School choice was a central point of disagreement, with Republican governors more likely to advocate for increased use of public funds for private schooling. A subset of Republican governors also focused on restricting transgender participation in women’s sports. Some Democratic governors fervently criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement for conducting raids in and around schools.

But governors from both parties prioritized improving student achievement — especially in literacy — and increasing funding for public education and teacher pay. School nutrition emerged as a newly prominent area of shared focus. 

School Choice

Thirteen governors — all Republicans except for Arizona’s Katie Hobbs — referenced school choice in their speeches, with the vast majority promoting the use of public dollars for private education. 

Several governors advocated for expansion of their state’s private school choice programs, either by increasing funding or by broadening eligibility for participation. Missouri’s governor, Mike Kehoe, for example, proposed investing an additional $10 million in the MO Scholars Program. By contrast, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster focused on eligibility, calling for universal access to the state’s education scholarship trust fund, which is currently limited to low-income families. 

Three governors announced that they will opt in to the new federal tax credit scholarship program. South Dakota’s Larry Rhoden praised the program and said the state will work with private school, public school and homeschool leaders to prepare for implementation in January 2027.

Other governors highlighted the need for more guardrails in private school choice programs. Hobbs continued to call for increased oversight of Arizona’s universal ESA program, arguing that a program originally designed to support students with disabilities and military families

has become vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse, while Idaho’s Brad Little called for greater accountability in his state’s choice program.

Meanwhile, Kehoe and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who are both Republicans, urged state lawmakers to support more choices for students within public education. Kehoe set aside $7.5 million for open school district enrollment, and Iowa’s Kim Reynolds proposed that per-pupil funding follow students to charter schools. 

Higher Education

Twenty-two governors discussed higher education priorities, largely centered on financial aid and affordability. Colorado’s Jared Polis continued his commitment to making the first two years at the state’s public colleges free for low-income high school graduates, and Indiana’s Mike Braun announced a freeze on tuition and mandatory fees at every public university for the next two years.

Others proposed targeted scholarships. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen promised that every in-state student who scores a 33 or better on the ACT will receive a full scholarship, including housing, to the University of Nebraska. Georgia’s Brian Kemp proposed a $325 million investment in the state university’s needs-based DREAMS Scholarships.

Five governors proposed health sector-related higher education initiatives. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the construction and endowment of a new medical school. Idaho’s Little committed $1 million to support graduate medical education, while Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear proposed $25 million for nursing student loan forgiveness. 

Workforce Development

Looking beyond traditional post-secondary pathways, 15 governors highlighted workforce development initiatives and the importance of aligning career and technical education with the demands of a dynamic job market. 

Both Republican and Democratic governors proposed expanding K-12 and postsecondary programs that connect students to apprenticeships in skilled trades, health care, education and technology. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, who proposed construction apprenticeships directly tied to affordable housing initiatives and partnerships between schools and nonprofits to train the next generation of climate stewards — key priorities for the state.

Kehoe announced support for a specific trade: pet grooming. His budget includes funding for expanding a Kansas City nonprofit called Pawsperity, which he said has helped 200 low-income students achieve financial stability through a stable career.

The governors of Colorado and South Dakota called for stronger state-level coordination, proposing new agencies to track workforce readiness and expand access to CTE.

Early Learning/Child Care

In line with initiatives to strengthen the workforce, 20 governors — Democrats and Republicans — proposed expanding early care and learning to increase access and affordability for working parents. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to fully fund New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s universal child care program for 2-year-olds for its first two years, while Grisham called for universal child care statewide in New Mexico. 

Seven governors — six Democrats and South Carolina’s McMaster — highlighted continued or new commitments to universal pre-K, while others suggested incremental expansions to early learning. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, for example, proposed using private investment to add 10,000 new seats in free early learning programs statewide, and Indiana’s Mike Braun suggested requiring businesses to have “skin in the game” to help reduce child care costs and expand access. 

Student Health

In last year’s addresses, several governors — predominantly Republicans — announced plans to ban cellphones in schools, with many framing the policies as necessary to protect students’ mental and behavioral health. 

This year, six Democrats and three Republicans proposed similar restrictions, though many emphasized improving student learning as the primary rationale. Kansas’s Laura Kelly, for example, proposed a school cellphone ban because the devices “are making it much harder for our children to learn and for our teachers to teach.” 

Still, student mental health was a concern, particularly regarding online safety. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned parents about artificial intelligence chatbots, citing concerns about their connection to teen suicides. Democratic governors in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts proposed restrictions on social media use for children — Hochul’s plan includes disabling AI chatbots, blocking location sharing and restricting access to online sports gambling.

Notably, only two governors, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Wisconsin’s Tony Evers, proposed new investments in K-12 mental health services.

School Nutrition

Nutrition and school meals emerged as a new priority in this year’s addresses, with many governors referencing the Trump administration’s campaign to improve food quality and wellness nationwide. Ten governors, both Democratic and Republican, introduced initiatives aimed at improving student nutrition. 

Kansas’ Kelly proposed making school meals free for all students now eligible for reduced pricing, and Hawaii’s Green extended free school meals to families at 300% of the federal poverty level.

Regarding the food itself, Little proposed a bill to remove artificial dye from school lunches, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom encouraged the continuation of efforts to remove highly processed foods from school cafeterias. Despite tightening restrictions, no alternatives or funding for healthier food were proposed. 

Three Republican governors, citing health concerns such as obesity, proposed removing candy, soda, energy drinks and other unhealthy foods from programs that provide federal subsidies for students when school is not in session: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT).      

This report was produced through a partnership between and ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. Senior Producer Meghan Gallagher of ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ developed the interactive maps.Ěý

This summer parents were supposed to have a bit more financial breathing room while their children were out of school. The government rolled out , the first new federal food assistance program in decades, for its inaugural year, providing qualifying families $120 per school-aged child to help them afford groceries during the summer while going without school meals to help feed their kids.Ěý

Nearly 21 million children are eligible for the program, but there are early warning signs that many families were unable to take advantage of the benefits. 

A prominent challenge is that the enrollment process was opaque and complicated enough that hundreds of thousands of families may miss out altogether, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unclaimed and sent back to the government, according to policy consultant David Rubel, who has done extensive research on the Summer EBT program as well as its predecessor, the , which gave parents money to cover meals while children were learning remotely.

Erika Marquez’s family was one of many that were unable to access the funding. Marquez has four children — three of them attend school programs and one, her infant, is at home. Her husband, who she is separated from, told her that he received a letter saying that Summer EBT benefits were coming, but said he got no further instructions about how to actually claim the funds. “He didn’t know who to contact, how to contact them, or anything for that matter,” she said. 

Summers are always harder for her family to make ends meet — when her three school-age kids are home, they miss two daily meals they would have gotten for free at school. Marquez was hopeful that the Summer EBT money coming in would help cover that gap this year, but when her family couldn’t access the funds, they suffered. Marquez works full time and says that to ensure that her children have what they need, she has to follow a strict budget to cover all of their expenses, and this was a particularly difficult summer. Living in Las Vegas, Nevada, which experienced the on record, her electricity bill went through the roof after cranking the air conditioning. Normally it costs her about $100 to $150 for the season; this summer she says it was about $400. 

Without help from the new food assistance program, Marquez says she had to ignore those utility bills and prioritize groceries so that her children had enough to eat. “It’s just hard when you hear your child say, ‘Mom, my stomach is rumbling,’” she shared. “It’s more important to be able to make sure that my children are fed.” She had to skip paying for electricity for two months, landing her on a payment plan, which has added fees on top of the bill itself. Had she received Summer EBT for her three children, that would have come to $360 — almost the same cost as her electricity bill, she noted. 

