Child hunger leaders from across North Carolina — including representatives from school nutrition departments, food banks, churches, and state government — convened in Asheville this week for an annual conference hosted by the (CHI).

“​​In this room, we are a community united by one common value: Kids deserve access to healthy food, no matter what,” said Lou Anne Crumpler, director of the CHI.

During conference sessions, which spanned a variety of topics related to school meals, one topic loomed large: the ramifications of changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was cut significantly by the , signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2025.

This year also marked the first time the conference was held in western North Carolina — aligned with a CHI project, funded by , that will examine child hunger and strategies to reduce it in the wake of .

“Hurricane Helene tested our infrastructure and our spirits,” said Jehan Benton-Clark, vice president of grantmaking and strategy at Dogwood Health Trust. “Western North Carolina has been navigating workforce shortages, market instability, and uncertainty in public funding. And yet, this region also represents what is possible when people show up for one another.”

Preparing for historic SNAP cuts

More than in North Carolina, including roughly 600,000 children, receive SNAP benefits each month. In addition to alleviating hunger, SNAP — particularly in rural communities, where food benefits play a crucial role in sustaining local grocery stores.

SNAP brings roughly $2.8 billion in federal funds annually to North Carolina, generating a $4.2 billion impact, according to a from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS).

“SNAP is the backbone of food access in rural North Carolina — SNAP is making sure that all of rural North Carolina has grocery stores that remain open,” said Kate Hanson, executive director of .

The , also called H.R. 1,  reduced federal funding for SNAP by , which amounts to a roughly 20% cut —

Beginning in October 2026, the bill increases the share states have to pay toward SNAP’s administrative costs from 50% to 75%. According to the NC DHHS presentation, additional costs to cover this increase annually are $69 million for county governments and $16 million for the state.

Separately, beginning in October 2027, the bill requires states with a above 6% to cover a portion of food benefits. Historically, the federal government has covered 100% of SNAP food benefits. Based on North Carolina’s most recent SNAP payment error rate, the state’s cost share for SNAP benefits could total annually.

If the state and counties are unable to absorb these additional costs, SNAP could face reductions or end entirely, threatening food access for hundreds of thousands of households.

“I’ve been calling on the federal government to delay implementation of H.R. 1 until fiscal year 2030 so that we states and the counties have adequate time to reduce our error rates, and to hold states harmless for the errors that occurred during the chaotic period of the federal government shutdown,” said Gov. Josh Stein in a prerecorded statement. “We need the General Assembly to fully fund SNAP in the state budget because we cannot risk losing this program.”

During a keynote address, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson discussed the temporary that occurred during the federal government shutdown in November. Following a brought by more than 20 states, including North Carolina, the Trump administration to be used for partial SNAP payments.

Jackson commended the work of staff at NC DHHS — who he called “unsung heroes” — for their work around the clock to ensure there was not a gap in SNAP benefits. In February, the North Carolina Department of Justice , the Dogwood Award, to the NC DHHS SNAP team who worked to “pull off this miracle,” Jackson said.

“Had it not been for them … food would not have been on the table for over a million people across the state,” said Jackson.

During a panel on SNAP, Hanson announced a new campaign called and urged attendees to share the importance of SNAP with their elected officials.

How cuts to SNAP impact access to school meals

Cuts to SNAP are directly tied to school meals because they impact one of the key ways students access free school meals: direct certification.

School districts regularly receive data from the state that allows them to automatically enroll students in free school meals based on their household’s participation in SNAP. As participation in SNAP declines, fewer students will be directly certified for free meals, and schools will have to return to collecting applications, which are often difficult to get families to fill out. Participating in SNAP also automatically enrolls children in , a grocery benefit available in the summer.

According to Rachel Findley, senior director of the Office of Nutrition at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI), more than 850,000 students were on SNAP in June 2025 — and that figure is already declining.

“That number will continue to decrease, and what that means is these students are no longer categorically eligible for free meals,” Findley said. “Now, our hardworking school nutrition central office staff are going to have to get free and reduced applications completed by families who haven’t completed a free and reduced application — perhaps the entire time that child has been in school.”

Declines in SNAP participation will also impact the (CEP), which allows eligible schools to serve all students free breakfast and lunch without collecting applications. That’s because CEP eligibility and reimbursements are calculated using the (ISP), a formula based on the number of students directly certified for free meals, such as by participating in SNAP or Medicaid.

As ISPs decline, some schools may lose CEP eligibility entirely, and others may no longer be able to afford to operate CEP — both of which would reduce access to free school meals.

When SNAP benefits lapsed in November, Findley said calls poured in from superintendents and community members across the state trying to figure out how school meals could help get more food to students. Findley’s answer was: “I can’t recreate this program to do things it was never regulated to do.” She described this as an “aha moment” where people realized: What do we do now?

“It’s going to be catastrophic for our students in North Carolina if SNAP benefits expire. It’s going to be catastrophic for school nutrition programs who rely on that categorical eligibility in order to operate meals at no cost for students,” said Findley.

Learn more about how cuts to SNAP are tied to school meals in .

Working to secure free school meals for all students

The coalition, launched with support from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, advocates for all North Carolina public school students to have access to breakfast and lunch at no cost to their families. The coalition is co-led by the , , , and CHI.

“Feeding kids isn’t controversial — it’s foundational for a full and a healthy life,” said Merry Davis, director of Health Through Food at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation.

Advocates of free school meals for all, including ensuring access to meals that can support students’ learning and health, reducing stigma in the cafeteria, eliminating school meal debt, and more.

— California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont — have passed legislation that provides free school meals to all students. Dozens of other states, including North Carolina, have introduced bills that would do the same.

In April 2025, a “” bill was introduced in the General Assembly, sponsored by four Republican House members. Although the bill did not move forward, it garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, with more than 50 sponsors.

According to Marianne Weant, director of programs at the North Carolina Alliance for Health, support school meals for all.

During the conference, Chanel Jones, a teacher in the and 2025 Piedmont Triad Region Teacher of the Year, shared her perspective on the importance of school meals for all.

In her remarks, Jones said she cares about school meals for all students because she has seen firsthand how hunger impacts her students, including a lack of focus, irritability, or deciding to put their head down.

“Hunger is quiet, it is subtle. It is often invisible, and yet it changes everything about a child’s ability to fully show up in a classroom,” she said.

At Broadview Middle School, where Jones teaches, all students receive free breakfast and lunch.

“And I can say without hesitation that is how it should be for every student in North Carolina,” Jones said.

Feeding western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene

In September 2024, caused widespread destruction in western North Carolina. Two days after the storm, 25 of North Carolina’s 100 counties were .

MANNA FoodBank, which serves 16 western North Carolina counties and the Qualla Boundary, lost nearly everything in the storm, including both of its warehouses and all food, equipment, and computer systems.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Claire Neal, CEO of MANNA FoodBank, said they devised a plan to receive donations in the morning and distribute items in the afternoon. Without cell service, internet, or open roads, “we were really just kind of relying on the kindness and capacity of our local neighbors,” she said.

What came next was “the scariest moment” of her professional life when she arrived at the donation site in the morning and realized how little food would be available to distribute.

“But the truth is … people gave what they had. They pulled things out of their garages to give to their neighbors,” said Neal. “And then when the roads opened up, the rest of the country, and really the world, responded in amazing and beautiful ways.”

Another learning from the hurricane, Neal said, was realizing just how long recovery takes. The food bank only recently restored its freezer and cooler capacity — nearly 500 days after the storm — and is now beginning to rebuild its volunteer center and offices.

“I say all of that just to use MANNA as an example … many of our neighbors are still rebuilding,” said Neal. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is something that we can do together.”

Connecting students to locally grown food

Farm to school — which includes purchasing local food for school meals, educational activities related to agriculture and nutrition, and school gardening — offers numerous benefits for both farmers and students.

For farmers, selling to school districts opens new institutional markets that can provide additional revenue and strengthen local economies. For students, eating local products in school meals and snacks can improve access to nutritious, high-quality food and increase interest in topics related to food systems and agriculture.

During a panel, Danielle Raucheisen, program director at the (ASAP), discussed the organization’s efforts to connect local farmers interested in selling to schools with school nutrition directors and child care programs that want to buy local products.

“One way we’re doing this is holding grower-buyer meetings at food hubs here in western North Carolina,” said Raucheisen. “Food hub staff, child care staff, and farmers from the community will learn more about each other and the different systems they all operate in.”

One of the farms ASAP works with is in Fairview. The farm offers grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pork, and pasture-raised chickens.

Virginia Hamilton, director of operations at Hickory Nut Gap Farms, said the farm supplies up to 8,000 pounds of ground beef to local schools each month. Located on 70 acres, the farm also frequently hosts groups of students for field trips and tours, allowing children from all backgrounds to “be a farm kid for a couple hours,” Hamilton said.

During the panel, Hamilton outlined three ways to support farm to school:

• Secure continuous funding for farm to school: To build momentum, Hamilton said farm to school efforts need continuous funding rather than being susceptible to the decisions of donors or politicians. “Every time we have to restart or retool something, it slows down the progress that we’ve made together,” she said.
• Support independently owned regional food infrastructure: “We can’t feed students if we can’t get the food to the schools,” said Hamilton. Infrastructure needed for large scale distribution of local food includes refrigeration, transportation, trucking, processing and slaughter facilities, and packing infrastructure.
• Advocate for farmland preservation: NC FarmLink estimates that the state will lose nearly of farmland to development by 2040. “Farm to school or farm to table just doesn’t actually work without the farm part. When we lose farmland, we can’t get it back,” said Hamilton.

Increasing access to summer meals in rural communities

When school is out for the summer, efforts to feed children don’t end. In 2025, 5.3 million summer meals were served across the state to children ages 18 and under, an increase from the 4.2 million meals served in summer 2024, CHI.

Historically, all summer meals had to be eaten on-site, such as at a park or a library. This can create barriers to accessing summer meals, particularly in rural communities, where children may not have transportation to reach meal sites.

Beginning in the summer of 2023, new provided a solution: Summer meals sponsors in low-income, rural areas are now allowed to provide meals that can be eaten off-site, also called non-congregate meals or .

“SUN Meals To-Go are a game changer,” said Tamara Baker, project and communications director at CHI, adding that serving SUN Meals To-Go also provides a way for school nutrition departments to strengthen their financial position by receiving additional federal reimbursements.

Participation in SUN Meals To-Go has grown rapidly. According to CHI, there were eight sponsors participating in summer 2023, 33 sponsors participating in summer 2024, and 43 sponsors participating in summer 2025.

Two of those sponsors — and — shared their experiences with SUN Meals To-Go during the conference.

Nicole Caudill, director of community meals for Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, said implementing SUN Meals To-Go has resulted in rapid growth in the food bank’s summer meals efforts. In 2025, when the food bank increased SUN Meals To-Go operations, they served roughly 1,200 children per day through congregate meals, and another 1,000 children per day through SUN Meals To-Go — nearly doubling their reach.

“This really opens up doors for us to get meals into rural communities,” said Caudill, adding that more than 54,000 meals were served last year through SUN Meals To-Go alone.

Learn more about SUN Meals To-Go in Hickory City Schools in .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Anthony Bonner is facing looming uncertainty. A single dad living in Memphis, Tennessee, he fears he may soon no longer qualify for benefits through the  (SNAP)—aid that can be used like cash to purchase groceries. 

Until now, Bonner has been able to receive SNAP aid for himself and his son regardless of whether he was working. New regulations, part of Donald Trump’s , are about to change that. 

Under the , parents with minor children   must work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week to receive SNAP. Bonner’s son, Braylon, turns 14 in late February. The typical 13-year-old boy, who plays the trumpet and enjoys basketball and Roblox, may soon be the only one in his two-person household to qualify for food aid.

As a self-employed barber, Bonner’s hours fluctuate, leaving him unsure whether he’ll meet the 20-hour-a-week minimum. It’s a struggle acutely felt by single parents who are the sole earners in their household.

“Nobody should be worried about where the next meal is coming from,” said Bonner, who is already anticipating changes to how he shops and how his family eats. “I might have to really figure out how to stretch it,” he added, referring to the limited funds he said he’ll have for groceries.

With the new rules in place, around 2.4 million Americans could lose assistance within the next few years, according to estimates from the 

The new requirements fail to factor in people who don’t work in fields with consistent hours, said Ed Bolen of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.  “It can be a pretty harsh rule for people who work in jobs that don’t always have nice, solid, consistent 20 hours a week,” he said. 

