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Tag: school meal programs

  • States step in to pay for school meals for all kids | CNN Politics

    States step in to pay for school meals for all kids | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    As soon as Tracy Area Schools in Minnesota resumed charging for breakfast and lunch last year, students started dropping out of the program. Many of their families simply couldn’t shell out up to $2.65 for a meal each day.

    “We have some kids who didn’t eat because Mom and Dad can’t afford it,” said Michele Hawkinson, food service director for the rural district of 700 students. “These kids are hungry. This is maybe the only nutritious, healthy meal they’re getting a day.”

    But Hawkinson no longer needs to worry about children in her district skipping meals. Starting this year, Minnesota students at schools that participate in the federal school meals program can eat breakfast and lunch for free, thanks to a law that state legislators passed in March. The initiative will cost about $200 million a year.

    Minnesota is one of nine states that are picking up the tab for students’ breakfast and lunch in many of their schools. California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico and Vermont have also approved permanent universal free meals programs, while Nevada launched a two-year effort last year.

    Other states have extended free meals to more students. For instance, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are providing free breakfasts this school year. And lawmakers in other states have introduced legislation to establish universal free meal programs.

    “There’s been a tremendous momentum for states to move forward on offering free school meals for all,” said Crystal FitzSimons, director of school programs at the Food Research & Action Center. “Offering free meals to all students just changes the culture of the cafeteria. (It) increases participation and makes the cafeteria a really positive environment for all students.”

    States are paying for the initiatives in different ways. Massachusetts is using revenue from its new millionaires’ tax to help cover the cost of the $172 million program, while Colorado is raising around $100 million a year by limiting state tax deductions for affluent residents. Other states are drawing from their general budgets.

    The states’ actions build upon a federal Covid-19 pandemic relief program that provided free meals to all students, regardless of income, for more than two years.

    During that time, around 30 million students were receiving free meals at school, according to the US Department of Agriculture, up from about 20 million children who qualified based on their household income prior to the pandemic.

    Allowing all students to eat in the cafeteria at no charge minimized the stigma felt by some kids who received free meals, increasing the likelihood that they would actually partake in breakfast and lunch, school nutrition officials said.

    But the pandemic program expired at the start of the last academic year. Lower-income families once again had to fill out applications for free or reduced-price meals, while parents who were struggling but earned too much to qualify had to find a way to pay for their children’s breakfast and lunch.

    School nutrition staffers, meanwhile, had to once again distribute the forms and convince eligible parents to complete them, while also contending with mounting school meal debt.

    Meanwhile, the number of kids getting meals at school dropped. Some 28.3 million students, on average, participated in the lunch program daily in May, down from 30.2 million the same time a year earlier. And 14.6 million kids partook in the breakfast program, down from 16.1 million.

    Many schools are taking a more holistic approach to children’s education, focusing on more than just reading, writing and arithmetic, said Chris Derico, president of the School Nutrition Association.

    “Research has shown if kids are hungry, they’re not going to be ready to learn,” said Derico, who is also the child nutrition director at Barbour County Schools in West Virginia.

    States are also realizing that improving children’s ability to learn could better prepare them to enter the workforce, said Annette Nielsen, executive director of the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center, which has been tracking the implementation of universal free meals programs nationwide.

    “There may be a financial cost, but there’s probably a larger financial benefit to keeping it long term,” she said.

    Benefits and challenges for schools

    In addition to the benefits for children, free school breakfast and lunch for all means districts don’t have to hound families with meal debt.

    The end of the federal free meals program caused debt levels to soar. The median reported debt was $5,164 per district, as of November, compared with $3,400 at the end of the 2017-18 school year, according to the School Nutrition Association.

    In Colorado’s Littleton Public Schools, the debt level skyrocketed to $32,000 at the end of last year, said Jessica Gould, director of nutrition services in the affluent suburban Denver district of just over 13,000 students. Prior to the pandemic, it was typically between $4,000 and $6,000 a year.

    “Now we don’t have to worry about that. We’re not the debt collectors anymore,” Gould said, noting that last year’s tab was paid by donors. “We’re just able to focus on providing good quality meals to our students.”

    However, the universal free meals programs also pose challenges to school districts. They no longer have the ability to increase breakfast and lunch rates when their costs of food, equipment and labor rise. Instead, they must make due with the state reimbursement.

    But the even bigger problem is that the state programs rely on districts still getting federal funding to cover the cost of feeding children who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. And certain state funds for general education also depend on the share of lower-income students in a school district.

    That requires getting parents to complete the applications, which can be challenging especially when schools are telling families that everyone can eat for free.