Many other parents have found themselves in a similar situation to Marquez this season. In California, according to the state’s response to a FOIA request made by Rubel, 281,690 Summer EBT cards were returned due to a wrong address and went unused between June 1 and Aug. 31. In a state where 1 in 5 residents is food insecure, this is troubling, especially given that during the pandemic, California $1 billion earmarked for P-EBT.

Propel, a financial technology company that helps low-income Americans with banking and public benefits, administered a of low-income families in August, which revealed anecdotal evidence that backs Rubel’s finding that some eligible families had trouble getting the money. The survey surfaced scattered reports of barriers to access. “No, haven’t received yet,” one respondent from Missouri wrote, adding, “It would help me not having to skip meals to feed my kids.” Another from Michigan wrote, “No, it would make a big difference. We haven’t received them yet, or the card.” 

Most of the families that received Summer EBT dollars got their cards automatically through a process known as streamlined certification. States enrolled them without them having to take any action if they were on certain public benefit programs, including free and reduced price school lunch, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. In some states, if a family already had an EBT card for SNAP benefits, for example, the money was automatically loaded onto it; other states decided to send out separate cards.

But a number of eligible families didn’t automatically receive the benefits. For example, families that don’t participate in other programs, but whose children do qualify for free and reduced price meals at school, are eligible for Summer EBT, but they must enroll, which has proven a challenge. In part, that’s because in 2020, Congress made school meals universally free so families did not need to enroll, but that expired last fall, and some parents are out of practice with signing up. In the 41 states without universal school meals, are failing to sign up for free and reduced price meals, let alone Summer EBT. Meanwhile, have passed universal school meals, requiring no paperwork during the school year, so parents had to know to sign up for Summer EBT separately. 

Kelsey Boone, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, an anti-hunger nonprofit, said that, anecdotally, her organization has heard that while the streamlined application has had a lot of success getting benefits to families, states are seeing “lower than expected application return rates” for everyone else. Kansas, for example, had received applications for Summer EBT by mid-September even though the Kansas Department for Children and Families estimates there are more than 100,000 families that are eligible for the program but have to enroll.

One problem is that some states haven’t created statewide applications specifically for Summer EBT, making it challenging for parents to figure out where and how to apply, and some have buried the applications deep in their websites. Another is that outreach to let parents know what they have to do “has not been as robust as it could be,” Boone said. She added that states don’t always have up-to-date addresses for households, particularly for low-income families who tend to move a lot, so any mail or even the EBT cards themselves may not reach parents. In at least some states, she noted, school districts weren’t even aware they had to tell parents to sign up. 

The same problems plagued the P-EBT program. When summer P-EBT cards were distributed in 2022 and 2023, about $1 billion in benefits went unclaimed by eligible families, according to , and about 4.5 million cards were either expunged or at risk of being expunged. Instead of conducting extensive outreach to make sure parents knew about the benefits and how to claim them, Rubel was told that many state departments of education put the information on their websites and left it to parents to find it. 

The problem with Summer EBT promises to be even more acute. Families had 274 days to realize they were missing out on P-EBT funds and sign up for the benefits, and if they spent at least a dollar the clock would reset, giving them another 274 days. The Summer EBT program gives families just 122 days from the date the money is loaded onto a card to spend it all before it’s forfeited and sent back to the federal government. “This is a very short window,” Rubel said. Nebraska expungement letters in early September. Rubel estimates most of the money will be gone by the end of November.

The good news is that states have been allowed to push application deadlines back so more families can apply and receive their money before it gets forfeited. In an email response to a question about the timeline, a USDA spokesperson said that the agency provided “additional flexibility” to allow all states that participated in the program this year to extend their application deadlines to ensure “sufficient time for applications to be submitted and processed.” The spokesperson said the agency will work with each state individually to determine the “appropriate” amount of time a state can extend a deadline.

Some states have already taken the agency up on the offer. Kansas and both announced they would push their deadlines to apply back.

But Rubel insists that school districts must do outreach to ensure eligible families get the money they’re owed before it’s too late. “They have the capacity, they have the infrastructure,” he said, adding that districts have up-to-date contact information for families. “They need to be prodded a little bit to help their families.”

It’s all the more urgent because the families that did receive Summer EBT dollars saw a huge benefit. In Propel’s August 2024 survey, fewer families reported that they had to eat less, skip meals or were unable to buy the food they wanted as compared to August 2023. Fewer lacked household essentials, owed money on utility bills, or had their utilities shut off; fewer were evicted or lived in unstable housing. Summer EBT “was life saving,” one respondent said. “I didn’t know where my next meal was coming [from].” Another said, “It helped tremendously with groceries for me and my daughter right when we really needed it.”

“This money really can mean the difference between having food on the table and not having food on the table for a family during the summer,” Boone said.

There is a chance to fix this problem before next summer starts. First, advocates hope more states will decide to join the Summer EBT program, ensuring more families can participate. In 2024, 13 states opted out, but , for example, has already said it will join in 2025. The window to opt in for next summer is currently open and will remain so through next August. For the states that participated this year, there are lessons to be learned about expanding accessibility. “There’s a lot of discussion about that right now,” Boone said. Some of that is about how states can improve their outreach, including putting more resources into it, trying to reach families in a multitude of ways and offering better customer service.Ěý

“So many of our problems are so hard to fix,” Rubel said. “This is a really easy one to fix.”

When Espie Chapman began teaching introductory agriculture classes at Kailua Intermediate School three years ago, the plot of land near her classroom was mostly vacant except for a small orchard of fruit trees.

Chapman had no farming experience, but she was determined to create a space where her seventh and eighth grade students could grow fresh fruits and vegetables. She asked the teens what they wanted to plant and got to work purchasing wheelbarrows and seeds for her class.

The school’s garden now produces fruits and vegetables like bok choy, spinach and papaya that Chapman’s students transform into soups and salads to sample during class.

“We just try and look at what’s in our farm, and what kind of recipes can we do with that,” Chapman said. “If they’re going to try and eat it, we’ll make it happen.”

Chapman’s class teaches teens about nutrition and sustainability, but while students are cooking the kind of locally sourced and culturally relevant lunches that the Hawaii Department of Education aspires to provide in all schools, they can’t actually serve meals in the cafeteria.

DOE previously ran a pilot program to train schools on food safety and enable them to serve produce from their gardens, but the program has been on pause since the Covid-19 pandemic. Without it, Chapman would have to figure out how to meet strict federal and state protocols on her own to supply the school’s cafeteria with produce from the garden.

DOE did not respond to questions about the status of the Garden to Cafeteria program and whether schools will be able to participate in the future.

Approximately 85% of Hawaii schools have gardens, but only a few have serious agricultural programs where students earn certifications as food handlers or gain firsthand experience harvesting and selling produce and using sustainable growing methods.

Typically teachers use school gardens for lessons ranging from the life cycle of a plant to a poetry unit focused on nature. But some want to take their lessons a step further by using produce from the gardens in school meals, exposing more kids to fresh fruits and vegetables and giving students a sense of ownership over what they’re eating.

DOE has historically struggled to increase the use of local ingredients in school lunches, and advocates say gardens can encourage students to eat healthier.

“School gardens can galvanize a community,” said Natalie McKinney, chief program officer of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which promotes environmental education and runs a learning farm in Haleiwa.

‘A Hidden Gem’

Third grade teacher Rex Dubiel Shanahan planted a garden at Sunset Elementary when she first started teaching in 1987 and takes pride in showing students how to plant seeds or make kimchi using the carrots they grow.