Leighton Ku, the director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, told Prism, “There’s this sort of presumption that people who are getting SNAP benefits are undeserving people, and that the way you show that you are deserving is that you work.” 

It’s a perception familiar to Bonner.

“I get the sentiment that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. But our bodies need food. Our bodies need water, that’s a necessity,” he said. “Whether a person works or not, people should be able to eat. Families should be able to eat.”

In light of the new SNAP changes, Bonner recently took on a second job to boost his hours. As a community organizer for the nonprofit , he’s employed through a three-month pilot program. If his contract ends in March, he will likely no longer meet the SNAP work requirements.

Failure to meet new requirements for any three months in a three-year period will result in a loss of benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents under the age of 14.

About 1 in 8, or 41.7 million, Americans rely on SNAP, according to the latest figures from .

“You’re taking the people who not only, in many cases, have the fewest skills and the most difficulty getting jobs, but who are probably the most reliant on food assistance, and you’re saying specifically you can’t get it,” Ku said.

A  from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that among workers participating in SNAP, most have jobs with low wages. The study noted that low-paying jobs often have scheduling practices that contribute to workers’ unstable incomes.

Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, said the documentation needed in order to prove the required work hours will also be a challenge for some. “There’s a leap between being in compliance with this policy and proving that you are,” Bauer said.

Bauer and Ku said that the SNAP program has long faced bureaucratic hurdles, with excessive paperwork and documentation often preventing people from accessing benefits even when they qualify.

Da’jion Lymore, a single father of a 6-year-old, knows this firsthand. After moving from Missouri to Georgia, he was forced to restart his SNAP application. As a self-employed multimedia specialist, verifying his income has been a challenge. Now, he’s stuck in limbo without any SNAP benefits, even though he technically qualifies.

As he waits for his benefits to come through, Lymore works hard to stretch every ingredient for his son. 

“I make sure I use everything,” he said, “making sure he gets everything he needs, making sure he’s full with every meal. He’s a growing boy; some days it’s definitely surprising how much he eats.”

Bonner had a message for lawmakers who voted to restrict benefits. 

“Look at your constituents. Really look at us. Stop looking at the numbers, look at the people,” he said. “The policy that you’re making is really hurting us.”

Proponents of  for SNAP deny accusations of cruelty.  

“To me, work is not a punishment,” said Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “It’s sort of an expectation that we all have for ourselves and should have for the rest of society, if you’re able-bodied and don’t have caregiving responsibilities.”

But a  from the Economic Policy Institute found that for low-income adults, the main barriers to work are economic conditions outside of their control, and that work requirements in the past have failed to boost work in significant ways. 

“They have other barriers, like child care needs, and other problems in their lives that make it difficult to find work,” Ku said. 

That argument doesn’t persuade Rachidi. “You could argue if high school-age kids even need caregiving,” she said of the broadened work requirement for parents with children over the age of 14. 

Bonner is astonished by that assertion. “It’s ridiculous to expect a child to be able to suffice by themselves,” he said. “If I left [my son] alone and said go ahead, go fend for yourself, he’s not gonna make it. No 14-year-old kid is prepared.”

Rachidi predicted that tighter work requirements could expand to other safety net programs, such as housing assistance. 

Bonner, meanwhile, tries to talk to his son about how to best prepare for the uncertainty that lies ahead. “You may have to reach out and extend help to others,” he tells Braylon, knowing that people in his community may be facing similar uncertainties. In Georgia, Lymore said his neighbors have come together through Facebook groups to organize a market stand where people can leave food for each other, such as fresh eggs, produce, and bread. “The community definitely helps each other out in this time of need,” he said, filling the gaps the government no longer meets.

The White House said Tuesday afternoon that the administration would partially fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that feeds some 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, hours after President Donald J. Trump threatened to withhold the money and defy a court order.

Multiple news outlets reported that press secretary Karoline Leavitt , saying the administration would comply with last week’s ruling that it could not cut off all funding to the federal food assistance program known as SNAP .

On Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump wrote: “SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

The president’s post sparked anger and confusion among advocates Tuesday, who said they’ve been working with the federal government to get the critical aid flowing. Gina Plata-Nino, interim director for SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, called Trump’s apparent reversal on providing partial funding cruel and intentionally harmful to needy families.

“He has to follow the law,” she said of the president. “The agencies are already working on this. USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] already agreed to comply and issued the memo guidance form last night.”

Last week, two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration could not withhold SNAP funding. The government then agreed to a partial payment using contingency monies, but said it would not tap other sources to fully cover the food assistance program. Advocates say families can expect to receive just 50% of their typical allotment for the month of November. And it’s unclear when the aid will arrive.

Meanwhile, multiple outlets reported Tuesday that one of those judges, U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, has to consider a new motion that would force the USDA to provide the full $8 billion needed for November benefits.

Two federal judges on Friday ruled against President Donald Trump’s move to suspend food stamp benefits starting Nov. 1 amid the month-long government shutdown, with each noting contingency funding is available. 

It’s unclear if the Trump administration plans an appeal or how quickly food assistance can flow to the 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Sixteen million of them are children, putting pressure on schools to address their needs.

U.S. District Judge of Rhode Island ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute the funds in a timely manner using contingency money. 

“SNAP benefits have never, until now, been terminated,” McConnell “And the United States has in fact admitted that the contingency funds are appropriately used during a shutdown, and that occurred in 2019.”

In a separate ruling, U.S. District Judge of Massachusetts gave the Trump administration until Monday to decide whether it will provide at least some food stamp benefits to recipients. She indicated the suspension of SNAP benefits is contrary to law. 

She found fault with the defendants’ assertion that the U.S Department of Agriculture is prohibited from funding SNAP because Congress has not enacted new appropriations for the current fiscal year.

“To the contrary, defendants are statutorily mandated to use the previously appropriated SNAP contingency reserve when necessary and also have discretion to use other previously appropriated funds,”  

Despite the judges’ rulings, many advocates say some kids will go hungry in November because the process for obtaining the aid consists of multiple steps — some of which have already been missed for those who receive help at the start of every month. 

On Oct. 28, more than 20 states, the District of Columbia, and three governors for suspending November’s SNAP benefits. They called the move unprecedented and illegal.

“SNAP is one of our nation’s most effective tools to fight hunger, and the USDA has the money to keep it running,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, with the president, said in a statement. “There is no excuse for this administration to abandon families who rely on SNAP, or food stamps, as a lifeline. The federal government must do its job to protect families.”

Gina Plata-Nino, interim director for SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, said her organization encouraged the USDA to tap into its contingency and reserve funds to save children and families from going hungry. By refusing this opportunity, at least some recipients will likely miss their allotment. 

Plata-Nino said states were directed by federal officials on Oct. 10 to stop reporting critical data — a list of household eligibility and food stamp allocation — information they send directly to electronic benefit transfer contractors, who are key in distributing the aid. 

“Even in the best-case scenario, if the judge says, ‘We rule in your favor and we demand that this happens right now,’ and the Trump administration doesn’t appeal … the process of getting benefits into recipients’ accounts would take time,” she said. 

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, executive director of EdTrust New York, a statewide education policy and advocacy organization, said it’s clear that serious damage has already been done to what is an essential program. 

“We know from what has happened so far with this administration that when they make announcements like this, it does have a direct impact on programs and the ability to sustain them,” she said. “For example, there was an announcement of federal cuts to Head Start very early on in the administration, and the program actually shut down. It’s still recovering. So, we can’t predict the chaos that is spread by this most recent effort to cut benefits.”

Benjamin-Gomez praised New York for declaring a state of emergency on the matter: Gov. Kathy Hochul is committing an additional $65 million in new state funds for emergency food aid to support state food banks. But not all states will do the same.  

Ian Coon, spokesperson for Alliance for Education, an independent, local education fund that supports Seattle Public Schools, said his organization has already earmarked funding to bridge the gap for those in need. 

He said the Alliance decided in late October to fund $150,000 in gift cards to area food stores for families in crisis. He said school staff will help identify children in need and offer the assistance of $25, $50 or $100. The $150,000 comes from a reserve fund.  

“We are fully aware it’s not a long-term solution, but we needed to do something,” Coon said. 

Carolyn Vega, associate director of policy analysis for Share Our Strength, which runs No Kid Hungry, said her organization also does not predict an abrupt or smooth end to the suffering of American families who rely on these benefits. 

“We are not holding our breath for the money to start flowing today,” she said. “Kids can’t wait: Families have to eat every single day. We know from our extensive work with schools that teachers already see kids show up to school hungry on Monday mornings. We can only imagine how much worse that would be if a family came in and were expecting to see benefits on Saturday and they did not. It’s an unbelievable strain for food banks. We know that schools will be an important resource for many families, but they can’t fill in the gap.”

In fiscal year 2023, nearly 80% of SNAP households included either a child, an elderly person or a non-elderly individual with a disability, . About 39% of SNAP participants were children that year. 

A statement on the federal agency’s website blames Senate Democrats for the shutdown. 

“They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance,” . 

The department declined to comment on the judges’ rulings.

April Perez was 22 years old when she had her first daughter. Enrolling in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, commonly known as WIC, was a lifesaver. “With her being my first child,” she said, “I was still finding my way through motherhood.” The program helped her access healthy foods for her family, get formula when she wasn’t able to produce enough breastmilk to breastfeed her daughter, and even get a referral to sign up her daughter, now 4 years old, for health insurance.

WIC provides food, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and health care referrals to low-income mothers and young children ages 5 and under. Perez said the benefits for formula and foods like milk, fruit and vegetables alleviated some of the financial pressure around her transition to motherhood. “I didn’t have to stress about whether I was going to feed her or not,” she said. The benefits also made it possible for Perez and her husband to save up for their own apartment and move out of the friend’s house they were staying in. 

Perez’s husband works long days in construction, but she doesn’t work due to a number of health issues. She has cerebral palsy, which makes it hard for her to stand, use her arms and hands, or sometimes even walk, and hydrocephalus. WIC benefits help keep her family afloat. Perez, who lives in Virginia, now has two more daughters, a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old, and all three of her children are enrolled in WIC. Her 3-year-old, who has been diagnosed with autism, is very particular about food given her sensory sensitivities, but Perez is able to get her plenty of milk, bananas and other foods she likes with her WIC benefits. “It gives me peace of mind for my kid,” she said. Her infant, meanwhile, needs a special formula because she has acid reflux, which she said would cost her $50 if she didn’t get it through WIC.

But the government shutdown has now put the WIC program at risk. Unlike Social Security, WIC isn’t an entitlement program, so it relies on Congress to appropriate money every year, but Congress wasn’t able to pass bills funding the government before the fiscal year lapsed on September 30. The program is on funds, operating mostly on a contingency fund of , which is , as the shutdown continues. 

Federal funds would likely have lasted just two weeks from the start of the shutdown, estimated Zoë Neuberger, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Then on Oct. 7, the Trump administration it had found a “creative solution” to use tariff revenue to keep federal WIC funding flowing. In a briefing for Congressional staffers three days later, the administration said it would about $300 million in unused tariff revenue into WIC, allowing it to continue until the end of October.

After federal funding is gone, states will have to use their own money if they want to keep the program going and try to get the federal government to pay them back when it reopens. The administration recently sent states an email saying that if they use their own funds for WIC allowable purposes they may be reimbursed, according to Neuberger and the National WIC Association. But “there isn’t a guarantee” of reimbursement, Neuberger noted, and “it would be helpful to have assurances.” 

States have used their funds to keep WIC going in past shutdowns, and some plan to do so now. Colorado lawmakers a bill to fund the program for a month in the event of a shutdown, and the governors of and Montana have that they’ll keep their programs running for the near term. But not every state currently has that capacity.

While Mississippi not to disrupt benefits for current recipients, the state has suspended enrolling new ones. The Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada WIC, which serves Nevada’s Native tribes and is open to all of the state’s residents, announced that it would benefits starting on Oct. 9, but then unspent federal recovery funds that allowed it to stay open through the end of October. Similarly, Washington state officials they don’t have the money to keep WIC open, but also federal funding on Oct. 9 that allows the state program to keep operating through the end of the month. If the shutdown drags on longer than that, states in similar situations will either have to stop enrolling new families to stretch their funds or risk having to cut off benefits entirely.

