From balancing a packed schedule to not always having the means to buy groceries, Brownlee is grateful her Virginia school continued to provide free breakfast and lunch for all students despite the expiration of federally funded pandemic school meals at the start of the 2022-23 academic year.

“I don’t have one of those stay-at-home mom lives where I’m able to pack their lunch every day,” Brownlee told ����Ӱ��. “So even if I know the food isn’t everything they might want, it’s at least something to get them through the day.”

Although Virginia has not passed free school meals legislation in the absence of the federal program, Virginia and many other states are now participating in the , or CEP — an Obama-era program that allows schools with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students.

According to a report from the , CEP participation soared in the 2022-23 academic year with 40,235 schools nationwide taking part — an increase of 6,935 schools, or 20.8 percent, compared to the previous year.

CEP began through the where any district, group of schools or individual school with 40 percent or more students eligible for free school meals can participate.

Today, 19.9 million children across the country attend a school that has CEP — an increase of nearly 3.7 million children, or 22.5 percent, compared to the previous year.

Participation rates vary significantly state-by-state, from nearly 100 percent of eligible schools in Wyoming, California and the District of Columbia to under 30 percent of eligible schools in New Hampshire, Colorado and Kansas.

Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and out-of-school time programs at the Food Research and Action Center, said CEP participation has grown in almost every single state.

“Most schools did not want to go back to the way school nutrition programs operated prior to the pandemic so they really leaned into community eligibility,” FitzSimons told ����Ӱ��.

Cheryl Johnson, the director of child nutrition and wellness at the Kansas Department of Education, said the state’s low 28.8% CEP participation stems from how it negatively affects schools’ finance formula.

“Many school districts are hesitant to move away from using meal applications because it can greatly impact their at-risk funding for students,” Johnson told ����Ӱ��.

Johnson added how schools participating in CEP lose important student data from no longer having to fill out applications for those receiving free or reduced price meals — thus causing schools to potentially receive less funding from the state.

But FitzSimons said Johnson’s concerns are not the case.

“A lot of times school districts would distribute Title I funds using free and reduced price eligibility, but they don’t have to do it that way,” FitzSimons said. “When community eligibility passed, the U.S. Department of Education actually came out with guidance to help districts come up with ways to distribute these funds among their schools.”

A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. 

Allie Pearce, a K-12 analyst at the Center for American Progress, added how schools shouldn’t shy away from CEP because there is a need to change how schools structure their finance formulas.

“Free and reduced price eligibility is an imperfect measure of students’ socioeconomic status but it’s the predominant one that’s used,” Pearce told ����Ӱ��. “We really need to move away from free and reduced price eligibility as this proxy measure and move towards other measures that are more representative of students and their families.”

Pearce recommends schools look at household income, students’ Medicaid participation and neighborhood poverty rates from the U.S. Census Bureau among other data points.

“There are a lot of things we can use, and it probably makes the most sense to use a mixed measure as much as possible since that will paint a clearer picture,” Pearce said.

Frank Edelblut, the New Hampshire Education Commissioner, noted how the state’s low 14.3% CEP participation comes from having few schools eligible.

“It’s just hard to get a whole broad swath of schools that are going to participate because they don’t qualify,” Edelblut told ����Ӱ��.

To address this concern, the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed a rule in March 2023 to lower the CEP eligibility threshold from .

“This proposed rule will make CEP available for about 20,000 more schools,” a USDA spokesperson told ����Ӱ�� in an emailed statement. “USDA estimates that about 2,000 schools with roughly 1 million children enrolled will opt into CEP because of this rule.”

But Pearce strongly believes “the logical and equitable next step is a universal system full stop.”

“Expanding community eligibility now is needlessly regressive when it comes to the pandemic era waivers we’ve already offered,” Pearce said. “It doesn’t address the ongoing meal debt burdens or some of the longstanding struggles associated with the meal application process in schools.”

Johnson agreed, adding that despite Kansas’ low CEP participation, free school meals for all students would be a “win-win” situation. 

“It would reduce paperwork and reduce stigma dramatically within the state if universal free meals were ever considered by Congress,” Johnson said.