“You can teach almost everything through the garden,” Dubiel Shanahan said.

Sunset Elementary participates in the Aina In Schools program, which is run by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and provides schools with activities that tie gardening to lessons in science and nutrition. But, Dubiel Shanahan said, she would like more schools to have access to resources on sustainability and healthy eating for students.

In recent years, DOE has offered more professional development opportunities for teachers interested in starting gardens. It has developed resources for schools to create peace gardens to support student mental health and is helping teachers incorporate more lessons about native plants into their classes, said Jennifer Ryan, the department’s school garden coordinator.

Even with more resources and professional development available, it can be daunting for teachers to maintain school gardens on their own, said Waikiki Elementary Principal Ryan Kusuda. Schools don’t have a dedicated source of funding to hire full-time garden coordinators, and many campuses rely on families and teachers when it comes to weeding, harvesting and other tasks.

Waikiki Elementary has the extra budget to pay for a sustainability teacher and a part-time farm manager dedicated to facilitating student learning and keeping up the garden, Kusuda said, adding it would be difficult to maintain the space solely through volunteers.

“It’s a hidden gem,” Kusuda said, adding that the school has roughly 80 fruit trees supplying tangerines and starfruit that students can sample during class.

In some cases, schools use gardens to help jump-start students’ careers.

In Leilehua High School’s career and technical education program, students in the natural resources pathway are responsible for 3.5 acres of land on which they grow lettuce, beets, radishes and more. CTE teacher Jackie Freitas requires her students to earn their certifications in food handling and gain experience selling produce to teachers and families every week.

“We are trying to help our community and provide them with fresh produce that they can afford and that they know is safe,” Freitas said.

Other schools have taught their students the importance of eating local by drawing on their gardens to supply produce to their cafeterias.

Last month, students at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science supplied 160 pounds of kalo from their garden to the cafeteria. Cooks at the Big Island charter school turned the taro into poi, which students enjoyed with their lunches of kalua pork and rice, said teacher Wendy Baker.

While the gardens don’t produce enough fruits and vegetables to supply 600 lunches every day, Baker added, occasionally incorporating food from the garden in school lunches helps students appreciate the time and effort that goes into their meals.

“When they help the garden, the garden helps them,” Baker said.

But including produce from the garden in school meals raises the stakes when it comes to requirements around food safety.

Schools already follow best practices around harvesting and preparing produce, such as requiring students to sanitize their hands and thoroughly wash their fruits and vegetables, said Debbie Millikan, a member of the Hawaii Farm to School Network and director of sustainability at Punahou School. But when it comes to growing food for school meals, campuses need to comply with additional state and federal guidelines like testing their water for E. coli every year and tracking the exact location where students harvest produce.

If students get sick from school meals, Millikan said, it’s important for schools to identify the source of the problem and know where their ingredients originate.

“Food safety and garden safety is absolutely critical, no matter whether you’re growing it at home or growing in a school garden,” Millikan said. “The record-keeping part is really critical because you’re serving a large group of students a large amount of food.”

In 2018, DOE started a Garden to Cafeteria pilot program to adopt federal regulations around food safety and apply them to schools. Participating campuses were required to document their compliance with water, soil and food safety requirements in order to incorporate fruits and vegetables from their gardens into meals.

A dozen schools participated in the three-year pilot, but frequent turnover in DOE’s food services branch put the program on pause as schools reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Dennis Chase, program manager at the Hawaii Public Health Institute. Most schools, including past participants in the pilot, haven’t been able to serve food from their gardens since.

McKinney at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation said she’s hopeful DOE will revive the program. Schools are unlikely to grow at the scale they need to produce all their own food, she added, but it’s important to incorporate more local produce in school meals so students will be more receptive to trying new fruits and vegetables in the future.

Other Ways To Meet School Food Needs

Numerous schools on the mainland — and a few in Hawaii — have been able to tackle food safety issues to grow food for their lunch programs, proving that the challenge is not insurmountable.

San Diego launched a program 10 years ago to train teachers and garden coordinators on how to safely plant and harvest food for school lunches, said Janelle Manzano, the district’s farm-to-school program specialist. Before the pandemic, she added, 10 to 15 schools participated in the program, although the number dropped to five last year.

It’s been difficult for some campuses to revive their gardens after the pandemic, Manzano said, but she’s hopeful more schools will start growing their own produce in the coming year.

At Leilehua High School, Freitas was undeterred when DOE’s Garden to Cafeteria pilot ended. Last year, Freitas received a Good Agricultural Practices certification from the United States Department of Agriculture for the school’s hydroponic greenhouse. The greenhouse is subject to audits twice a year to make sure students are following safety requirements for harvesting produce and tracking their cleaning and sanitation schedules.

The certification means Leilehua’s greenhouse is held to the same standards as commercial farms and can supply produce to the cafeteria like any other vendor, Freitas said. While the garden’s safety procedures have not changed much, she added, students are now required to keep a more detailed record of when they clean their tools and harvest produce.

Freitas said her students are still working with cafeteria staff to determine how the produce can fit into the school’s meal plan, but she’s hoping the process will help them understand how they can contribute to food production in Hawaii and take pride in their work.

“It can be done,” Freitas said.

This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. 

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

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.

Nearly 800,000 kids are eating free meals in school after the Legislature expanded access — but the state will need to come up with more money if it wants to continue the program.

That’s according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which announced on Tuesday that 70% of Washington’s kids now have access to school meals at no cost to students or families.

But the state underestimated how many students would participate — leading Superintendent Chris Reykdal to to continue feeding this many kids.

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The office’s request says that the gap in funding can also be attributed to adjustments in how much the federal government reimburses for its free meal program and an increase in students who meet the income requirements. About 50.1% of students are designated as low-income this year, up from 46.8% in the 2019-2020 school year.

“As we all battle rising inflation and our budgets getting tighter, these programs provide much needed financial relief to families statewide,” Reykdal said.

Hungry students are more likely to have attention and behavioral issues, face academic challenges and develop poor eating habits.

The Legislature has gradually increased Washington’s free school meal program over the past four years, an effort spearheaded by state Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane.

Under Riccelli’s , passed in 2023, if at least 40% of a school’s population was eligible for the federal free and reduced meal program, then the school had to provide the meals at no charge to any student who requests a breakfast, lunch or both. The new rules took effect in the 2023-2024 school year.

Beginning in the current school year, the program expanded to schools where at least 30% of the population is eligible for the federal meals program.

According to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the number of lunches served at Washington schools operating the new free meal program increased 32% from the previous year, and the number of breakfasts served increased 50%.

In the 2024-2025 school year, 1,523 schools are serving free meals to all students who requested one — up from 1,269 in the 2023-2024 school year.

Riccelli tried to pass a universal free school meals bill , but the state determined it would cost too much at about $115 million a year, Riccelli told the Standard in February.

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 .

The first night of the Democratic National Convention, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s lieutenant governor strode onto the stage to help kick things off. To Minnesotans, Peggy Flanagan has been a constant presence during Walz’s two terms as governor. But to many delegates in attendance — and people watching the event from around the world — hers was a new face.Ěý

“My name in the Ojibwe language is Gizhiiwewidamoonkwe, or in English, Speaks with a Clear and Loud Voice Woman,” . “I’m a member of the White Earth Nation and my family is the Wolf Clan. And the role of our clan is to ensure that we never leave anyone behind.”

If Kamala Harris is elected president in November, Flanagan will assume Walz’s office, making her the first Indigenous woman governor in U.S. history. Since her DNC appearance, headlines in national news outlets have dubbed her Walz’s “understudy,” a rising party star “waiting in the wings” for her turn. 