Losing benefits would be devastating for parents like Ashely Gooden-Stewart, a mother of three from Texas. She first enrolled in WIC in 2014, when her first baby, who died as an infant, was born. She enrolled when each of her other children were born and is currently receiving benefits for her 1-year-old. Gooden-Stewart works remotely on a contract basis, but the work is seasonal and spotty. She said she doesn’t have any current projects and doesn’t expect to before the end of the month, but in order to get a full-time job she needs child care, which she cannot afford. 

WIC helps fill in the gaps. “Eggs is expensive, milk is expensive, life is expensive,” Gooden-Stewart said. Her family relies on getting those staples through the program. If these benefits dry up, “We would have to go with less,” she said. 

The educational aspects of WIC are also very valuable to her. She said the breastfeeding classes are “incredible” and the classes on child development milestones, which she currently attends, have been very useful. “Although I’ve been a mother for years, it’s different each time,” she said. She loves the cooking classes that are offered, which help her discover more ways to incorporate vegetables into her family’s meals. “It helps our family eat healthier,” she said, adding that losing access to these classes would be “detrimental.” 

The uncertainty of the shutdown itself may be disrupting benefits for some people by making them hesitate to enroll. “Just the news about a shutdown or WIC possibly being affected leads people to not get benefits that they need,” Neuberger noted. And even after the government eventually reopens, WIC’s future remains uncertain. The program still has to be funded for the next year, and it’s unclear if it will get enough money to keep operating as it has been. In his , President Trump called for a significant cut to WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefits, which would between 62% to 75% for 5.2 million participants, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP). 

Although the Republican-led House proposed a smaller cut to the fruit and vegetable benefits in its latest appropriations bill, the proposal still calls for a reduction and doesn’t include enough funding to keep serving everyone that is likely to enroll over the next year. Under the proposal, recipients would see a reduction in their food benefits and states would have to turn away nearly a half million eligible families, according to a . The Senate Agriculture Appropriations , by contrast, fully funds WIC. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have a bill that would make WIC a mandatory program, sparing it from running out of money during a government shutdown or if enrollment surges more than expected.

There is also that if an agreement to reopen the government doesn’t include guardrails that ensure that the Trump administration actually spends the money Congress appropriates as is the law, WIC could be cut through measures the administration to withhold funding for other programs, such as impoundment and rescission. With higher enrollment from eligible families and rising food costs, WIC is in need of more funding than in past years to continue serving all eligible participants who enroll.

If WIC benefits are disrupted, Perez’s family will feel the impact immediately. “It scares me,” Perez said. Her family receives food stamps, but with food prices so high, “it only lasts me for one week,” she said. Perez knows she can’t work, and she doesn’t have child care, but she said that if WIC funding runs short in the shutdown, she might be forced to find some kind of job to make ends meet. The only alternative would be for her husband, who already works from 6 a.m. into the evening, to get a second job during night hours. She worries about how that would impact her children, especially her daughter with autism who doesn’t do well with change.

They might even have to move. Perez fears that if their WIC benefits are interrupted, her family may not be able to afford their monthly rent of $1,650 on top of utilities, internet and car payments. 

Growing up, Perez said she watched her parents go without food so she and her siblings could eat. WIC benefits have meant she hasn’t yet had to do the same. But that will change if WIC’s food benefits disappear. “The thought of that happening — and me having to do that for my kids — that hurts,” she said. “The thought of having to worry about that is scary. I don’t want to have to worry about if I’m going to be able to feed my kids or not.”

“[If] I wasn’t able to take care of my kids like I want to,” Perez said, “that would really make me disappointed in this country.”

The American Federation of Teachers published the findings Sept. 10 after research company Grow Progress 705 members about classroom expenses and federal education policy changes. The union also collected personal insights about student hunger, an issue that have found is prominent at school and could be impacted by impending to food assistance programs.

“Every year, public school educators dig into their own pockets to help their students get the education they deserve,” union President Randi Weingarten said in a . “They pay for books, decorations, paper, pencils and, yes, even food.”

Families that deal with can’t afford enough groceries to meet their needs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most recent available shows that nearly 18% of households with children across the nation struggled with food insecurity in 2023.

Research the national nonprofit in March found that 92% of teachers have taken some type of action to address student hunger at school. Nearly half personally provide food in the classroom, while 29% have purchased food for students to eat outside of class.

“Families are struggling to put food on the table for their kids for a variety of reasons, whether that’s the rising cost of food or the worsening job market or limited resources,” said Sara Steely, a No Kid Hungry spokesperson. “The entire education system is stronger when kids are well-fed, and teachers are up against a lot — food shouldn’t be something they have to think about.”

In the AFT survey, a Florida union member said students need food at school because of a lack of it at home, while another teacher in Kentucky said many students “are starving because of lack of food availability.”

Ann Walkup, a Rhode Island physics teacher and AFT member, said she and many educators at her high school buy food like granola bars, crackers and water bottles.

“Most of us keep some sort of stash somewhere,” she told ����Ӱ��. “There are definitely some teachers who have a situation like [food insecurity] with some of their students. We’re supposed to refer them to the office, and there’s a system the school has to support them, but admittedly, it is just easier to be like, ‘Hey, I’ve got an extra granola bar.’ ”

Steely said child hunger is about to become even more complicated with the recent cuts to the , which helps about 42 million people afford groceries each month. In July, the Trump administration approved a tax bill that will from SNAP funding through 2034.

Once the SNAP cuts are fully implemented, roughly 2.4 million people are projected to lose food stamp benefits in an average month, according to estimates from the .

Students automatically qualify for free or reduced-price lunch if their families receive SNAP benefits, Steely said. Parents will have to return to filling out paperwork to get their children free meals at school — something that is an obstacle for people who have language barriers or are embarrassed about their income, she said.

“As we see these SNAP and Medicaid cuts play out and the impacts to free school meals access, I could see that burden falling to the teachers,” Steely said. 

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, told ����Ӱ�� that student hunger continues to be a critical issue for members of the nation’s largest teachers union. She said schools already felt the impact of cuts this spring, when the in funding for districts and child care facilities to purchase food from local farms for student meals.

“We’re seeing more kids coming to school hungry,” she said. “We spend money buying snacks, we send things home to families in book bags. We do that because, at least as educators, we can’t look away.”

Barren cupboards at home during the summer. Empty stomachs at school in the fall. Advocates predict that may soon be the reality for many of the nation’s children after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which calls for dramatic cuts in federal food aid.

Signed by President Donald Trump after squeaking through the House and Senate, the massive bill will reduce funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, by roughly — approximately 20% — between 2025 and 2034. And new rules are expected to make it harder for needy families to obtain the aid. 

The result: Some will lose at least some benefits, including 800,000 children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.

The controversial bill, which delivers tax breaks to the , comes just a few months after the agriculture department slashed from programs that allowed schools and food banks to buy locally produced goods. 

And it arrives at the same time that 13 GOP-led states, including Texas, are , rejecting federal dollars to feed children during the months when they are most vulnerable, citing .

Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, said the cuts and eligibility changes to SNAP — the deepest since its as the food stamp program — put students’ well-being and education at risk. 

“Children’s learning will be disrupted and their health will be jeopardized,” she said. “It’s really going to be devastating. Every state will be affected by this.”

Currently, people without dependents are limited to three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 80 hours per month and continue to do so until age 54. The new law . 

Under current rules, SNAP recipients responsible for a child under 18 are exempt from the work rule. The new bill .

Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director for the at The Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank, said the work-related rules, which require extensive documentation, will pose an administrative hurdle some families might not overcome. 

“A lot of people who get cut off from these services are people who are working but don’t have the time or energy to fill out all of this paperwork,” she said. 

But perhaps the most significant change to SNAP is a shift in financial responsibility for the program from the federal government to the states. All 23 Democratic governors warned Congress in June that they were unprepared to shoulder this new — some noted they from the program completely — and food banks are  

Child and family health advocates were relieved to see at least one of their fears was not realized: The , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, was expected to lose billions. Those changes were not included in the bill’s final version.

SNAP eligibility among children is a trigger for schools to provide free meals. As fewer kids qualify for food aid at home, those children will not get the nutrition they need and their classmates will also lose access, advocates say.

“As SNAP enrollment drops, fewer schools will be able to offer all students free meals,” Hysom said. “So, we’ll see a rise in stigma in the cafeteria, a decrease in school meal participation, the return of for many schools and increased hunger in the classroom.”

Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund, is worried about the kids who will be pushed out of the program despite their ongoing food insecurity, noting that children of color might be .  

Wilson said schools moving toward universal free meals in recent years — delivered without students having to apply —  The changes brought about by the new bill mark a major step backward, he said.  

“We believe we will see a shift back to an individual eligibility model, which costs more and means fewer students will have access to it,” he said. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2028, any state that has a payment error rate — the percentage of people given benefits who did not qualify or who were denied aid despite meeting the requirements — must contribute a 5% match for the cost of SNAP program allotments. 

State contributions rise incrementally as the error rate increases: those reaching 10% or higher will be required to kick in 15%, though questions loom about how this will be implemented. as soon as others. 

The paperwork requirement is not only burdensome for families, but for those who process the documents, child advocates say. The task comes as the federal government also plans to drastically reduce what it spends on SNAP’s administrative costs, from 50% to 25%, leaving states responsible for the rest.

Gina Plata-Nino, the Food Research & Action Center’s deputy director for SNAP, fears states will not be prepared to properly administer the benefit program. 

“This will cost state agencies a lot of time — and time is money,” she said, adding new applicants might have to wait to be processed. “The state agencies are already at capacity.” 

Plata-Nino said the related calculations will be more complex, especially for families with children. 

The bill also eliminates , an evidence-based program that “helps people make their SNAP dollars stretch, teaches them how to cook healthy meals, and lead physically active lifestyles,” according to the USDA. 

Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that the bill changed the work exemption for able-bodied adults with children from those with dependents under age 18 to those with kids under 7. The reduction to age 7 was in the House version of the bill, but was changed to age 14 in the Senate version that was ultimately approved.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently that provided roughly $1 billion in funding for the purchase of food by schools and food banks. 

And the , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, may tighten its requirements, potentially pushing some 12 million kids out of the program.

These moves come at the same time the House Republican budget plan to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The program fed more than per month nationwide in 2023. In 2022, 40% were  

This recent shift reflects a stark reversal of earlier, nationwide efforts to keep families fed during the pandemic. Many districts, such as Baltimore, organized days after schools were shuttered in March 2020 with no identification or personal information required. Those initiatives led to the nation’s food insecurity rate dropping to a when it reached 10.2% in 2021, down from a 14.9% high a decade earlier, according to the USDA.

It has since crept back up to 13.5% and now, five years after schools utilized USDA waivers to deliver meals in , they are bracing for what could be massive cuts from the federal government.

Elizabeth A. Marchetta, executive director of food and nutrition services for Baltimore City Public Schools, said 31 campuses — serving 19,000 children — would lose out on free breakfast and lunch if the Community Eligibility Provision changes go through. They are among 393 schools and who would be shut out. 

“It would be devastating,” Marchetta said. “These are critical funds. If we are not being reimbursed for all of the meals we’re serving … the money has to come from somewhere else in the school district, so that is really not great.”

Nearly benefited from the Community Eligibility Provision in the 2023-24 school year. The program reimburses schools that provide universal free meals based on the percentage of their students who automatically qualify for free and reduced-price lunch because their families receive other types of assistance, like SNAP. 

In 2023, after the COVID-era policy ended where any student could receive a free school meal regardless of income, President Biden lowered the percentage of high-need students required for a school to qualify from , greatly expanding participation. 

House GOP Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington now seeks to . The budget proposal would also require all students applying for free and reduced-price meals to submit documentation verifying their family income.

, a barometer of food insecurity among students, is already on the rise. It will almost certainly increase if universal school meals disappear for students whose families make too much to qualify for free and reduced-price lunch but too little to afford to buy meals at school. At the same time, kids who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals could lose that benefit if the required paperwork becomes harder. 

In the fall of 2023, across 808 school districts, the median amount of school meal debt was $5,495. By the fall of 2024, that amount reached $6,900 across 766 districts, a 25% increase, according to the .

It was just $2,000 a decade earlier. A trio of Democratic senators is the , with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman saying in 2023, “‘School lunch debt’ is a term so absurd that it shouldn’t even exist. That’s why I’m proud to introduce this bill to cancel the nation’s student meal debt and stop humiliating kids and penalizing hunger.”