    So far, Gould has received forms from about 1,500 eligible families, but she is expecting more than 2,300.

    “Our community is confused,” she said, noting that the district created a flyer to explain the new universal free meals program. “It’s been challenging at best to just figure out how to communicate to our families.”

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  • London is handing out free meals for all primary school children | CNN Business

    London is handing out free meals for all primary school children | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    London’s mayor has announced an emergency program to provide free meals for all children attending state primary schools in the capital, adding to a string of fresh evidence that Brits are struggling to afford necessities.

    “The cost-of-living crisis means families and children across our city are in desperate need of additional support,” Sadiq Khan, who himself received free school meals as a child, said in a statement Monday.

    The £130 million ($156 million) program will run for the academic year starting in September and save families around £440 ($529) per child. It will also help reduce the “stigma that can be associated with being singled out as low income,” the statement added.

    It is expected to help around 270,000 pupils who, according to estimates by researchers for the city government, would benefit from free school meals but are not currently eligible under national criteria, which are broadly based on household income. On this basis, a quarter of all London pupils, including those in high school, qualify for free school meals, according to official data.

    This number tallies with an estimate by the Child Poverty Action Group that about 210,000 children living in poverty in London don’t qualify for free school meals because the eligibility criteria are “so restrictive.”

    There was further evidence Monday that more and more Brits are struggling to afford food and electricity as inflation, which is near its highest level in four decades, erodes wages and welfare payments.

    A survey of 85 food banks by the Independent Food Aid Network, an advocacy group, found that 89% saw demand increase in December and January, compared with the same period 12 months ago.

    More than 80% of food banks reported a significant number of people needing help for the first time, as well as an increase in the number of people needing ongoing support rather than occasional food parcels. Just over a third of organizations said they had served staff working for the National Health Service (NHS), which has been hit with successive strikes since December over pay and working conditions.

    “Our fastest-growing client group are working people on low wages who cannot make ends meet,” said Su Parrish from The Easter Team, a food bank in Crawley, south of London.

    Parrish added that the food bank had provided a “record” number of Christmas parcels and modified their usual contents as “clients told us they wouldn’t be able to afford to put ovens on, even on Christmas Day.”

    A survey of more than 2,700 UK adults, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Monday, found that 51% were worried about keeping warm in their homes this winter.

    Some 60% of respondents, who were polled between January 25 and February 5, said they were using less gas or electricity at home to cope with the increased cost of food, fuel and energy bills.

    “We hear horror stories of people living in cold flats keeping their entire energy budget for keeping the fridge going,” said Andi Hofbauer of St Aidan’s FoodShare in Leeds.

    Also on Monday, a separate ONS survey of nearly 18,500 UK adults between September and January found that 34% of those aged 25 to 34 years reported borrowing more money or using more credit than usual compared with a year ago.

    And over half of adults living in rented accommodation said they would be unable to afford an unexpected, but necessary, expense of £850 ($1,000).

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  • White House seeks to tackle food insecurity at first hunger conference since 1969 | CNN Politics

    White House seeks to tackle food insecurity at first hunger conference since 1969 | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Groceries cost 13.5% more than they did a year ago. Nearly 25 million adults live in households where there isn’t always enough to eat. Some 40% of food banks saw increased demand this summer.

    At a time when the affordability of food is in the spotlight, the Biden administration is hosting a White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health on Wednesday with the goal of combating food insecurity and diet-related diseases.

    Overall, food insecurity has declined since former President Richard Nixon convened the first and only White House conference on food, nutrition and health in 1969, which led to nationwide expansions of the food stamp and school meals programs and the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, among other changes. General economic growth and the reduction in poverty have also contributed to the improvements in food security in recent decades.

    However, the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring inflation have increased the attention paid to food insecurity in the US over the past two years. The Biden administration released a 44-page playbook on Tuesday aimed at the “bold goal” of ending hunger by 2030 and increasing healthy eating and physical activity to reduce diet-related diseases.

    Among the key proposals: expand free school meals to 9 million more children by 2032; allow more people to qualify for food stamps; broaden the Summer Expanded Benefit Transfer program to more kids; increase funding for nutrition programs for senior citizens; and improve transportation to and from grocery stores and farmer’s markets, among other initiatives. Many of the efforts would need approval from Congress.

    President Joe Biden announced at the conference more than $8 billion in private and public sector commitments as part of the administration’s call to action.

    “In America, no child, no child should go to bed hungry,” Biden told those gathered at the conference Wednesday. “No parent should die of disease that can be prevented.”

    More than 100 organizations have made commitments, including hospitals and health care associations, tech companies, philanthropies and the food industry.