The actual story is much more interesting. In a rise marked by serendipity, two pivotal moments stand out. The first took place in 2002, when, as a new University of Minnesota graduate, Flanagan was walking past Sen. Paul Wellstone’s campaign headquarters and decided to stop in. She was 22 and eager to help him win a third term. 

It didn’t happen. The senator was killed in a plane crash 12 days shy of what seemed certain re-election — a tragedy that served as prelude to the second defining moment. Wellstone’s death galvanized a generation of progressive political activists who created an organization, Wellstone Action, dedicated to teaching ordinary people the fundamentals of running a grassroots campaign. 

Flanagan — who had used the Wellstone formula to become the youngest person ever elected to the Minneapolis School Board — was working for the candidate incubator in 2005 when a small-town high school teacher and football coach named Tim Walz turned up at one of its boot camps. He was considering a run for Congress as a Democrat in a deep-red southern Minnesota district. . They as each rose through the political ranks. 

As lieutenant governor, Flanagan has been a driving force behind many of the policies now being showcased as the middle-class wins Walz brings to the presidential ticket. Advocacy for kids, vulnerable families and early childhood education have topped her agenda at each stage of her political career. 

The universal free school lunches, child tax credit and paid family and sick leave that Harris and Walz are campaigning on? Good retail politics, certainly — and also an outgrowth of Flanagan’s childhood experience knowing that her friends were watching as she handed the lunch ladies the issued to kids who got free food. 

“Universal school meals is one of the most important things that I’ve ever worked on in my entire career — removing that shame and that stigma is a powerful tool to make sure that kids are eating right,” Flanagan says. “Anecdotally, we have heard attendance is up. … And instead of asking if kids have enough money in their account, we are asking, ‘Do you want chicken and rice or do you want pizza?’ ”

A literal political pedigree

Flanagan grew up at political strategy meetings. Her grandmother, mother and aunts were Irish social-justice Catholics who worked alongside the late Hubert Humphrey in Democratic politics for decades. When Humphrey ran for president in 1968, Flanagan’s mother, Patricia, moved to Washington, D.C., to work on his campaign.

“I grew up in a family where women just did the work,” Flanagan says. “I didn’t know anything different, right? My grandmother was absolutely the matriarch and was involved in party politics before it was, you know, polite for women to do that work.”

She did not realize that organizing was an activity with a name until she was older and doing it herself, Flanagan continues. “It was just like, well, you see a need, and then you bring people together and try to work together to solve the problem.”

Pat Flanagan was a single parent, getting by thanks to Medicaid, a Section 8 housing voucher, food stamps, state child care assistance, free- and reduced-price school lunches and the Minnesota Family Investment Program — the household subsidy that replaced welfare. She used the benefits to move herself and her daughter to a middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, that had good schools and stable neighborhoods. 

Eventually, Pat became a phlebotomist, but struggle shaped Peggy Flanagan’s views. She has also referred to herself on several occasions, without elaborating, as a “ of domestic violence.” She speaks passionately about her mother’s insistence that when food was scarce. Somehow, she says frequently, Pat Flanagan always found enough resources to meet her daughter’s needs.  

If the women in Flanagan’s life taught her to build coalitions, her father nurtured her sense of resolve. Marvin Manypenny spent to recoup lands swindled from , one of the homes of Minnesota’s largest indigenous group, the Anishinaabe, who were dubbed Ojibwe by colonists. In 1986, Manypenny sued the U.S. government in a case that chronicled more than a century of betrayed promises by federal officials to respect Native lands. In 1991, an appeals court , ruling that it did not have jurisdiction to decide the claims. 

Manypenny was a frequent fixture at protests and active in tribal politics, but not a consistent voter himself until his daughter’s name appeared on a statewide ticket as the candidate for lieutenant governor in 2018. 

“My dad oftentimes would say, ‘My girl, I want to burn down the system, and you want to get into the system and change it from the inside out,’ ” Flanagan when he died in 2020. “That’s a pretty good summary of how my dad operated and how I operate.”

When Flanagan walked into Wellstone’s campaign office, it was with her maternal lineage’s coalition-building skills and her father’s spine. Wellstone’s organizers put her to work mobilizing the urban Native American community. 

A political science professor at Carleton College, located an hour south of the Twin Cities, Wellstone ran a then-unorthodox, bare-bones campaign for U.S. Senate in 1990, ousting two-term Republican Rudy Boschwitz, the owner of a chain of lumber stores. 

Accompanied by an army of door-knockers — many of them his students — Wellstone rode an old green school bus around the state, giving stump speeches from a platform on the back. He could afford to air only one TV ad one time, but his grainy, low-budget “Looking for Rudy” — in which he went seeking his rival to set up a debate — became a news story itself. 

Flanagan was an early linchpin of Wellstone Action’s grassroots training efforts. A campaign policy aide and longtime friend of the senator’s, Pam Costain traveled the country with Flanagan for several years, teaching people about what they called the Wellstone triangle. Even in her 20s, Costain says, Flanagan had experience with all three legs.

“You cannot do electoral politics without an appreciation for what it takes to build grassroots involvement,” she explains. “And you can’t do [community organizing] work if you’re not willing to contend for power — because then you’re just always going to be the agitator and not the decision-maker.”

Out of college, Flanagan was employed by the Division of Indian Work, a Twin Cities nonprofit service provider, helping to build relationships between the school system and Native families. She had been encouraged by a longtime Minneapolis School Board member to run for a seat in the 2004 election, but begged off.ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý

“I was like, you know, I’m 23. I don’t have any kids in the district,” Flanagan recalls. “I don’t think I’m the one. But I will help you find somebody.”

Not long after that conversation, at a meeting where American Indian Movement founder Clyde Bellecourt was speaking, she raised her hand and told the crowd that if anyone wanted to run for school board, she would help. “Folks in the room were like, my girl, why don’t you do it?”ĚýĚýĚý

As she drove home from the meeting, Flanagan passed Wellstone’s former campaign office, where she had stopped to volunteer. She pulled over and decided to run.Ěý

“I didn’t think we’re going to win,” she recalls. “But at the very least, the issues that are happening in the urban Native community … will be brought forward. It turned out that a number of people in Minneapolis shared those concerns.”Ěý

‘It wasn’t a small thing’Ěý

Flanagan was not the first Native person to serve on the board, but her presence made the district’s ongoing failure to serve its Indigenous students harder to ignore. In the 1970s, Indigenous dropout rates in Minneapolis schools hovered around 80%, fueled by decades of official indifference to the continued legacy of American Indian boarding schools that stripped Native children of their languages and cultures. Mistrust of government-operated schools is still high.Ěý

Bullying and a near-total lack of Native teachers or curriculum fueled truancy rates, sometimes leading to court-ordered removals of Native children from their families. Before its closure in 2008, a free, private alternative school operated by the American Indian Movement graduated more Indigenous students than Minneapolis Public Schools combined.

Flanagan had graduated from high school in St. Louis Park, a suburb located just west of Minneapolis, but she understood what it was like not to see herself represented in the classroom.ĚýĚýĚý

“When I got to the University of Minnesota, I had for the very first time a teacher who looked like me … in my intro to American Indian Studies class,” she says. “It changed everything. Learning accurate history, knowing that there is a teacher who will absolutely understand who you are and where you come from.”Ěý

On the school board — where she served alongside Costain, who had also sought and won a seat — Flanagan was instrumental in the negotiation of , long in coming, between urban tribal leaders and the district. The first of its kind in the country, it required the school system to create specialized programs aimed at engaging mistrustful families, preserving Native languages and strengthening cultural identity.Ěý

Now the head of the Minneapolis Foundation, R.T. Rybak was in the first of three terms as mayor of Minneapolis when the pact was signed. “It wasn’t a small thing to negotiate an agreement between a public school system and Native leaders, because it starts with an extraordinary amount of historical inequity,” he says. “That was a very significant achievement.”