Research shows students benefit mightily from free meals: those who attend schools that adopted the Community Eligibility Provision saw compared to those who did not. Free in-school meals are also credited for boosting attendance among low-income children, improving classroom behavior and

Joel Berg, the CEO of , said further cuts will greatly harm the poorest students. 

“Over the last few years, things have gone from bad to worse,” he said. “We were all raised seeing Frank Capra movies, where, in the end everything works out. But that’s not how the real world works. In the real world, when the economy gets a cold, poor people get cancer.”

the number of Americans who didn’t have enough to eat over two one-week periods between August-September 2021 and August-September 2024. The states with the highest rates of food insecure children were Texas at 23.8%, Oklahoma at 23.2% and Nebraska at 22.6%. Georgia and Arkansas both came in at 22.4%. 

The USDA slashed the $660 million — it allowed states to purchase local foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, for distribution to schools and child care institutions — and $500 million from the , which supported food banks nationwide. 

Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations for the School Nutrition Association, said that as families struggle with the high cost of groceries, the government should be doing more — not less — to bolster school meals and other food aid programs. 

“We’re urging Congress not only to protect the federal Community Eligibility Provision, but to expand it,” Pratt-Heavner said. “Ideally, all students should have access to free school breakfast and lunch as part of their education.” 

SNAP benefits stood at $4.80 per person per day through 2020 before jumping to more than after they were adjusted for rising food and other costs. Even then, the higher amount was not enough to in most locations. 

Republicans in Congress seek to cut the program by over the next nine years, possibly by returning to the pre-pandemic allotment of $4.80 and/or expanding work-related requirements, said Salaam Bhatti, SNAP director at t. 

Another possibility, he said, is that SNAP costs could be pushed onto states — including those that can’t afford them. 

“This would be an unfunded mandate,” Bhatti said. “States would have to take away from their discretionary spending to offset the cost and if it is not a mandate, then states in rural America and in the South that don’t have the budgets just won’t do it.” 

Food-related funding decreases come as the child tax credit, created to help parents offset the cost of raising children, is also facing uncertainty, said Megan Curran, the director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

The American Rescue Plan increased the amount of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6, and $3,000 for those under age 18. Many taxpayers received monthly advance payments in the second half of 2021, instead of waiting until tax filing season to receive the full benefits. The move The expanded child tax credit was allowed to lapse post-pandemic and now even the $2,000 credit could revert back to just $1,000. 

All food-related and tax benefit cuts — plus the unknowns of Trump-era tariffs — will leave some Americans particularly vulnerable, Curran said. 

“It’s shaping up to be a very precarious time for families,” she said, “especially families with children.”

From 2021 to 2022, the number of Kansas children who didn’t know where their next meal would come from grew by 37,000.

The rise in food insecurity shows up at food banks across the state.

Aundrea Walker, the executive director of Just Food, said 30% of the people it serves are under 18 years old. Walker has worked at the Lawrence-based food bank for 10 years. She’s never seen demand so high.

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“The amount of individuals and households we’re serving is absolutely insane,” she said.

Walker said Just Food spends about $40,000 a month on food. That isn’t enough.

“We’re constantly running out,” she said.

Walker said the pantry had to create new, paid staff positions to collect more food. At other food banks, some families line up two hours before the pantry opens.

The jump in food insecurity is mostly attributed to two things: rising inflation and pandemic-era benefit programs running out. Combined, they leave less money for families and force tough choices between paying bills or eating.

The number of children who didn’t know where their next meal would come from jumped from 13.4% in 2021 to 19.1% in 2022, according to Kansas Action for Children’s 2024 Kids Count Databook.

“(I’m) alarmed by it,” said John Wilson, president and CEO of Kansas Action for Children. “When we see every single Kansas county experience an increase in food security among kids, that’s troubling.”

Certain pandemic-era programs ran out at the end of 2021 or start of 2022. Families getting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, could receive the maximum benefit. That ended. Congress temporarily expanded a child care tax credit giving families hundreds more per year. That didn’t make it past 2021. Cost-free student meals were an option. But that was gone by the summer of 2022.

To help kids in Kansas, “we have to help the people who care for them, too,” Wilson said.

Advocates for a stronger social safety want the Republican-controlled Statehouse to put more tax dollars toward things like food security.

Kansas Republicans not likely to address food insecurity

Republican leaders in the House and Senate didn’t say whether they’d debate bills to address the issue. Historically, the conservative state Legislature hasn’t seriously considered proposals in recent years that would expand SNAP or other social service programs.

Advocates for more public spending on social services say the Legislature has instead put up barriers.

The 2015 Hope Act bans state officials from using federal or state money to advertise SNAP programs on radio, billboards or television. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said only 70% of eligible people actually get SNAP benefits in Kansas. That’s below the national average of 82%.

Kansas is one of the last states in the country not using . It’s a federal program that allows more flexibility in admitting Kansans to food benefit programs. It doesn’t guarantee more people get SNAP, but it can mean owning a car or having more assets doesn’t disqualify someone.

Kansas also permanently bans people with multiple drug felonies from getting food stamps, and just last year, the House Welfare Reform Committee supported a bill that would prevent families from buying candy or soda with EBT cards.

Republicans argue those policies protect against the misuse of tax money.

Rep. Francis Awerkamp, a St. Marys Republican, introduced a bill to prevent the Kansas Department for Children and Families from participating in the summer electronic benefits transfer for children program. That program gives Kansas families who are on free or reduced-price lunches a one-time, $120 payment for meals over the summer.

Awerkamp, chair of the Welfare Reform committee, didn’t respond to requests from The Beacon.

Walker, with Just Food, said the Legislature has done some things to help. It eliminated the sales tax on groceries, which helps when you spend $460,000 a year on food like her group does. She said efforts to cap inflation would also help, but food insecurity is a multifaceted problem that can’t be fixed with just one bill.

Looking to the 2025 session

The pandemic-era benefits programs cost millions, which is one reason Republicans are apprehensive about expansion. Haley Kottler, an advocate for a strong social safety net at Kansas Appleseed, said cheaper alternatives could feed more Kansans.

The Legislature could end the food stamps ban for Kansans with multiple drug felonies. The state could also simplify the food assistance application program so it isn’t as complicated to apply. Kottler also wants to see universal meal programs expanded.

Harvesters helps food banks in 17 counties in northeast Kansas and 10 counties in northwest Missouri. Sarah Biles, a Harvesters spokesperson, said the demand for food assistance hasn’t been this strong since the 2008 recession. Demand at food pantries was dropping year after year until the pandemic hit, and the 2022 numbers ballooned back up to the 2008 level.

Biles said government intervention is important. For every meal provided by a food bank or charitable organization, SNAP can provide nine meals.

“We definitely all need to work together to solve this issue,” she said. “There’s plenty of food in the United States. It’s a matter of getting all that food to where it’s needed most.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

WASHINGTON — Amid persistent  in the United States, lawmakers and advocates on Wednesday stressed the importance of school meal programs during a U.S. Senate Agriculture subcommittee hearing.

Hunger severely impacts  and can lead to negative outcomes in school, . Last year, 47.4 million people lived in food-insecure households, according to the .

Federally funded efforts, such as the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, provide free and reduced-cost meals to students across the country.

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Advocates say these programs play a crucial role in helping to reduce child hunger and urged the panel to expand them.

“School lunch should always be free and definitely free of judgment,” said Sen. John Fetterman, who chairs the Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research.

“Honestly, it shouldn’t be a conversation — it would be like asking the kids to pay for the school bus every morning or to pay for their own textbooks at school,” Fetterman said.

Fetterman and fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. Bob Casey  in June aiming to expand free or reduced-price meals access for kids. Part of the initiatives also call for amending the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows schools and school districts in low-income areas to offer free meal options to all students.

Fetterman also sponsored the Universal School Meals Program Act, an effort introduced by  last May, which would “provide free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every student — without demanding they prove they are poor enough to deserve help getting three meals a day,” according to Sanders’  of the bill. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, introduced .

Subcommittee ranking member Mike Braun of Indiana said he introduced the  last July with Ohio Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown in an effort “to better prioritize and support the use of American food in school meal programs.”

That bipartisan bill would increase requirements for school meals to include U.S. products.

States a model

Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of the Food Research & Action Center, pointed out that eight states  that offer school meals to all students, regardless of one’s household income. Those states are California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont.

The national nonprofit aims to reduce poverty-related hunger in the U.S. through research, advocacy and policy solutions.

“While those eight states are showing us what is possible, there are critical steps the subcommittee and Congress should take to enhance the reach and impact of school meals nationwide,” FitzSimons said.

As one piece of the puzzle, FitzSimons said Congress can “ensure that all children nationwide are hunger-free and ready to learn while they are at school by allowing all schools to offer meals to all their students at no charge” and the Universal School Meals Program Act “creates that path.”

Meg Bruening, professor and department head at Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Nutritional Sciences, said “the school meal programs in the U.S. provide a critical safety net for almost 30 million children with meals each year” — comprising 60% of children in the country.

Bruening said these school meal programs align closely with the , “ensuring a variety of healthy foods are offered to children while at school, where children spend most of their waking and eating hours.”

The guidelines, developed by the USDA and the Health and Human Services Department, are .

Summer EBT

Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock underscored how child hunger increases in the summer months when kids lack access to regular meals at school.

Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia and multiple territories and tribal nations opted in this year to a new effort, known as Summer EBT, to feed kids during the long summer months.

Also called Sun Bucks, the USDA initiative provides low-income families with school-aged children a grocery-buying benefit of $120 per child for the summer.

But 13 states,, chose not to participate in the program in 2024. The USDA said states have until Jan. 1 to submit a notice of intent if they plan to participate in the program next year. Iowa has to receive federal money for an alternative summer meal program.

Warnock said he hopes  on Summer EBT.

“Unfortunately, my home state — the state of Georgia — has not opted in to Sun Bucks, with some officials saying it does not result in higher nutritional outcomes for students, and that existing programs are ‘effective,’” he said.

“I heard our state leadership say: ‘We don’t need it,’” he added. “I’m still trying to figure out who this ‘we’ is — for whom are you speaking when you say: ‘We don’t need it?’”

A spokesperson for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has said the governor has concerns about the program’s dietary standards and cost.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

When summer nears, hundreds of thousands of kids in Washington can face three months without free meals provided by their schools.

“There’s this huge gap, and it affects learning,” Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said.

But starting this summer, a new federal program will help lower-income families who rely on free school breakfasts and lunches.

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is similar to a program that helped feed families during the pandemic. With a push from Murray, a permanent version of the program was approved federally in 2022 and is set to launch in Washington this summer, thanks to some new funding from the state Legislature.

It will provide families with a $120 preloaded card usable at grocery stores and farmers markets. The cards will be issued to families between mid-June and the end of August, but the exact dates that a child may receive their benefits will vary, according to state officials.

Children whose families are up to 185% of the federal poverty line – – can qualify. about 550,000 kids in Washington will be eligible.

Most of the funding comes from the federal government. But during this year’s session, the state Legislature set aside $12 million over the next two years to fund a portion of the program. The plan for the state program, which will be run by the Department of Social and Health Services and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, was approved by the federal government last week.

Most children who already receive , Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits, or a free or reduced school lunch are automatically eligible for the program and won’t need to reapply, said Norah West, spokesperson for the Department of Social and Health Services.

West encouraged families who are eligible but have not applied for free or reduced school meals to do so before the end of the school year if they want access to the summer program.

Families who do not qualify for the other programs can still apply for the summer assistance. Details will be released in the coming weeks on how to do that.

West said exact dates for when children will get their benefits will be released soon, and families should check the state’s regularly to learn more.

Once a family is approved, they will get the card within seven to 10 days. Unused benefits will expire 122 days after they are issued.

The summer program is just a piece of a broader conversation lawmakers are having about ensuring kids get enough to eat. State legislators have tried in recent years to provide free school meals for all children, but proposals to do so have failed.

On a federal level, Murray said she is continuing to raise awareness about the broader effects of nutrition on children’s learning abilities and well-being.

“The stress on families is incredible,” Murray told the Standard in February. “It just seems to me that in the United States of America, that’s something that our families should not have to worry about.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

Fueled by Kids, a nonprofit founded and run by teenagers in Bedford, New Hampshire, fills the 67 hour gap between when students receive school lunch on Friday afternoons and again when they receive school breakfast on Monday morning, alleviating the food anxiety that many of these children experience as a result of not knowing when or where they might be having their next meal.