    At least $2.5 billion will be invested in start-up companies that are focused on solutions to hunger and food insecurity, according to the White House. More than $4 billion will be dedicated toward philanthropic efforts to improve access to nutritious food, promote healthy choices and increase physical activity.

    The President also urged Congress to make permanent the enhancement to the child tax credit, which was only in effect last year. Parents used the additional monthly funds to buy food and basic necessities, which Biden said helped cut child poverty in half and reduced food insecurity for families by 26%.

    Congress has poured billions into special pandemic assistance programs aimed at enabling struggling Americans to have enough food to feed themselves and their families – even as millions of jobs were lost in 2020.

    “That’s why it’s so consequential that at the onset of the Covid-19 recession, the combination of fiscal support to households – whether it is from the economic impact payments, unemployment insurance, refundable tax credits, enhanced SNAP benefits or pandemic EBT – all combined to prevent an increase in food insecurity over the past two years,” said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

    The pandemic aid, particularly a temporary enhancement to the child tax credit, helped keep kids fed last year, Bauer and anti-hunger advocates maintain.

    Food insecurity among children fell in 2021, reversing a spike during the first year of the pandemic, according to a recent US Department of Agriculture report. Some 6.2% of households with children were unable at times to provide adequate, nutritious food for their kids last year, compared with 7.6% in 2020, the report found. Last year’s rate was not significantly different than the 2019 share.

    And the prevalence of food insecurity in the families who have kids dropped to 12.5% last year, the lowest since at least 1998, the earliest year that comparable records exist.

    But elderly Americans living alone and childless households both experienced an increase in food insecurity last year, the report found.

    Overall, the share of households contending with food insecurity remained statistically the same in 2021 as the year before.

    This lack of improvement in general food insecurity despite the surge in federal spending on food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, is a red flag for Angela Rachidi, senior fellow in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

    “When the solution is always ‘let’s just spend more on SNAP or spend more on school lunch or WIC,’ I think that that’s not always the best use of federal dollars,” she said.

    Rachidi would like to see more of an emphasis on nutrition and healthy eating, which are among the pillars of the White House conference.

    “Many more people in the US die from diet-related disease than die from hunger,” she said, noting the health problems caused by obesity, diabetes and other conditions.

    The pandemic aid that helped keep Americans afloat has largely been exhausted, and Congress has shown little appetite to dole out more assistance – even as high inflation is squeezing many families.

    The share of people who say they live in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last seven days has climbed to 11.5%, according to the most recent US Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey conducted in late July and early August.

    That’s up from the 10.2% recorded by the survey in late December and early January, just after the final monthly child tax credit payment was distributed. The share had been even lower in the late summer and early fall of 2021, when the monthly installments were being sent.

    Meanwhile, shopping in the supermarket is taking a bigger bite out of people’s wallets. Egg prices have skyrocketed nearly 40% over the past year, while flour is 23% costlier. Milk and bread are up 17% and 16% respectively, while chicken is nearly 17% more expensive.

    Starting next month, it will be a little easier for those in the food stamp program to afford groceries because the annual inflation adjustment will kick in. Beneficiaries will see an increase in benefits of 12%, or an average of $26 per person, per month. This comes on top of last year’s revision to the Thrifty Food Plan, upon which benefits are based, which raised the average monthly payment by $36 per person.

    Still, the upward march in prices has driven more people to food pantries, which are also struggling to stock the shelves amid higher prices.

    Some 40% of food banks reported seeing an increase in the number of people served in July compared with June, according to a survey conducted by Feeding America, which has more than 60,000 food pantries, meal programs and partner agencies in its network. The average increase was about 10% more people. Another 40% said demand remained about level.

    Many food pantries don’t have the resources to meet this increased demand, said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Feeding America’s CEO, noting that she’s seen sites with nearly empty shelves but long lines out the door.

    The network provided 1.4 billion fewer meals in the fiscal year ending June 30 than the year before.

    The USDA announced earlier this month that it will provide nearly $1.5 billion in additional funding for emergency food assistance, which will help alleviate the supply shortages at food banks and pantries.

    However, Feeding America feels more should be done. It recently surveyed nearly 36,000 people for their recommendations to end hunger. Many felt that food stamp benefits should be increased and eligibility should be expanded. Nearly half felt their communities need more food pantries, grocery stores and fresh food.

    The recent infusion of federal funds will help pantries distribute more food, though it doesn’t completely close the gap. And it will take time for the supplies to arrive, Babineaux-Fontenot said.

    “Today, people are going to be looking for ways to feed themselves and their family, and there will be scarce resources for them to do that,” she said.

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