American Indian students were guaranteed placement at three schools designated “best practices” sites. Educators would be required to interview for positions — a departure from the strict seniority-based placement system then required by the teachers union contract — and would have to agree to undertake ongoing, specialized training and observation. To ensure continuity, they were also supposed to be protected from being bumped from their positions during layoff.

At the time, 38% of Minneapolis Public Schools Native students graduated, more than two-thirds of them from alternative schools not operated by the district. The number of Indigenous students graduating from district schools has ticked up slightly in the intervening two decades, but partly because of a change in the way state officials define American Indian. In 2023, 42% graduated, with 14% dropping out and the fate of another 20% unknown.Ěý

Almost half of Minneapolis’s Native graduates enroll in some postsecondary education within 16 months. But in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, none had earned one year’s worth of credits within two years. Since 2021, the percentage of Minneapolis Indigenous students reading at grade level has fallen from 22% to 19%, while math proficiency has hovered between 10% and 13%.ĚýĚý

The agreement between the district and Native leaders , but there is no evidence the staffing exceptions were codified in the teacher contract. Last May, the district’s American Indian Parent Advisory Committee notified the school board that it considers the schools out of compliance with regarding its obligations to Native students.Ěý

Flanagan’s elected term on the board ended in 2009, but the following year she was appointed to replace Costain, who had resigned to take over the district’s nonprofit education partner. At , the board heard on the district’s racial and ethnic achievement gaps, complete with an estimate that at the incremental pace of change taking place, it would take decades for Minneapolis students to to their peers statewide.

Flanagan had an emotional reaction to the lack of meaningful progress. “We know what works for kids. And we’ve just got to be courageous enough to do it, to ask for it, to demand it,” she said. “If white kids were failing in this district … at the rate that children of color and Native students are failing, people would be on fire. They would be storming the Capitol, they would be burning that place down.”

In 2013, Marian Wright Edelman, then president of the Children’s Defense Fund, tapped Flanagan to head its Minnesota branch. During her time with the organization, she spearheaded a successful effort to get lawmakers to raise the state’s minimum wage — then $6.15, more than a dollar an hour less than the federal minimum — and index it to inflation. For large employers, it is now $10.85.

A few months later, Minneapolis’s new mayor-elect, Betsy Hodges, asked Flanagan to head her “Cradle to K Cabinet,” an effort to in the city.Ěý

“Peggy understood very clearly that one of the challenges of working with prenatal to 3-year-olds is you cannot help and support them without helping and supporting their parents,” says Hodges. “And lots of people love to support young people but do not love to support young people’s parents. When they’re in school, it’s a little easier to heed that reality. But when it’s prenatal to 3, it’s not. So what are the supports parents need to be really effective?”

Flanagan made it clear up front that families’ opportunities to shape the cabinet’s strategies needed to be meaningful. “We wanted to have enough parents as part of the group that they didn’t feel like they were being tokenized,” Hodges recalls. “We made sure to arrange meetings for times that they would be able to be there. We made sure to have child care. We did our best to set it up in a way where we could get their feedback in a way that didn’t feel dismissive or condescending.”

The pull of public officeĚý

But electoral politics still tugged. In 2015, Flanagan won a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives, serving a handful of suburbs on Minneapolis’s western boundary, including the one where she grew up. She served until 2019, authoring bills in support of early childhood education and a range of benefits for families. She sponsored just one K-12 education measure, to fund diversity, equity and inclusion training for educators in her home district.Ěý

In 2017, Walz called Flanagan and asked her to run for lieutenant governor. (In Minnesota, the governor and the No. 2 are elected as a ticket.) For many of her predecessors, the job has been a one-way trip to obscurity, but since their inaugurations, Walz and Flanagan have typically been seen together.Ěý

“Every major decision she is there from the beginning and helps me see about them differently and think about them differently,” . “You have a 55-year-old rural white guy who was in the Army [National Guard] and coached football, and you have a 39-year-old Indigenous woman who lived in St. Louis Park. That brings a wealth of [ways] to approach these issues.”

Flanagan has an office in the same Capitol suite as the governor. The White Earth flag hangs in the hall alongside the Stars and Stripes and a new state flag adopted last spring, replacing one that was offensive to Native Minnesotans.ĚýĚý

Privately, some Republicans have groused that they believe Flanagan pushed Walz to the left politically. Whether that is true is debatable, but her policy priorities have been front and center in the six years since they took office.

One of her first accomplishments as the state’s second-highest executive was securing the first increase in decades to the Minnesota Family Investment Program, the cash assistance program for low-income families her mother depended on when she was a child. In 2019, lawmakers increased the payments by $100 a month.Ěý

Flanagan also played a key role in ensuring Native history and culture are included in new state social studies standards. Topics differ by grade level and include Indigenous people’s relationships to land and water, the current state of treaties and American Indian perspectives on the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

A Flanagan administration’s prioritiesĚý

This year’s appearance was not Flanagan’s first DNC speech. In 2016, she took to the stage to read a letter to her daughter Siobhan, then 3. She was still in the state House, and only the second Native woman to address the convention.Ěý

The following year, she told the Minneapolis Native newspaper The Circle that she would run for the House of Representatives seat occupied by Keith Ellison if he did not stand for re-election. She ended up on Walz’s ticket instead.Ěý

Many of the political wins the governor and lieutenant governor have enjoyed in recent years were possible because Democrats controlled both branches of the state legislature and the executive branch —Ěýby a very slim margin. That could change if Republicans gain control of either the Minnesota House or Senate.

If Flanagan becomes governor, state Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson would like to see more emphasis on closing achievement gaps.Ěý

“While Walz and Flanagan both have experience in the education system, their priorities too often focused on satisfying political interests instead of ensuring kids were getting the education they deserved,” he says. “Once a leader in education, Minnesota now lags Mississippi in some areas despite years of historic funding increases.”

Flanagan says her priorities will remain the same if Harris and Walz are elected and she becomes governor. High on her list is addressing chronic absenteeism: “Attendance matters, especially in the post-pandemic world that we live in.”

She also hopes to promote career and technical education, invest more state aid in kindergarten readiness and continue diversifying the state’s teacher corps, which has historically been more than 90% white.ĚýĚýĚý

Flanagan says her daughter attends the same school system she did but is having a wholly different experience. “There are over 40 Native kids in her school,” and Ojibwe language is taught to fourth- and fifth-graders, she says. “She can fully show up as her Indigenous self in the classroom and know that she will be valued for who she is, that there will be a curiosity about her identity and culture that is demonstrated in a supportive way.”Ěý

The change, she adds, benefits all kids. “I am hopeful that we are in a place, not only in talking about the history of Native people and ensuring we have Indigenous education for all, but also acknowledging Native people are contemporary people who still exist and who live all across the state,” she says. “Everybody benefits from learning the full, rich history of our state.”

Earlier this spring, Noma Projects took its efforts across the Atlantic, embarking on a weeklong tour of New York City through a series of pop-up events, ranging from book signings to cooking at the Union Square Greenmarket. Among those tour events: a school lunch takeover, closed to the public, in which DREAM Charter School students in grades K-8 were offered sandwiches and yogurt parfaits made using Noma Projects’ Pumpkin Seed Praline.