Each week, Fueled by Kids members gather for their club meeting at Bedford High School, then pick up food that they preordered from local grocers. They partner with other high schools to pack bags of groceries — all ready-to-eat or simple enough to be prepared by the students themselves — that then get distributed to more than 20 schools serving over 1,000 students. The recipients are all anonymous to Fueled by Kids organizers, identified by school counselors and principals as students who may face food insecurity over the weekend. All of Fueled by Kids’ funds raised go directly back to purchasing food for distribution.

A bill that would provide free meals for all public school students in Virginia passed the Senate Education and Health Committee Thursday.

“This is about making sure that every kid who goes to school gets fed — no questions asked,” said Sen. Danica Roem, D-Manassas, the patron for , earlier this month.

The proposal would cost over the next two years.

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Some Republicans including Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, balked at the cost.

“I just obviously do not want any child to go hungry and do not want any child who cannot afford a meal to go hungry, either breakfast or lunch, but I just think at this point, I’m not quite ready to say that the commonwealth is going to pay for breakfast and lunch for every child in the commonwealth when you got [wealthy] counties,” Peake said. “I just don’t see that we should take general fund dollars to pay for breakfast and lunch in some of the wealthiest counties in the commonwealth.”

Roem noted even Virginia’s wealthiest counties, such as Loudoun, have schools that qualify for federal school lunch programs and have significant school meal debt. Furthermore, she said, many families fall just outside the eligibility limit for free and reduced meals.

Catherine Ford, a lobbyist representing the School Nutrition Association of Virginia, contended the state should be putting funds toward universal meals.

“We believe that just like textbooks, just like school buses, just like desks, that meals should be provided to children at school,” Ford said.

Proposal

If passed, all public school divisions in Virginia would be required to make meals available for free to any student unless their parent had notified the school board to not do so.

The state would reimburse schools for each meal.

Currently, only schools that qualify for the federal Community Eligibility Provision can offer all students free meals. Schools qualify for the CEP if a certain percentage of their students are classified as low-income.

Previously the federal government set that threshold at 40%, but this September the U.S. Department of Agriculture lowered it to 25%, a change it said would “give states and schools greater flexibility to offer meals to all enrolled students at no cost when financially viable.”

Roem’s measure would expand free meals to even those schools that don’t qualify for the CEP.

The legislation would also require school boards to adopt policies to maximize their use of federal funds for free breakfast and lunch and create a workgroup to study the potential impact of offering guaranteed school meals.

A step beyond earlier legislation

Roem said this year’s proposal is an extension of she successfully carried that required divisions to apply to enroll any schools in CEP that qualified for it.

Generally, Roem said school breakfasts in Virginia cost $34 million per year, while lunches cost $138 million.

During a Jan. 11 hearing on her newest proposal, Roem said that because of the 2020 legislation, 44 schools in Prince William County, which lies in her district, have zero school meal debt compared to more than 50 schools that just enrolled in the CEP this year and had together collected $291,256 of school meal debt in the first semester of the prior year.

“Not every single student who attends a CEP school can’t afford their own breakfast and lunch,” Roem said. “A lot of them come from families that can, but most of the students … have enough insecurity at home financially that they need help, and collectively, we’ve decided it’s in our interest, it’s in the student’s interest and it’s the parent’s interest to make sure that we are taking care of everyone at the school.”

Adelle Settle, founder of nonprofit Settle the Debt, which raised roughly $250,000 last year to pay down the lunch debt for students in Prince William County, said she often hears from parents “who earn just over the threshold to receive free or reduced meals for their students, but they’re still struggling and they need help to pay for those school meals.”

Meal debt, Roem also said, is “money that could’ve gone into other areas such as a classroom or computer lab.”

“And frankly, if the federal government isn’t going to do its job, as far as I’m concerned, of fully funding universal free school meals for all, then we’ve got to step in and take care of our student constituents,” she said.

The bill now goes to the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee for consideration.

Addressing food insecurity in higher education

Roem is also carrying , which would create a grant program to address food insecurity among students at public colleges or universities in Virginia.

The bill is also heading to Senate Finance and Appropriations.

“With college enrollment still lower than it was pre-pandemic, addressing food insecurity can help students afford tuition and housing so they can stay in school and graduate on time,” she said.

Under the program, public institutions could apply for grants to address food insecurity.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on and .

The Iowa Departments of Education and Health and Human Services notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Iowa will not participate in a program that provides additional food assistance for children during the summer, the state announced Friday.

The two Iowa departments, alongside Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, released a statement that they plan on “enhancing and expanding already existing childhood nutrition programs” instead of participating in the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children program in 2024.

The program, also known as Summer EBT, provides families with children who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school with an EBT card allowing them to purchase $40 of food per child each month when school is not in session.

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In the release, the Iowa officials criticized the Summer EBT program for not having a “strong nutrition focus,” and said the program would cost Iowa $2.2 million, as states are required to cover part of the program’s administrative costs.

Reynolds linked the Summer EBT program to the federal Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program, a temporary measure meant to provide more assistance for families with children whose access to food was affected by the pandemic.

“Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,” Reynolds said in a statement. “HHS and the Department of Education have well-established programs in place that leverage partnerships with community-based providers and schools who understand the needs of the families they serve.”

Luke Elzinga, policy and advocacy manager with the Des Moines Area Religious Council and board member of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, said the state had mischaracterized the program. Summer EBT is a new permanent, federal childhood nutrition program, separate from P-EBT. He said the state’s decision was “disappointing,” especially as food pantries and nonprofits see a rising need for food assistance in Iowa.

“We are seeing at food pantries and food banks across the state record-breaking numbers,” Elzinga said. “And during the pandemic, those numbers were down because people had additional SNAP benefits.”

State officials pointed to existing programs, including the Summer Food Service Program and Seamless Summer Option program, that provide food assistance to children and families during the summer in Iowa. These programs, funded by the USDA and administered by the state Department of Education, provide more than 500 meal sites in low-income areas throughout the state. The sites are run by local sponsors and provide spaces for children to get food during the summer.

According to the news release, more than 1.6 million meals and snacks were provided to Iowans age 19 and younger last summer. Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow said in the release that the department is “looking forward to expanding” partnerships with community groups that help support child nutrition when school is out of session.

Reynolds and Iowa HHS Director Kelly Garcia also criticized the Summer EBT program for not providing a focus on childhood nutrition. According to data from , Iowa has the 10th highest rate of obesity among high school students at 17%, in addition to having a 15.7% obesity rate for children age 10 to 17.

“No child should go hungry, least of all in Iowa, but the Summer EBT Program fails to address the barriers that exist to healthy and nutritional foods,” Garcia said in a statement. “Iowa’s kids need consistent access to nutritionally dense food, and their families need to feel supported to make healthy choices around food and nutrition. Another benefit card addressed to children is not the way to take on this issue.”

Elzinga disagreed with these arguments, saying that the statements show “our state government does not trust low-income people to make the correct food choices.”

He linked the officials’ remarks to a that would have prevented SNAP participants from purchasing food like fresh meat, bagged salads and sliced cheese.

While that language was removed, Elzinga said the focus on restricting food assistance programs on the basis of nutrition does not help people in need eat healthier. According to a , the most common barrier to a healthy diet for SNAP participants was the affordability of nutritious foods.

Elzinga said while Iowa will not be participating in 2024, he and other hunger advocates plan to make future participation in the Summer EBT program a top priority during the 2024 legislative session.

“We’re going to be working very hard during the legislative session to make sure that Iowa participates in 2025 and every year going forward, because we should not be sitting out again,” he said. “This is federal money for low-income kids during the summer. And it’s not a lot — It’s $120 per kid — but that makes a huge difference for families during the summer who are struggling to feed their kids.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

At Marblehead Community Charter Public School, a food pantry was founded in the wake of the pandemic to support both the school’s families and the broader community. The pantry, which has a separate entrance on the side of the school, is frequented by many, all of whom express overwhelming gratitude, and many of whom feel shame that they need to request assistance. An on-site garden also supports the school’s food programs and provides educational opportunities for MCCPS students to learn about where their food comes from.

Hot, scratch-made breakfasts and lunches are available to every student, every day. The meals are so healthful and delicious that the teachers and staff often opt to eat what’s on the menu. After this universal program launched at MCCPS, the number of students accessing breakfast nearly tripled, and nearly twice as many students participated in school lunch. Lines for lunch became so long that they had to create an additional lunch period to accommodate all of their students. The impact on MCCPS students has been profound — all students now have access to nutritious, homemade meals without the burden of stigma and they are better prepared to start the day physically and mentally.

For many New Hampshire public school students, getting breakfast at school is not a priority.

The Granite State has one of the largest divides in the country between the number of school breakfasts eaten and the number of school lunches eaten, from the Food Research and Action Center. While an average of 95,337 students per day ate school-provided lunch in the 2021-2022 school year, fewer than half of those students – 45,192 – also ate breakfast, the center found in a 2023 report.

That ratio puts New Hampshire in the bottom 16 states in the country. Now, educators and child anti-hunger advocates are urging Granite State schools to increase their promotion of school breakfasts and make it easier for students to eat them.

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“School breakfast has maybe a bad rap,” said Amy Hollar, the SNAP-Ed director at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. “… It’s better than it used to be. And it can get even better the more of us that embrace it and work together to make school meals a priority.”

This school year, nine school districts are competing in the School Breakfast Challenge, in which each district will attempt to increase the number of students eating breakfast by the highest percentage by March.

Organized by New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, an advocacy group, as well as the UNH Cooperative Extension and the New England Dairy Council, the competition aims to empower and encourage schools to launch campaigns promoting breakfast.

Educators and child anti-hunger advocates say school breakfasts help increase nutrition, boost attentiveness, and increase reimbursement to schools.

“We know that kids that eat school breakfast miss less school,” said Hollar. “They’re more alert and focused.”

The competition has been accompanied by a series of webinars to give school administrators ideas on how to boost breakfast participation. And it follows a template crafted in part by the University of Minnesota, which helped spearhead a four-year project in that state to do the same.

Riona Corr, deputy director of New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, said school meals are important in making sure students have consistent energy throughout the day.

And she said bringing in more students for breakfast would increase the amount they are reimbursed, which could help address school lunch debt.

The Food Research and Action Center found that New Hampshire schools could collectively receive $8.6 million more in school meal reimbursements per year if 70 percent of the students who eat lunch at school also ate breakfast.

“Say there’s 50 percent of the school who’s participating in free and reduced lunch,” Corr said. “Why is only 8 percent of those kids participating in free breakfast?”

For schools looking to expand breakfasts, educators have strategies. Schools should make the food more convenient to access and provide more flexibility to students about when they can eat it, they say.

Advocates are pushing “breakfast after the bell,” an approach in which schools allow students to pick up and eat breakfasts after the first class begins. Many schools require students eating breakfast to do so before that first period, which researchers say discourages many from doing it.

“A lot of schools – nationwide, not just in New Hampshire – are allowing breakfast before the first bell, and then not allowing kids to eat afterward,” said Corr.

Under the “breakfast after the bell” model, schools are encouraged to allow breakfast to be eaten in the classrooms, or in an area more convenient than the cafeteria. That could include tables with to-go food bags near entrances, or grab-and-go carts in the hallway.

And students are given more time to eat those meals, even if class has begun.

Meanwhile the UNH Cooperative Extension has developed a toolkit for “nudges,” or techniques school administrators can use to remind students about the breakfasts and encourage them to eat. The tips range from ways to incorporate nutrition advice into classroom curricula to pre-written jokes about breakfast that can be read out over the loudspeakers.

The challenge offers schools three participation tiers with increasing levels of commitment. Tier one is deploying the “‘nudges”; tier two involves attending New Hampshire Hunger Solutions’ webinar series; and tier three involves developing an action plan for a broader campaign.

For schools putting in the effort, the challenge has a modest cash prize for the largest increase in school breakfast take up: The Dairy Council has donated $1,000, which will be distributed to two of the winners, Corr said.

But the competition is only a piece of the overall effort, advocates say. The Cooperative Extension and New Hampshire Hunger Solutions are working with school food service directors and wellness committees to develop campaigns tailored to each district’s challenges and needs, Corr said.

