level. In 2023, Rep. Ilhan Omar, who also represents Minnesota, Rep. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Jahana Hayes introduced the Universal School Meals Program Act. The law would provide students with free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack each day, without needing to prove eligibility.
It would also raise reimbursement rates, the amount of money the federal government provides to states for lunches, afterschool snacks, and breakfasts served to children participating in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs. The bill would also increase the national average payment for free lunch from $4.01 to $4.63 and include additional payments to schools using locally sourced food.
“Minnesota has a long history of good coalition work around food,” says Lenarz-Coy. “When we look at what got us to universal school meals in Minnesota, [the health sector] was involved, food producers were involved, public health was involved, education advocates were involved, and anti-hunger advocates were involved. It really was a coalition.”
It is going to require that level of coalition-building to bring Minnesota’s approach to universal school meals to the national level. But now, with a Republican president-elect and a Republican majority in the Senate and the House, Project 2025 is a real possibility.
With its implementation comes the removal of many protections provided to school children across the country, including calling for an end to the community eligibility program (CEP), which, beginning in the 2014-2015 school year, allowed high-needs schools to begin providing free lunch to all their students and receiving reimbursement based on the percentage of students eligible for those meals. Schools are designated as high needs if a significant percentage of its student population qualifies for free or reduced-price meals.
The Food Group notes Project 2025 and similar proposals do not acknowledge the connection between nutrition and learning or the need of many students who are above the CEP free or reduced-price eligibility threshold but are still unable to afford school meals. Since Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law in 2010, which aided the creation of the CEP, children in the U.S. have eaten 23 percent more fruit and 16 percent more vegetables at school, and breakfast participation has increased by nearly 25 percent.
While feeding all children in schools is an expensive endeavor, Lenarz-Coy says it’s an essential element of education that shouldn’t be overlooked. In July, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) compiled studies showing the value of free school meals for all children, including improved physical and emotional health among students, increased attendance rates, improved test scores among marginalized student groups, and reduced discipline infractions.
“[In Minnesota], we’ve made sure to continue talking to school nutrition associations about how we can keep improving the quality of the lunch along with getting lunch to everybody,” says Lenarz-Coy. “It’s not an easy lift, so the key is to have champions. [You need] several stars to align. Having a champion in the governor’s office was really important to getting a policy this big over the line.”
Hunger Is a Health Problem
Healthy meals for the nation’s children is not a new concept.
In 1946, the National School Lunch Act began giving free school lunches to low-income students. The Child Nutrition Act of 1966 then condensed control of the school lunch program from several government agencies to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), established the School Breakfast Program, and authorized the Special Milk Program, which provides milk free of charge or at a reduced cost to children in schools who do not participate in other child nutrition programs.
The USDA piloted the Child Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) in 1968 to provide food and resources for local sponsors who want to combine a feeding program with a summer activity program. In response to reports of hungry children, the Black Panther Party began running free breakfast programs out of churches and community centers, eventually expanding to 36 cities across the United States by 1971.
During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, supplying school meals became an even more urgent priority. In 2020, Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which gave the USDA authority to issue nationwide waivers making meals free for all students in participating school districts. More than 5 million children were served during the summer of 2020, nearly double the number of children who received meals through the program in each of the five previous summers. The move led to a record drop in food insecurity among families with children, from nearly 12 million in 2020 to 9 million in 2021.
“It was a huge success,” says Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), an organization that aims to improve the nutrition, health, and well-being of people facing food insecurity in the United States. “Schools loved it, parents loved it, kids loved it.”
Though the program ended on June 30, 2022, when Congress failed to extend the waiver, at least eight states, including California, Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, have now passed legislation to provide free school meals to students.
Other bills such as the School Meals Expansion Act, the No Hungry Kids in School Act, and the Expanding Access to School Meals Act would expand free meals to students, an idea the majority of people in the U.S. support. A poll by FRAC found that 63 percent of voters nationwide support legislation that would provide free meals to students.
Free Food Without Shame
Despite this widespread support, Project 2025 suggests narrowing the scope of the USDA, which it refers to as a “major welfare agency” and removing references to “equity” and “climate smart” in the USDA’s mission statement. Besides the devastating overall effects of this move, conflating free meal programs with welfare discourages students from participating in free meal programs.
This framing continues the stigmatizing of free school meals as “welfare” that began during the “right to lunch” movement in the 1960s. In a 2023 interview on the Integrated Schools podcast, Jennifer Gaddis, Ph.D., an associate professor of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said that before the pandemic, 30 million children participated in the school lunch program on a daily basis. However, about 20 million more had access to the program but chose not to participate, partially because of the stigma.
“I think shame [was a reason people didn’t participate],” Gaddis said. “And just the stigma of this being like a government handout versus something that you expect to be part of the school day.”
Universal school lunch eliminates the visibility of who is receiving assistance. Consequently, more students are likely to participate in the lunch program. When students feel comfortable participating, they are more likely to consume healthy nutritious meals, which can positively affect their health and academic performance. Eliminating the negative connotation associated with school lunch also fosters a more inclusive learning environment and a decrease in disciplinary actions, while also alleviating stress on families that may already be resource-strapped.
“Families are struggling with increased food costs and housing costs,” FitzSimons says. “[Universal school meals] reduce the household food budget and make it easier for families to make ends meet. It’s much easier when [parents] don’t have to worry about making sure their kids have lunch, and it helps ensure that students have access to the nutrition they need so that they don’t show up in class hungry or get hungry in the afternoon.”
When the School Doors Close
As the push for free healthy school meals increases, so does the discussion about how the U.S. can reduce child hunger once the last school bell rings. Since the Families First Coronavirus Response Act expired, the number of children living in hunger has increased. Today, 14 million children are facing hunger in the United States.
Some schools currently supplement school-day breakfast and lunch with weekend meals for students with an identified need, while other families are reliant on care food programs offered through local organizations.
“If there is a weekend program, like at a rec center, a YMCA, or a Boys and Girls Club, they can serve meals through the child and adult care food program,” FitzSimons says. “They don’t reach as many kids, obviously, as school meals.”
But this isn’t a new problem, though there are old solutions: In 1995, a school nurse, who has remained unnamed, in Little Rock, Arkansas, observed that many of the students she treated for illness or fatigue were hungry because they did not have enough to eat at home. So she created a backpack meal program, where she partnered with a local food bank to provide bags with food for students to take home over the weekend.
Over time, programs such as Feeding America’s BackPack Program, Blessings in a Backpack, and Operation Backpack have cropped up in schools and districts all across the country. More than 800,000 children across the U.S. benefit from food backpack programs on any given weekend.
The BackPack Program works with food banks and schools to provide healthy, easy-to-prepare food for weekends and school breaks. The program feeds more than 450,000 children each week by sending backpacks of groceries home with students. A study of the program in Urbana, Illinois, found that meals provided to families beyond the school day increased food security. Thirteen percent of families surveyed moved from “low food insecure” to “food secure” between October and December, and schools reported improved academic performance, school attendance, literacy and math test scores, and interest in school.
If we want to bring universal school meals to all children, regardless of income, it’s going to take a combination of imagination, tolerance for criticism, and a shift in how we consider this issue.
“On test days, schools feed all kids well. Every day is a good day to do well in school,” she says. “We’re really trying to make the case that in the same way we cover books and other things about school, we should make sure all kids going to public schools are fed.”
This article originally appeared in Yes! Magazine at https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/12/17/progress25-universal-school-meals.
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