The DREAM Charter event on April 19 was facilitated by , , formerly Noma’s head chef, that places professional chefs in public foodsystems like schools, senior organizations and prisons.

Through three back-to-back lunch services last month, the Noma Projects team experienced first-hand the challenges — and joys — of ensuring students are provided a nutritious, delicious lunch every day. Watch how this unprecedented service went for a team from the world’s best restaurant as they faced their toughest critics — schoolchildren.

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 most recent state budget made changes to allow more students to be fed at no cost, but the battle to quell child hunger is still ongoing in Ohio.

The budget bill passed last year provided more than $4 million in funding to allow any students qualified for reduced-price of free breakfast and lunch can get the meals at no cost for the .

It’s not quite the universal meals that when budget talks began, but the are progress in the right direction, child and education advocates in the state concluded.

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The programs that are still attempting to help stem the flow of student hunger are seeing the struggles that inflation has on the cost of food, and Katherine Ungar, senior policy associate with the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, said the stigma of the income-based school food programs is still a barrier.

“It’s creating these categories that can create that stigma,” said Ungar.

Ohio has taken strides to help in the future by pledging to use federal dollars to establish a summer program that will give low-income families with child of school-aged children “grocery-buying benefits” while schools are closed, according to the USDA, who estimates more than 29 million children nationally could benefit.

“During the summer months, we estimate almost 1 million kids … lose access to meals,” Ungar said.

CDF-Ohio researched the whole-child impacts of categories like housing, health care and food insecurity. In fiscal year, 2023, the group’s showed an increase in the state’s students who were eligible for reduced-price or free school meals and considered “economically disadvantaged.”

The number of kids qualifying for the no-cost or low-cost lunches, for which any student in a household with up to 185% of the federal poverty line is eligible, when from 46.6% in the 2021-22 school year to nearly 50% in the 2022-23 school year.

This new summer benefit will be eligible to about 837,000 Ohio children, according to Ungar, and the economic impact of the benefit could bring $150 million into local economies.

The (EBT) gives eligible families who apply pre-loaded cards with $40 per child per month. The EBT program works in conjunction with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Women, Infants and Children (WIC) funds and other nutrition assistance efforts.

But the program can only be used if eligible families apply. Children who are certified as eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school would be eligible for the Summer EBT as well, but still have to apply through the same process as the free-or-reduced-lunch application.

“We know there are families who qualify but have not completed the application form,” Ungar said. “Some families may not think they’re eligible, but it’s important that anyone who could be eligible applies, so that those benefits can get to the people who need them.”

A similar program was available during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the USDA found that the program decreased “children’s food hardship” by 33%, and took between 2.7 and 3.9 million out of hunger across the country.

According to research by the , the pandemic EBT program brought Ohio children an estimated $2.2 billion in nutrition assistance between Spring 2020 to Summer 2023, the end of the pandemic program.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

“We’d get something really plain like one piece of bread with one piece of fish or chicken,” Woodard told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “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 ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ.

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 ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, 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.

Attorney General and more than 20 other attorneys general are challenging the federal Food and Nutrition Service’s new policy that recipients of food assistance funds update their nondiscrimination policies to protect LGBTQ people.

In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture it was expanding its interpretation of discrimination based on sex. As a result, state agencies and programs that receive funding from the Food and Nutrition Service were ordered to “investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation” and to update their policies to specifically prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

Paxton and his counterparts claim the guidance issued by the USDA is “unlawful” because states were not consulted and did not have an opportunity to provide feedback, in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act. They also argue that the USDA is , which extended sexual discrimination in the workplace to include discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

“[It] will inevitably result in regulatory chaos that threatens essential nutritional services to some of the most vulnerable citizens,” Paxton’s office said in a .

Earlier this month, Paxton and others sent to President Joe Biden arguing against the guidance issued by the USDA and asking him to withdraw it.

“USDA is committed to administering all its programs with equity and fairness, and serving those in need with the highest dignity. A key step in advancing these principles is rooting out discrimination in any form — including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in the press release from May.

Tuesday’s lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of Tennessee Knoxville Division.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

On June 25, President Biden signed the Keep Kids Fed Act of 2022. The law will extend some school meal waivers through the end of the 2022-23 school year.

With a massive, pandemic-era expansion of free school meals scheduled to expire on June 30, Democrats and Republicans around a possible compromise that would extend the federal program through the summer. Passed , the deal is expected to move through the Senate and be signed by President Biden in the next few days.

Authorized by Congress and the Department of Agriculture over the last two years, widened the category of students eligible to receive breakfast and lunch. Schools providing meals were also offered higher reimbursement rates for the costs of running their programs, as well as the flexibility to serve food off-site and substitute for items lost to supply-chain snags.Those benefits by proponents of renewing the waivers, or even following the pandemic’s end. But language to continue the program into next year was left out of the FY2023 budget signed by the president in March.

In the near term, the could ease classroom hunger and simplify the work of schools in the months to come. But research suggests that greater availability of free meals in public schools actually lowers grocery spending even for those without school-aged children. And at a time of sharply rising food prices, it’s conceivable that the end of the waivers would contribute to further inflation.

In circulated last fall by the National Bureau of Economic Research, academics from the University of Chicago and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that an earlier boost to free meals — through the Obama-era Community Eligibility Provision, which allowed certain schools to offer breakfast and lunch to all students without having to process individual applications — caused a significant decline in grocery sales at local retailers. Those chains responded by lowering prices across all their stores, leading nearby households to spend approximately 4.5 percent less in grocery bills in areas where the policy was adopted.

Jessie Handbury, a Wharton economist and one of the paper’s co-authors, called the effects “fairly sizable.”

“Because they’re responding across all their retail locations, the…drop in prices is going to affect all the households in the vicinity of that chain’s stores,” she said. “So you’ll have households that aren’t directly impacted by the demand shock, or that live nowhere near the communities that are taking up universal free lunch, but are still benefiting from it.”

The Community Eligibility Provision was introduced in select states through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, before becoming nationally available in the 2014-15 school year. Participating schools (identified as those where over 40 percent of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch) could choose to provide such meals to all of their enrolled students, whether they were eligible or not. 

To study the effects of the legislation on grocery spending, Handbury and UChicago professor Sarah Moshary gathered information from the National Center for Education Statistics showing school-level participation in the Community Eligibility Provision between the 2011-12 and 2015-16 academic years. They combined that with self-reported grocery purchase figures from the , which collected data from a representative panel of nearly 50,000 American households over the same timeframe. 

Finally, the pair added findings from a separate industry tracker of weekly grocery chain sales and sale quantity by product. In the five years under study, the system included responses from over 20,000 stores.

In all, the study found that homes with school-aged children reduced their grocery spending by an average of 7.5 percent (about $200 annually, or roughly two weeks of spending for families included in the sample) when a local school adopted the Community Eligibility Provision — the direct impact of their children receiving more meals for free in school. What’s more, that drop in sales led grocery chains to slash prices not just for the directly affected stores (i.e., the ones located near CEP schools), but in all of their locations. As a consequence, shopping costs in the median ZIP code affected by the policy were reduced by an average of 4.5 percent.

Handbury said it was plausible that a large number of families who were always eligible to receive free meals at school only began taking advantage of them once the provision was adopted. The sudden universality of the program may have reduced the social penalty sometimes referred to as “lunch shaming,” she surmised.

“You could imagine that when it costs money for their child to get lunch at school, they just automatically pack lunch for their children,” Handbury argued. “And when it became free, that was enough to induce them to at least send their kids to try free school lunch. Possibly because there was a reduction in the stigma associated with getting free lunch — or even getting school lunch — it just became what you did.”