“Where is your barrier? Is it administration? Is it teachers? Is it students?” Corr said.

Those challenges can be hard for some schools to overcome. In some cases, low cafeteria staffing levels can hamper some of the more innovative ideas. Other times, custodial staff will raise concerns with additional cleaning needed if schools allow eating in classrooms.

Students face stigmas associated with school breakfasts. And parents might assume that the breakfasts are not nutritious, thinking back to their own childhood experiences.

All of those hurdles can be overcome, Corr said, but some are more entrenched than others. It’s why the campaign is focusing on nudges as a low-cost way to get involved without overextending staff resources.

In continuing its campaign, New Hampshire advocates are following the footsteps of the University of Minnesota, which in 2013 launched its own breakfast promotion program in 16 high schools across the state.

Nutritionists at the University of Minnesota kept tabs on the schools, sorting some into control groups that received fewer resources and others into experimental groups that received budgets to launch ad campaigns.

One school took on a Hunger Games theme in an homage to the film series that had just opened in theaters, complete with lighthearted videos. Others tried taste tests where kitchen staff would experiment with new variations of recipes like banana bread and students would vote on their favorites.

“There was one school where the admin was, oh my gosh, 110 percent on board,” said Mary Schroeder, an extension educator for health and nutrition at the University of Minnesota. That school produced a video that included every student in the school, she added.

In one of the most innovative and effective strategies, several schools offered free breakfast for all students one day a week, carving out money in its budget to do so. That allowed everyone to try the food without fear of stigma, and helped to combat negative perceptions students may have had about its quality, Schroeder said.

“When they did their pre surveys … many children said that they didn’t like the taste of school breakfast,” Schroeder said. “But then when they asked other questions, they realized a lot of the kids who didn’t like the taste of school breakfast had never eaten school breakfast.”

The program, which lasted four years, produced strong results: The schools in the experimental group that received funding and pursued the recommended strategies saw a 49 percent higher increase in breakfast takeup than those that didn’t, from the extension. And the extra takeup in meals brought in between $90 to $489 per day in reimbursement money to the schools, after accounting for the program start-up costs.

This year, Minnesota lawmakers made the breakfast pitch much easier: The legislature passed a universal school breakfast law making them free for all students.

New Hampshire does not pay for universal school lunches or breakfasts; students who want breakfast will need to pay full price if their family makes more than 185 percent of the federal poverty level.

But advocates in the Granite State say strong efforts by schools can create a word-of-mouth effect that can get more kids buying the breakfasts anyway, benefitting the school and themselves.

“We want to make sure that we can promote a culture where it’s great to eat breakfast at school, because for some kids that’s the only place they’re gonna get it,” said Hollar.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

Two thumbs up to the groups that are working to erase over $76,000 in student lunch debt.

The two advocacy groups — Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and Oklahomans for Public Education — announced that they are partnering to launch a fundraiser to eliminate the debt generated by students who eat at their schools.

As Nuria Martinez-Keel the $76,000 covers overdue bills for just seven school districts. At $37,003, Stillwater Public Schools had the largest debt from last school year.

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Martinez-Keel reported that lunch debt in Oklahoma is on the rise, following the end of a two-year during the COVID-19 pandemic under which the federal government allowed all students to eat for free at school. Typically, the free food is only offered in low-income areas or to those living in poverty, she reported.

The federal program ended June 2022.

In August, the Marlow Public Schools Superintendent Corey Holland told that the district had about a $20,000 unpaid student meal tab. He said it’s been difficult to get families used to paying for food and dealing with the bureaucratic hurdles of filling out applications.

He’d like to see “some form of the free meal program return.”

In El Reno, one school official said some students have stopped eating lunch because “they know their parents can’t afford it.”

According to , over 1 in 5 — or 208,110 — children aren’t getting the nutrition they need.

Oklahoma is also 1 of 5 states that has a food insecurity rate greater than 14.5%.

The group reports that food insecure children are “more likely to have lower reading and math scores, more significant behavior and social problems and low high school graduation rates.”

In other words, if Oklahoma children are hungry, they’re not learning.

In that context, the recent state report card results released by the state Department of Education aren’t particularly surprising.

Only tested at grade level in math, reading and science. State Superintendent Ryan Walters said Oklahoma’s academic outcomes are stagnant and “simply unacceptable” given the record investments in public schools.

Schools provide a multitude of services.

Hunger is something that is largely out of local districts’ control, but it is definitely something that could be alleviated if lawmakers are willing to think outside the box.

Maybe it’s time to rethink how we feed our public school students.

We have billions in our state savings. Now might be a good time to pilot a universal free meal program to see if providing free food to every child, regardless of income, could help reshape our struggling student outcomes and chronic absenteeism.

Lawmakers like to complain that they’re investing historic amounts of money into public schools, but not seeing the expected return on their investment.

Maybe that’s because we’re simply throwing money at something without examining the root causes. We could have the best curriculum and teachers, but a child who goes to school hungry isn’t going to be focused on learning.

Schools are uniquely positioned to help tackle childhood hunger with the right legislative investment. After all, they touch the lives of over 700,000 children each day.

“Offering meals at no charge means that schools no longer have to collect unpaid meal fees from families or foot the bill for meals served when children do not have money to pay,” the reported. “Removing this dynamic between families and schools allows school nutrition staff to focus on preparing and serving healthy meals to children, and it eliminates a significant financial burden for school districts and families.”

Districts have a lot to worry about.

Maybe we shouldn’t be making them debt collectors too.

Students have a lot to worry about too.

Maybe we should make sure it’s not food.

Lawmakers want increased student outcomes.

Maybe we can all win here by trying something new, and focusing on a policy discussion that could have a far-reaching benefit and bolster the overall quality of life of hundreds of thousands of children and their families.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

One of 15 US Department of Agriculture programs aimed at reducing food insecurity and improving nutrition for America’s vulnerable populations, the is the primary federal program that helps feed the nation’s youngest children in a variety of child care settings. The program improves child nutrition, supports families, reimburses child care providers and infuses federal dollars into local economies, among other benefits.

And yet, the first nationwide analysis of data on CACFP just published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine (AJPM) finds the program underused and unevenly accessed throughout the U.S. The study found that of all licensed child care centers in the U.S., just 36.5% participated in CACFP. In low-income areas, the number of child care settings using the program varied widely from state to state, ranging from 15.2% to 65.3%.

For the study, “,” researchers analyzed administrative data from the CACFP and child care licensing agencies in 47 states and the District of Columbia for 93,227 licensed child care centers. Alabama, Montana and North Carolina were not included due to incomplete data or non-response. In prior research, they found that many eligible child care providers were not taking advantage of the program; indeed, many had never heard of it.

Lead investigator Dr. Tatiana Andreyeva became aware of providers’ lack of participation as director of Economic Initiatives at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health. The focus of her research has been the role of economic incentives in food choices, as well as the effects of federal assistance programs on food insecurity, diet quality and access to healthy food in at-risk communities. In earlier research, she had become aware of the CACFP’s surprisingly low provider participation in Connecticut; in surveying providers, she found multiple barriers to participation, including a lack of awareness and piles of paperwork. Supported by a grant from , a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Andreyeva and coinvestigators Dr. Timothy E. Moore, Lucas da Cunha Godoy and Erica L. Kenney were able to expand this research nationally.

Statistics Matter

The USDA does not keep statistics on eligible child care settings’ participation in the CACFP. It tracks the number of meals served and daily attendance for the program but doesn’t have a system that tracks participation among eligible programs, though it routinely estimates participation for its larger programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“As an economist, I can’t understand how this young population is so underfunded, underappreciated,” Andreyeva says. “The CACFP is about nutrition, but if you look at child care and education generally, this age group sees very little public funding. It’s the age where you can get such a positive return on investment, as has been shown in multiple studies. Somehow our society is ready to spend on K-12, but not on children zero to 5. This is the age when you can get a profound return on investment, as has been shown in multiple studies.

“So that’s what motivated me. With this grant, I could study provider child care participation nationwide — and nobody else has done it.”

The researchers collected data from state agencies that oversee licensing and CACFP and merged it with data that helped them identify CACFP-eligible child care centers and learn which of the eligible centers were participating. In other words, a mountain of data.

According to the , most U.S. children regularly are cared for by people other than their parents. Because all CACFP-subsidized meals and snacks must align with the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the children this program serves tend to eat more balanced, nutritious diets than they receive at home. A new study published in the concluded that compared with meals provided from home, children in low-income families who receive underwritten meals in child care settings experience greater food security, better health outcomes and are less likely to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency room. In a nation where most young children don’t meet dietary recommendations, child care centers and family daycare homes that participate in this food assistance program can play a unique role in improving the diets of millions of children.

Given those benefits, why wouldn’t these providers rush to sign up for this proven nutrition assistance?

Barriers To Participation

Andreyeva’s research highlights a variety of causes, with one key barrier as simple as no one knowing about it. More than half of non-CACFP centers in one state didn’t even know the program existed.

“Do a survey. Ask any parent, even low-income parents, nobody has ever heard about it,” she says. “A lot of child care providers don’t know about it. What we show in our studies is that participation varies by state, but it seems that for the federal government, CACFP is just not a priority.”

Even providers who are aware of the program often are challenged to take all the steps required to be a part of it. Most providers are already struggling to keep their heads above water and one more to-do list for one more program, even one with obvious benefits, can seem impossible.

“They’re already understaffed and overwhelmed, especially after the disaster of the last couple of years. They’re struggling financially and they just don’t have the staff to sort through it.

“I have a Ph.D. and we looked at the application with a nutritionist and we couldn’t figure out how to complete it,” she says. “For child care centers to track income eligibility — it’s a big pain and all the paperwork is just very complicated. No wonder they don’t want to do it.”

One of the complicating factors, she says, is that there have been a few instances of fraud with the CACFP, as recently as during the pandemic, in which millions of dollars were stolen from the government. What had already been a complicated process has become doubly so because of the number of T’s to cross and I’s to dot. The programs are administered through grants-in-aid to the states, which then manage the state program by designated agencies such as their departments of education, health, family and/or social services.

“Participants are usually small businesses, and there are so many of them, oversight can be really challenging for the state. Some states are so concerned with fraud prevention, and seeing that not a penny gets stolen, the feds and states have added so many layers of checks that it can be difficult for a provider to participate. So, a few bad apples have ruined it for others.”

Prior research by this team and others found that other barriers to participation include the complications of serving meals in child care centers, including the availability of food service companies able to provide CACFP-compliant meals at affordable rates; limited equipment and kitchen facilities and staff; local health and state regulations; a lack of parent interest in center-provided meals; and provider concerns about insufficient reimbursement.

“Many participating providers will say that CACFP, through meal reimbursements, pays for food costs, but doesn’t fully cover expenses, especially in more expensive areas with higher food costs,” Andreyeva says.

It Can Be Done

The high levels of CACFP participation in some states after accounting for income differences suggest that some have done an excellent job of getting providers to join the program. Andreyeva has another paper under review in which the researchers interviewed state agencies to see what they were doing — or not doing — to increase participation, so they can share best practices with state agencies, providers and policymakers.

The AJPM analysis has pinpointed multiple potential remedies that could boost participation in the CACFP. Among the researchers’ recommendations, the USDA, state agencies and advocates must:

• Understand why providers decide to participate or not in the CACFP, so solutions can be targeted to these issues.
• Simplify the application process and compliance requirements.
• Provide child care providers with small grants to cover the costs of applying for the program and/or remaining in compliance, such as updating kitchen facilities and equipment or helping them find service vendors.
• Increase the number of sponsoring agencies such as United Way, Catholic Charities and other nonprofits (required for family daycare homes to apply for CACFP), which could ease administrative challenges, particularly for smaller centers.

Policymakers could play a vital role in expanding access to CACFP, including providing adequate funding to administer the program effectively, modernizing data collection to assess and track participation, and conducting extensive outreach to raise awareness of the program.

Andreyeva points to the significant financial implications of failing to utilize this readymade, proven nutrition program. Previous research estimated that underutilization of CACFP in Connecticut left 20,300 children from low-income households without the program’s subsidized meals and cost the state $30.7 million in foregone federal funds. Multiply this figure by the number of qualifying child care centers and daycare homes nationwide that don’t apply, and it adds up to a huge amount of money left on the table.

How much better it would be for our nation’s youngest children if nutritious food were on the table instead.