Kerri Link, the nutritions program supervisor at the Colorado Department of Education, said the state addressed the low 27% CEP participation by passing free school meal legislation starting in the upcoming 2023-24 academic year.

Colorado now joins California, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont that have acted to independently .

Until statewide measures transition to federal investment, Pearce said CEP participation still serves as an incremental step forward.

“It may not go far enough to meet the needs of schools across the country, but in general, it’s a great step towards free meal access for more students,” Pearce said.

Despite overwhelming support from the Rhode Island Senate, free lunch and breakfast for all public school children will likely not be available, according to state legislators.

The Rhode Island Senate voted on May 16 in favor of the federal government doesn’t already cover — with opposition coming from Senate Republicans.

Rhode Island Democratic senator Jonathan Acosta said momentum to offer the meals will likely end once the bill is presented to the House of Representatives.

“Nobody wants to be the asshole to say ‘no we’re not going to feed kids at school’ so my guess would be that the House will protect itself by avoiding a public vote,” Acosta told ����Ӱ��.

LeeAnn Sennick, communications director for the Rhode Island Senate minority office, declined ����Ӱ��’s request for comment on Acosta’s remarks.

According to the , of the state’s 137,452 public school students, more than 70,000 receive a free or reduced-price lunch; and around 29,000 receive a free or reduced-price breakfast.

During the pandemic, the federal government funded free school meal programs for children throughout the country. The program expired at the start of the 2022-23 school year, leaving state governments to decide whether to pick up the cost. 

Rhode Island House of Representatives communications director Larry Berman told ����Ӱ�� in an emailed statement “there is no money in the budget that just passed the House Finance Committee in regards to free lunch and breakfast” for all public school children.

The House of Representatives began to vote on the state budget Friday and will adjourn on June 30th.

Acosta said the House of Representatives has other spending priorities, such as funding housing. 

According to the , California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico have funded universal school meals after federal funds ran out.

Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Nevada have passed temporary legislation in the absence of continued federal investment.

“Hunger is one of the very first things that needs to be addressed. It’s one of the biggest barriers to learning and one that’s honestly pretty easy to solve,” Allie Pearce, a K-12 education policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, told ����Ӱ��.

Under set for the 2023-24 academic year, a student from a household of three is eligible for free lunch if they made $32,318 or less in annual income and for reduced-price lunch if they made $45,991 or less. A student from a household of six is eligible for free meals at $52,364 or less in annual income.

“Those are just students that we know have filled out applications or that have been directly certified,” Pearce said. “There are probably so many more students that have not been able to fill out those applications or their families are in difficult or uncertain financial situations and may not qualify.”

The bill, sponsored by Acosta, would require Rhode Island public schools to provide free lunch and breakfast to all students instead of requiring them to only provide meals for those covered by the federal government.

“With the pandemic we saw a rise in economic and food insecurity across our state,” Acosta said. “We’ve started moving back to this world where we saw the issue of lunch shaming…so in light of that we picked up where some of these folks left off and introduced this legislation.”

Pearce noted that deprioritizing free school meals will do a disservice to all Rhode Island public school students, especially those who receive reduced-price meals.

“Those students will continue to have to pay a lesser amount but one that adds up for sure,” Peace said. “It also doesn’t work to address the stigma a lot of students go through when it comes to the meal debt that they may accrue.”

Rhode Island Republican senator Jessica de la Cruz has argued this bill is unnecessary because children from low-income families already receive free school meals.

“What you are doing is financing free lunches for the affluent,” Cruz told . “I would be in favor of widening the eligibility, but I cannot support the lunches of the affluent.” 

Rhode Island Republican senator Gordon Rogers agreed with Cruz.

“I’m not against feeding children and kids that need it in school,” Rogers told . “This will cost the state of Rhode Island [up to] $40 million, not just one time, but continuing, escalating forward.”

In the meantime, Acosta is hopeful conversations around free school meals will be revived in the coming year.

“The people in our state are our most valuable asset and the more that we develop them the better the returns are going to be for all of us,” Acosta said.