Other studies have also shown clear consumer benefits accruing to families impacted by the program. , from researchers at Vanderbilt and the University of Louisville, showed that families with children spent between 5 and 19 percent less on monthly grocery purchases in areas that implemented the Community Eligibility Provision. Low-income households also experienced a meaningful improvement in dietary quality, and fewer were classified as food-insecure, in the wake of CEP adoption.

“The savings of $11 per month (or up to almost $39 for fully exposed ZIP codes) are realistic in magnitude and represent a meaningful change for low-income families that may face especially tight resource constraints,” said Michelle Marcus, one of the paper’s co-authors. “For the average household in our sample with two children, CEP provides about 8.25 additional meals per household for each of the eight academic months.”

Price discounts of that magnitude may not seem like much, but during a period of dramatic inflation — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by over 9 percent between April 2021 and April 2022 — they might make a significant difference. Since the COVID-era meal waivers operate essentially like an enhancement of CEP, Handbury noted, their potential expiration could be expected to have “weekly inflationary effects” on those prices.

That’s partly why advocacy groups are already praising the bipartisan deal to extend the waivers for another school year. Earlier this month, the Food Research and Action Center touting the effects of the Community Eligibility Provision and advocating further flexibility for provision of school nutrition going forward.

In an email to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, a spokesman for FRAC said the group was “excited about the provisions included in the bill that will support access to summer meals, allow children who are eligible for reduced-price meals to receive free meals, and the additional funding for schools and child care.” 

Another group, the School Nutrition Association, was a vital resource at a time when the cost of kitchen essentials like wheat bread and dish gloves had risen by well over 100 percent.

“School nutrition professionals have withstood crippling supply chain breakdowns, rising prices and labor shortages in their efforts to provide students healthy meals, at a time when families are struggling with higher costs. With crucial federal waivers on the verge of expiring, this agreement offers school meal programs a lifeline to help build back toward normal operations.”

Now, school meals are at a pivotal moment. Will school nutrition budgets recover from the ? Will the innovations accelerated by the pandemic, such as , become long-term solutions? Beyond the cafeteria, how can school meals serve as an instructional intervention to improve student learning?

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To understand what the future of school meals could hold, we first need to understand how they currently operate. Let’s begin with a primer on key school meals programs, how students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and their nutritional standards.

Key programs

In 1946, the National School Lunch Act. It created the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to “safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other foods.” Since then, school meals have evolved to encompass numerous programs that are administered at the federal level by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Here’s a brief overview of key FNS programs.

• (NSLP): The flagship and largest child nutrition program, the NSLP provides low or no-cost lunches served in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care facilities. In 2019, roughly were served to children nationwide, with 74% of them being free or reduced-price.
• (SBP): First , the SBP was made permanent by Congress in 1975. It provides low or no-cost breakfasts served in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care facilities. In 2019, roughly were served to children nationwide, with 85% of them being free or reduced-price. compared to school breakfast, and such as breakfast in the classroom and grab-and-go carts aim to increase participation.
• (CAFCP): , the CACFP provides reimbursements for meals and snacks served to children or adults enrolled at participating child care centers, day care homes, and adult day care centers. It also covers reimbursements for meals served to youth during afterschool programs and children living in emergency shelters. In 2019, roughly were served through the program, with 80% of them being free or reduced-price.
• (SFSP): Also known as the Summer Meals Program, the SFSP provides free meals to kids and teens in low-income areas when school is out for the summer. Unlike other programs that are only administered by schools and districts, the SFSP can be administered by a variety of groups, including camps, local governments, faith-based groups, and other nonprofits. Another key difference is that all meals under the SFSP are free to children ages 18 and under. In 2019, roughly were served to children through the program. Amid COVID-19, , causing a large increase in the compared to the NSLP and SBP.
• (SSO): Available for schools that already operate the NSLP or SBP, the Seamless Summer Option provides a streamlined option for schools to continue providing meals during the summer months. School food authorities participating in NSLP or SBP apply to operate the SSO through their state governing agency. Once approved, SSO allows schools to serve free meals to children ages 18 and under from low-income communities using the same rules and reimbursement rates as the NSLP or SBP.

Qualifying for free or reduced-price meals

Since the pandemic began, the USDA has allowing schools to provide free meals to all students regardless of their eligibility. That waiver is currently set to expire at the end of June 2022.

Even without this waiver, the (CEP) allows qualifying schools and school districts to offer no-cost meals to all students — more on that below.

However, for non-CEP schools and districts, there are usually : direct certification, categorical eligibility, or based on household income.

1. Children in households that participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are , which schools do via a data matching system. Additionally, 27 states offer .

2. Other categories that are automatically eligible for free meals include foster, migrant, homeless, or runway youth, those enrolled in Head Start, and children from households that participate in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). Schools can use state data or can coordinate with liaisons for homeless or migrant youth to certify categorical eligibility. However, some students may be missed in this process and therefore have to fill out a school meal application.

3. If a student isn’t eligible through direct certification or categorical eligibility, households can fill out a school meals application to . Children in households with incomes at or below 130% of the poverty level are eligible for free school meals, while those in households with incomes between 130% and 185% of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals, meaning they will pay no more than 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch. Meals must be paid for in full for children in households above 185% of the poverty level, with meal prices varying by school district.

Providing free meals to all students

The (CEP) allows high-poverty schools and districts to provide free school breakfast and lunch to all students. as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and available nationwide beginning in 2014, CEP improves access to school meals and reduces paperwork and administrative costs for schools. To qualify, 40% or more of students in a given school or district must be considered “identified students” — those who are certified eligible for free school meals without a household application due to direct certification.

In the , 33,171 schools and 5,479 school districts nationally participated in the program, with more than 15.5 million children attending CEP schools. Rather than collect household applications, CEP schools are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students categorically eligible for free meals based on participation in means-tested programs. The Food Research and Action Center maintains to determine which schools are eligible or near-eligible for CEP.

Nutrition standards

In order to receive federal reimbursement for school meals served through the NSLP and SBP, schools must meet strict nutritional requirements, also referred to as the meal pattern. Following the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the to align them with the latest dietary guidelines.

The aim to make school lunches and breakfasts more nutritious, including increasing the availability of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; limiting the amount of sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat; and meeting certain calorie limits. The Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act also resulted in sold within schools, also known as “competitive foods” since they compete with the traditional meals served in the cafeteria.

A found that the overall nutritional quality of school lunches increased by 41% between the 2009-10 and 2014-15 school years, before and after the stricter guidelines went into place. And, a found that schools were the single healthiest place that children consumed food, with grocery stores, restaurants, entertainment venues, and food trucks all offering meals with lower nutritional quality.