At Ilima Intermediate School, teacher Sarah Milianta-Laffin often sees students standing around the trash cans after lunch, asking their peers if they can eat the leftovers off their lunch tray.

Milianta-Laffin purchases around $500 worth of snacks at the start of each school year to keep in her classroom, anticipating that some students will need a granola bar to get through class if their families can’t afford school meals. 

“Meals should be things that we just give automatically, and we know we see better results,” Milianta-Laffin said. “Attention span is better when kids are not hungry. Anxiety is lower, because you’re not worried about where your next meal is coming from.”

Recent changes to  could allow a major expansion in the number of Hawaii schools that offer free meals to all students. But it’s unclear how many of schools will take advantage of the Community Eligibility Provision program, which provides schools in high-poverty areas with federal funds meant to subsidize the cost of offering free breakfast and lunch to all families. 

Before recent changes to the program, schools where 40% or more of students were low-income or had high-needs could qualify for the CEP. That includes students who are homeless, in foster care or enrolled in federal initiatives such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Under recent changes to the program, the qualifying threshold has dropped to 25% of a school’s student body. According to a , which uses data from the 2022-23 school year, 83 new schools in Hawaii could enroll in the CEP.

Nicole Woo, director of research and economic policy at , said hungry students can’t learn. Even if families qualify for reduced-price lunch, they may still struggle to cover the remaining costs of school meals and could benefit from the CEP expansion, she added. 

“The benefits are clear,” Woo said. “We certainly hope the Department of Education and charter schools will take advantage of this new rule to get free meals to more kids.”  

But, Woo acknowledged, making this change might be easier said than done. 

A Financial Roadblock

Currently, 106 schools in Hawaii offer free meals to all students under CEP. 

Even with CEP’s expanded eligibility, Hawaii families may not see free lunch offered at their schools right away, said Daniela Spoto, director of . 

According to the FRAC database, 17 eligible Hawaii schools chose not to adopt CEP in the 2022-23 school year. 

The Department of Education is still analyzing how recent changes to the CEP rule will impact Hawaii schools, said deputy superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun. 

One question the department faces is whether all Hawaii schools can now qualify for CEP. The federal government allows entire districts to participate in CEP, as long as their schools have an average of 25% or more of low-income students. 

Hawaii has a single statewide school district, but the DOE is still trying to determine whether the state can group together all schools and whether the district would meet the 25% threshold, Oyadomari-Chun said. Even if this is a possibility, the decision could be an expensive one for the department, Oyadomari-Chun added. 

CEP schools receive federal reimbursements to help to cover the cost of offering free breakfast and lunch to all students. But schools with fewer low-income students receive less federal support helping to cover the costs of those meals.  

The responsibility falls to the school district to cover the remaining costs of offering free meals at CEP schools, Oyadomari-Chun said. The department is still determining what these costs might be for next year, she added. 

Last year, the department estimated that, even with federal reimbursements, it would cost roughly $64 million a year to provide free meals to all students, although the final number could vary based on students’ participation in school meal programs and the costs of labor and food. 

“We really want to feed our kids,” Oyadomari-Chun said. “We really would love for the whole state to be part of CEP, but it does have a cost to the state that we have to analyze.” 

Hawaii isn’t the only state weighing the costs and benefits of expanding schools’ participation in the CEP. 

Some states, like Oregon and Washington, have already set aside funding to cover the costs of providing free lunch under the CEP, said Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and out-of-school time programs at FRAC. When more state and federal funds are available to cover the costs of meals, schools and districts are more likely to take advantage of the CEP, she added. 

“There’s definitely a variation in the take-up rate based on the amount of federal reimbursement the school would receive for their meal,” FitzSimons said. 

Schools under the DOE would not have to use their own budgets to cover the costs of providing free lunches under the CEP, Oyadomari-Chun said. Instead, she added, the department would request necessary funding from the Legislature in the spring. 

But charter schools, while also eligible for the CEP, have to use their own budgets to cover whatever costs the federal government won’t reimburse for school lunches. While the number of DOE-operated schools in Hawaii participating in the CEP grew from seven to 92 between the 2015-16 and 2023-24 school years, the number of public charter schools dropped from 18 to 14.

For Ka ‘Umeke Ka’eo, a charter school in Hilo, enrolling in the CEP initially seemed like a straightforward decision, said director of operations Louisa Lee. The school knew many of its families could benefit from a free lunch, and Lee hoped the federal reimbursement rate would offset the cost of participating in the program. 

But participating in CEP cost the school approximately $120,000 to $150,000 a year, she said. The school considered withdrawing from the program but has continued its participation because families needed free lunch more than ever due to hardships from the Covid-19 pandemic, she said.

“I would say that our CEP plans are year to year,” Lee said. “It’s year to year for as long as we possibly can, or until we find another option.” 

Policy Possibilities 

The push for free meals in Hawaii schools isn’t new. , three bills in the Legislature called for the state to make food more accessible to students, from providing universal free meals to establishing a subsidy for students who do not qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. However, none of these bills passed into law. 

Rep. Mahina Poepoe introduced one of the bills, which would have offered free breakfast and lunch for all students beginning in the 2023-24 school year. Poepoe said she hoped to fill a need the federal government temporarily addressed during the height of the pandemic, when schools offered free lunch to all families.

By offering free meals to all students, schools can help to reduce the stigma around free or reduced-price meals, Poepoe said. She hopes the recent expansion of CEP-eligible schools can help reduce the cost of establishing a universal free school meal program. 

“I’m very hopeful that the rule change will make legislation more palatable in the upcoming session by further reducing the cost,” Poepoe said.  

Oyadomari-Chun said the department would be interested in seeing similar legislation introduced this year, but would need to consider the financial implications of the proposal. 

Sarah Fukuzono, an educational assistant at Kanoelani Elementary School, said providing free meals to all families would ensure that her students are ready to learn and have access to nutritional foods. She recalled how, last year, she would bring eggs to one of her students in the morning, knowing that he would come to school cranky and without breakfast.

“If the student is hungry, I’m not going to get any work out of them,” Fukuzono said. “But if we have a general baseline of, these kids have eaten breakfast, these kids have eaten a nutritious lunch, then we can move on to things like learning.” 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Civil Beat’s community health coverage is supported by , Swayne Family Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation and .

This story was originally published in .

“We’d get something really plain like one piece of bread with one piece of fish or chicken,” Woodard told ����Ӱ��. “They’d count out everything we’d get to make sure everyone had something to eat.”

The district began to change when officials introduced food trucks and live cooking demonstrations into its school meal strategy in 2019, said Woodard, 17.

“It’s a really amazing feat,” she said. “I feel safe eating the food because care is put into everything I eat now.”

Originally created pre-pandemic, the food trucks and live cooking demonstrations have contributed to the district’s hike in school meal participation for the 2022-23 school year among the nearly 50,000 students enrolled in the district’s 107 schools.

School breakfast participation increased from 22,142 to 24,612 students, and school lunch participation increased from 28,558 to 33,062 students — an 11% and 16% surge, according to the .

Food Trucks

“When we got the food trucks, I was immediately able to see and feel that shift on how students see school food service,” said Carl Williams, executive director of the district’s office of school nutrition. “It’s really elevated our program and students see us differently.”

Williams said there’s high demand for the food trucks — often causing competition among Detroit principals rushing to reserve them.

“The principals love it like crazy,” Williams said. “They’ll call me first thing in the beginning of the school year trying to get them booked.”

Williams said the district designed two food trucks, often referred to as Blue and Goldie to represent the district’s official colors, that routinely visits two of the 29 high schools each week.

The elementary and middle schools can also schedule food truck visits for special events, he said.

“The food trucks have created an abundance of options for students…and they look at us as a quality meal provider,” Williams said.

From burrito bowls to street tacos, Woodard said the food trucks are so popular she often sees her classmates go back in line for seconds.

“Of course they would,” Woodard said. “They’ll even try to be discreet about it.”

Live Cooking Demonstrations

Mike Hearn, also known as the Great Chef Mike, is one of four chefs contributing to the food trucks and live cooking demonstrations.

“It gives me so much excitement because it offers something different for our students and I’m just happy to be a part of it,” Hearn told ����Ӱ��.

Hearn said he particularly enjoys running the stir fry station where he lays out all of his ingredients, from bean sprouts to bamboo shoots to various proteins, for students to see him cook.

“It really increases [school meal] participation and that’s what’s most important to make sure we don’t leave any hungry kids out there,” Hearn said.

Williams said one student told him the meals made him feel like he was “eating at a five star luxury restaurant and my response to him was ‘you deserve this type of service every day.’”

Next Steps

Kevin Frank, senior director of the district’s office of school nutrition, said the district’s school meal initiatives are unique to Michigan schools.

“We’re like a hidden gem,” Frank told ����Ӱ��, adding that despite budget limits the district has been exploring more food options, such as Nigerian and Mexican dishes, to match the diversity of Detroit’s students.

“We obviously have a lot of restrictions, but our chefs are brilliant and if anyone can do it they can,” Frank said.

When University of Missouri student Puna Neumeier finishes a day of classes, she can’t think about homework. Her pressing worries are getting food, paying rent and taking care of her mother, who is disabled.

“As a caretaker and daughter, I have to be in charge of getting the food, cooking the food, serving the food, as well as taking care of her,” she said.

Neumeier has a job, but making ends meet this year has been particularly tough because of inflation, she said. So she turned to a food pantry along with federal aid, which lightened her daily expenses.

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With the possibility of losing food stamps, her family’s bandaged income and food security were in danger. Students reapplying for federal food assistance after July 1 might not be eligible.

During the pandemic, rules were relaxed so students weren’t required to participate in state or federally funded work programs such as work-study. Students who received no financial support from their families now qualified, too.

Those temporary pandemic rules allowed 3 million more students to qualify for food stamps.

Those students now have to find other ways to put food on the table.

The invisible struggle

Worrying about the next meal or skipping it altogether for lack of money have become unofficial benchmarks of the college experience for some.

It’s an invisible epidemic that affected 44.9% of Missouri college students in 2021, according to a Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics study. Almost half of students in Missouri lacked consistent access to enough food to live an active, healthy life, as defined by the USDA.

Additional older studies have reported student food insecurity rates in the U.S. ranging from 25% to 35%.

Food insecurity is also common in the general population. In 2021, Boone County had a food insecurity rate of 11%, which included more than 20,000 people.

“Food insecurity happens everywhere. It happens in every corner in every community and every county in Missouri,” said Kim Buckman, director of advocacy and communication at Feeding Missouri, a coalition of the six food banks in the state.

Many people are just one unplanned emergency away from not having enough money to buy food, Buckman said.

“You get a flat tire, and all of a sudden that took all your reserves.”

The effects of food insecurity among students range from low performance in school to health risks such as depression, stress and obesity tied to overconsumption of added sugar, fat and refined grains.

Although many students might need food assistance, most don’t get it. They’re unaware of the resources that can help them, or they are confused about the application process.

Students also don’t know where to go for help in a nonjudgmental setting since using federal benefits or food pantries is often stigmatized.

Feeding Missouri tries to make it easier for students to use the benefits “without feeling some kind of stigma associated with battling with food insecurity,” Buckman said.

Resources available to MU students include SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program of food stamps; SNAP-Ed, which provides nutrition education; and Tiger Pantry, which provides emergency food to the wider campus community.

Addressing food insecurity

The central government program that helps Americans combat food insecurity is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once commonly known as food stamps.

It uses a system like debit cards for eligible recipients to buy food from authorized stores. Last year, the federal program assisted more than 40 million people.

Approximately 1.4 million U.S. students received SNAP benefits in 2016, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

But this number doesn’t reflect how many students actually qualify to receive support. GAO reported that 57% of students qualified in 2016 but didn’t receive any SNAP benefits.

Single-family households making no more than $17,676 in gross income are potentially eligible for SNAP benefits. To qualify, students also must meet at least one of several criteria that include age, health, work, child care and other responsibilities.

Universities are trying to address the food security gap with educational programs and emergency food assistance. SNAP-Ed, implemented by MU Extension, delivers research-based nutrition education to SNAP recipients and others who are eligible in every Missouri county.

“We are working with the four UM System campuses, as well as all two- and four-year institutions across the state, to really make a concerted effort,” said Jo Britt-Rankin, extension professor and administrative director of SNAP-Ed.

Each UM System campus is investing in full-time positions — basic needs coordinators — who will be able to assist those who need SNAP benefits or other types of federal aid programs, Britt-Rankin said.

SNAP-Ed offers one-on-one sessions with students who need help filling out an application or figuring out if they’re eligible.

“Using that benefit says nothing about your worth as a person,” said Kimberly Keller, associate extension professor and evaluation coordinator for the program.

Britt-Rankin said a lot of awareness comes from word of mouth. It’s important to spread information about their programs through financial aid offices or student services, she said.

“There’s anxiety about the whole process, and then having someone who understands that can help you navigate it,” said Leslie Speller-Henderson, education programmer for the program.

Lack of awareness regarding eligibility and how to seek assistance can be a barrier for some students to receive benefits they deserve.

Gabriel Martinez, a graduate student at MU, received SNAP benefits when he was an undergraduate.

“Sometimes it was easy, like filling out an extra checkmark on student entry stuff. Sometimes it’s a matter of hunting down whatever you needed to find,” he said about his experience with applying for SNAP.

Now, as a doctoral student, he uses Tiger Pantry instead, which requires just a simple registration.

Alternatives to SNAP

Tiger Pantry, a Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri partner agency, is an on-campus resource in the Hitt Street parking garage that helps to combat food insecurity.

Most of the inventory comes from the Food Bank, in addition to food drives, public donations and local supermarkets. The pantry has received more than 4,500 pounds of food donations so far this year.

“The pantry is, I think, a very basic resource — basic, as in foundational for students to be able to succeed and not have to worry about things that would impede that,” said Lindsey Linkous, the pantry’s student director.

Opened in 2012, the pantry doesn’t have a screening process, and anyone in the MU community is qualified to use the services after registering.

In recent years, the number of pantry users has doubled, according to Tiger Pantry data. In 2020, an average of 128 households used the pantry monthly, compared to an average of 283 between January and July this year.

“Every semester, more and more people have come to the pantry,” she said.

The increase comes both from the promotion of the pantry and the need in the community, she said.

With about 35 volunteers per semester, the pantry is open three times a week during a regular semester.

There is also collaboration with Campus Dining Services for meal programs. Registered pantry patrons can request up to 12 meals per semester to be used at any all-you-can-eat dining hall on campus.

In addition to the pantry and meals, Tiger Pantry also has more than 20 locations for emergency food packs on campus with two to three microwavable meals and four to six types of snacks. The packs are intended for times when a student can’t access any of the pantries in Columbia.

The resource helps students devote their energies to school and extracurriculars instead of worrying about where their next meal is coming from, Linkous said.

As an MU student, Neumeier has been using the pantry on and off for the past couple of years. It is an important resource in her life, she said, helping her to concentrate on school and other responsibilities.

“It’s less having to worry, ‘How am I going to find the time to go to the grocery store?’ and more of, ‘I have this assignment due tonight,’” she said.

Despite the available support, students still might be uncomfortable at a food pantry. The grocery store pantry model, also referred to as client-choice mode, can be empowering and make it easier for people to ask for assistance, said Feeding Missouri’s Buckman.

“One of the biggest things, though, that I will say that we need to continue working on is overcoming the stigma associated with it,” she said. “Food insecurity can happen to anyone.”

This story originally appeared in . It can be republished in print or online. 

That’s when the district began experimenting with vending machines as a school meal option.

But what began as a short-term, pandemic-era fix to alleviate cafeteria lines later transformed into a way to spark excitement and increase student participation in school meals.

“It’s trendy, it’s new, it’s different, and that, of course, grabs students’ attention,” Sommer Purvis, supervisor of child nutrition programs at the Livingston Parish Public Schools, told ����Ӱ��.

As districts across the country adjusted to the absence of federally funded school meals in the 2022-23 school year, many saw a decline in student participation. 

But Livingston Parish Public Schools experienced an uptick.
School breakfast participation increased from 10,746 to 11,023 students, and school lunch  participation increased from 18,669 to 19,233 students — a 3% surge, according to the .

Purvis credited creating options for reimbursable school meals, such as the vending machines, for the district’s continued growth in student participation.

Serving students’ meals from vending machines compared to a traditional cafeteria line creates “the perception of offering something different and healthier even though both meet the same regulations,” Purvis said.

From club sandwiches to a variety of fresh salads made in-house, the vending machines sell out more than 150 lunches a day at the district’s four participating schools.

The district also regularly asks for student feedback, and began including vegetarian and vegan lunch options.

The vending machines are not only popular among students, but have also helped ease labor shortages among the participating schools’ cafeteria staff.

“It’s helped during serving time being able to disperse some students to other areas as opposed to them all coming in through the cafeteria lines,” Purvis said.

Livingston Parish Public Schools child nutrition program coordinator Chancy Vaughn noted how the cafeteria staff have responded positively to the changes.

“A lot of work does go into the front end of it but you make up for it on the back end,” Vaughn told ����Ӱ��. “When lunch time starts, the workload is less because the [vending] machines operate by themselves.”

Vaughn said the vending machines are connected to the school cafeteria’s payment system, so students can decide where they prefer to use money from their accounts.

“The students love it a lot, they really do,” Vaughn said. “They love having the options…and I think if we gave them even more options they would love it even more.”

12th grader Taylor Purvis said his classmates enjoy the convenience, especially if the cafeteria lines are too long.

“It opened up a lot of new opportunities for everybody,” Purvis told ����Ӱ��. “A lot of students like it and it’s very convenient.”

As the 2023-24 school year begins, Vaughn said the district plans on expanding the meals offered in the vending machines.

“If we brought in more vending machines, they would be utilized,” Vaughn said. “The students really enjoy and look forward to using them.”

Of the 91 large school districts surveyed, accounting for more than 6.5 million students, participation in school breakfast and lunch decreased by more than 100,000 and 250,000 students respectively.

In particular, school breakfast participation dropped from 1.84 to 1.74 million students, and school lunch participation dropped from 3.61 to 3.36 million students — a decrease of 5% and 7% respectively.

“The return back to normal school meal operations, which a number of the districts that participated in the survey had to do, really did negatively impact school nutrition operations,” Crystal FitzSimons, director of school and out-of-school time programs at the , told ����Ӱ��.

Experts said participation declines came from young families whose children entered school during the free meals for all era unaware of how and where to fill out the proper forms when the federal program expired.

Experts also pointed out flaws in the free or reduced-price meal eligibility system some districts had to default back to.

For instance, 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, according to set for the 2023-24 academic year. 

“It’s really tone deaf to the fact that people who might be above the free or reduced-price category could still be struggling middle class families,” Joel Berg, chief executive officer at , told ����Ӱ��.

Large districts were defined as having an enrollment greater than 7,000 students — from more than 7,000 students in California’s Inglewood Unified School District to nearly 1 million in the New York City Department of Education.

Other districts include Los Angeles Unified School District, San Diego Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools and District of Columbia Public Schools.

Of the 91 districts surveyed, five were in states that have independently funded free school meals for all and 28 implemented the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP — a program that allows schools with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students.

The remaining 58 districts went back to their tiered eligibility system where students had to qualify for free or reduced-price meals — thus contributing to the drops seen in student participation. 

FitzSimons said the drops were not as dramatic as they could have been because a handful of the districts surveyed prioritized maintaining pandemic-era meal operations as much as they could afford.

However, FitzSimons noted rising food prices, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions among other operational challenges contributed to the struggle districts faced to provide students’ healthy school meals.

“School districts were really struggling with the changes and with so many of the operational challenges that had been taking place throughout the pandemic,” FitzSimons said.

91% of districts reported rising food prices as their topline issue, in addition to 86% that struggled with labor shortages and 85% that struggled with supply chain disruptions.

Other operational challenges include increased school meal debt, communicating changes to the school meal programs when the federal program expired and low student participation.

Matthew Essner, vice president of state nutrition at , said problems communicating changes to the school meal programs was a widespread issue.

“When schools went back to the traditional meal setting, access and people even understanding that they were required to fill out those forms was a bit confusing,” Essner told ����Ӱ��. 

FitzSimons added how labor shortages and the number of school lunch lines “negatively impact kids being able to get food quick enough.”

FitzSimons also noted how supply chain disruptions impacted schools’ ability to serve a variety of healthy school meals, which decreased students’ desire to participate in the meal programs.

“[Healthy school meals] generate excitement, particularly with older kids, because we do see participation in the programs decrease as kids get older,” FitzSimons said.

So far California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont have acted to independently fund free school meals for all students.

As momentum grows, FitzSimons said statewide legislation as such is the most viable way to ensure every student has access to healthy school meals. 

“We need to be looking at Healthy School Meals for All as the way to operate school nutrition programs,” FitzSimons said. “It changes the whole culture of the school cafeteria.”

Heather Cook slices bright cherry tomatoes then places the halves into a glass bowl in her kitchen in Barboursville.

On a Friday in July, she’s preparing what she calls an “easy caprese” salad. Next, it’s time to add cheese.

Though she’s alone in her kitchen, kids and adults around West Virginia are watching her step-by-step cooking demonstration via Facebook live. The virtual cooking class, offered through programming, aims to teach kids and families how to grow and cook their own food in an effort to boost nutrition and affordability.

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Cook, 35, said into her iPhone, held by a tripod, “Most of us love cheese, right? You can use cheese sticks.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced WVU Extension to offer its Family Nutrition Program classes exclusively online in 2020, health educators started reaching kids and families they’d previously never seen in person in the 40 counties they serve. In turn, they created a full-time online instructor position this year in an effort to combat the state’s childhood nutrition insecurity.

“A lot of parents work and can’t make it, or we’ve also seen a lot of parents who don’t have transportation,” said Cook, who stepped into the new virtual instructor position after nearly 10 years with WVU Extension. “Doing the virtual classes, it opened up a good opportunity for them to participate.

One in seven children in West Virginia don’t have access to enough food as food bank employees say hunger is worsening in the state.

Cook, who grew up in Southern West Virginia, said she knew firsthand how difficult it can be for families to access affordable produce due to the declining number of grocery stores in the mostly rural state and state’s poverty rate.

“I see a lot of people who are struggling to feed their families,” she said.

Nutrition insecurity expanding in West Virginia

In the last few years, West Virginia’s food banks have reported increased hunger numbers due to pandemic-spurred job loss, pandemic-related benefits ending and rising food prices.

Kristin McCartney is a public health specialist and the director of the SNAP education programs with WVU Extension.

“Even though we think of a select group of people being food insecure, it’s really expanded,” she said, adding that their internal surveys of families show that more families who don’t qualify for emergency food assistance are struggling to have enough food for their families.

Food bank employees have anticipated more food needs this year as the state will this fall for some adults receiving SNAP benefits. In West Virginia, nearly of households receiving SNAP benefits have children, and anti-hunger advocates said thousands of SNAP recipients could lose their benefits due to the work requirement.

The WVU Extension Family Nutrition Program work is supported by SNAP funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service.

While the program still offers in-person nutrition education, its virtual programming has enabled employees to reach all 55 counties and offer programs to a wider range of ages. The program has a , which features healthy recipes, food safety tips, food preservation instruction, shopping tips and more. It has more than 69,000 views.

In her virtual cooking classes, Cook tries to select recipes that kids can do with minimal adult help or with ingredients that they have on hand. She regularly helps kids find ingredient substitutions.

“The classes are geared toward younger kids making healthy snacks, like a snack mix or a smoothie where you put all the materials in a Ziploc bag and use a straw or a spoon,” she explained.

Along with classes like Cook’s, WVU Extension this summer is offering in-person nutrition classes and a kids’ market program where nearly 4,000 families are eligible for $30 to $60 to spend on fresh produce at local grocery stores.

There’s also a “Grow This” program that offers free seeds and gardening instruction to residents. Last year, 73,000 people participated in the program, according to WVU Extension.

One of Cook’s virtual classes focuses on helping kids and families learn how to garden. Families who signed up for the course received compostable “grow bags” — a shopping bag that is suited for growing — along with seeds for microgreens, kale, mini bell peppers and purple carrots. The grow bag idea came out of employees’ realization that some participating families didn’t have yard space for a garden.

During an online Zoom meeting, Cook taught participants how to shred notebook paper to create a compost layer and how to properly water their plants.

“I love this program because we are trying to go back to how our grandparents did things and trying to be able to provide for yourself,” Cook said after the class. “I love that we are able to teach them to grow their own food and how to make healthy choices.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .

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.