Glossary

• : Child and Adult Care Food Program; federally assisted meal program that provides reimbursements for meals and snacks served to eligible children and adults who are enrolled at participating child care centers, day care homes, and adult day care centers.
• : Community Eligibility Provision; Allows schools and school districts in low-income areas to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. Schools are instead reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students who are categorically eligible for free meals based on their participation in other means-tested programs.
• : Foods sold or available in schools outside of the federally reimbursable school meals programs, such as via a la carte lines and vending machines.
• A process that allows states and school districts to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications. The 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act requires school districts to directly certify students whose households participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through a data-matching system.
• : Food and Nutrition Service; works to end hunger and obesity through the administration of 15 federal nutrition assistance programs including school meals and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
• : Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act; 2010 legislation that reauthorized child nutrition programs to expand access and improve nutritional quality.
• Meal pattern: Establishes criteria that school meals must meet in order to qualify for federal reimbursement. For example, meal patterns dictate the minimum of various types of foods (fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, milk) that school meals must contain. Meal patterns vary depending on grade level.
• : National School Lunch Program; federally assisted meal program providing low-cost or free lunches to children in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions.
• : School Breakfast Program; federally assisted meal program providing low-cost or free breakfasts in schools and residential childcare institutions.
• SFA: School Food Authority; administrative unit that is responsible for the provision of school food services within one or more schools and has the legal authority to operate FNS programs. The SFA receives federal meal reimbursements and is responsible for ensuring eligibility guidelines and criteria are met. This may be a single school district, several school districts, or individual schools.
• Reimbursable meal: A meal that qualifies for reimbursement with federal funds because it has met USDA meal requirements and nutrition standards, was served to an eligible student, and was priced as an entire meal rather than based on individual items.
• : Summer Food Service Program; federally-funded program that reimburses operators who serve free meals and snacks to children ages 18 and younger in low-income areas.
• : Seamless Summer Option; program that allows schools participating in the NSLP or SBP to continue serving meals during school breaks using the same rules and reimbursement rates as the NSLP or SBP.
• : United States Department of Agriculture; provides leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues. Operates numerous federal agencies, including the FNS.

This article is the first in a series looking at the future of school meals from policy to practice.

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

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But without action from Congress to authorize the USDA to continue extending waivers, these flexibilities will expire at the end of June, marking the end of a more than two-year period where school meals were provided at no cost to students across the country. This is occurring against the backdrop of two pandemic realities: at the same time that , participation in school meals .

“We all want to put the pandemic behind us, but what school meal programs face is nowhere close to normal. We desperately need these waivers to manage unyielding supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, cover rapidly escalating costs and remain viable to support our communities,” said Beth Wallace, president of the School Nutrition Association,

In February, nearly 2,000 national, state, and local organizations from every to extend the USDA’s authority to issue nationwide waivers beyond this school year. The letter states that continued flexibilities are needed to respond to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and its aftermath.

“As we look to rebuild, school meals are such an important part of making sure kids have the fuel they need to focus and learn and concentrate,” said Crystal FitzSimons, director of school and out-of-time school programs for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). “And the easiest and best thing to do is just to make sure that every kid has access to that meal that they need to make it through the school day.”

Despite advocacy efforts, Congress took no action on this issue when it passed a . While the future of the waiver extension remains unknown, there are other pathways that would expand access to school meals for all — also called universal school meals — including federal legislation and state-level efforts.

Community Eligibility Provision

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there were efforts to expand the provision of school meals for all. In 2010, the created the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows high-poverty schools and districts to offer breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students. more than 15 million students at roughly 33,000 schools and 5,000 school districts were offered free school meals through CEP.

CEP has been shown to increase participation in school meals. had a 9.4% increase in breakfast participation and a 5.2% increase in lunch participation on average. CEP also reduces the administrative burdens of running school meal programs and eliminates unpaid school meal debt. Additionally, has found that CEP is associated with a range of positive outcomes, including lower rates of food insecurity and suspensions.

Why school meals for all?

As the country continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, school nutrition programs offer a pathway to reducing childhood hunger, improving students’ health, and supporting academic achievement.  of school meals for all include:

• Increases participation in school meals, which has been linked to a variety of health and educational benefits, including improved academic achievement and attendance
• Eliminates school meal debt. A  of school districts had unpaid meal debt that was growing substantially
• Reduces the stigma associated with participating in school meals
• Reduces the administrative burden on school cafeterias

Federal legislation stalls

Child nutrition reauthorization

Child nutrition reauthorization (CNR) is Congress’ , including the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, and the Summer Food Service Program. Although CNR is supposed to occur every five years, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was the most recent child nutrition reauthorization. That legislation expanded access to schools meals for all through the creation of the Community Eligibility Provision and created stricter nutrition standards. The Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act expired in September 2015, but most child nutrition programs continue to operate because they are permanently authorized, while other programs are funded through the appropriations process each year.

A that would expand access to school meals have already been introduced and could eventually be incorporated as part of child nutrition reauthorization, should Congress decide to act on it in 2022. One of those bills is the Universal School Meals Program Act of 2021. Introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and a in both the and the , the bill would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all students regardless of income. However, the bill is currently stalled in Congressional committees.

According to FitzSimons, the two committees with jurisdiction over CNR — the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the House Committee on Education and Labor — have expressed interest in taking on CNR this year, but if they will do so remains unclear. For more on CNR,

Build Back Better

Although it stops short of providing school meals for all, President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill includes two key child nutrition proposals: expansion of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) and nationwide Summer EBT.

Summer EBT is a program that provides summer food benefits through EBT cards to low-income families with children who are eligible for free- and reduced-price meals during the school year. The program as a demonstration project and has grown since then, in 2018. Build Back Better would invest $25 billion to make Summer EBT available nationwide to all children receiving free- and reduced-price meals.

The legislation would also make it easier for schools serving large numbers of low-income children to provide universal school meals under CEP. Currently, to qualify for CEP, a school must have 40% or more of its students automatically enrolled for free school meals through direct certification, usually because their families participate in SNAP and/or Medicaid. Build Back Better would increase reimbursements under CEP to encourage more eligible schools to participate in it, and it would lower the threshold for eligibility to 25% of students directly certified.

It would also create an option for states to offer CEP statewide rather than only at the school or district level, which FitzSimons said would allow the highest poverty states to provide universal free school meals without having to come up with additional state funding.

Although the House passed the last fall, it remains stalled in the Senate.

States leading the way

“States are not waiting for Congress,” said FitzSimons.

As many policies remain stalled at the federal level, there is renewed energy and momentum for expanding schools meals for all at the state level. Two states, and , have passed legislation providing for school meals. Other states have ongoing campaigns advocating for school meals for all, including , , and .

According to FitzSimons, the successful passage of legislation in California and Maine was the culmination of prior steps that expanded access to school meals and reflects a trend of states considering how to build the strongest school nutrition programs possible.

“The more you learn about school meals, the more you think about how all kids are in the school cafeteria, the more you understand the stigma associated with participating in free school meals and how kids start to opt-out of school meals as they get older,” said FitzSimons of state-level efforts. “It all leads you to a place where — why are we wasting our time determining which child really does deserve a free school meal and which child doesn’t?”

Beginning in the 2022-23 school year, implement universal school meals, offering a free breakfast and lunch to all students. Funding allocated by the state legislature covers the additional cost of the program, supplementing existing federal meal reimbursements.

“We provide our students free textbooks, access to computers, and other learning tools, so it only makes sense that we would provide free school meals as well,” said California state senator Nancy Skinner

Similarly, begin providing school meals for all in the 2022-23 school year, and the state will also cover the difference between the federal reimbursement for school meals and the total cost of the expansion.

“I believe this is the most significant piece of legislation that we’ve dealt with here in Maine ever,” said Maine Senate President Troy Jackson . “I believe this is going to be a game changer for addressing the alarming rate of food insecurity among children in Maine, which has only worsened during the pandemic.”

While the future of nationwide school meals for all remains uncertain, the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic have undoubtedly accelerated policy discussions and legislative actions toward school meals for all.

“It’s not clear how this will play out,” said FitzSimons. “But it’s very exciting to see so many policymakers kind of embrace healthy school meals for all and understand how important nutrition is for kids for their health and also for their opportunities to learn at school.”

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

The child care and universal pre-K proposals in President Joe Biden’s social spending plan have survived efforts to slash the original $3.5 trillion price tag down to a figure more acceptable to two fiscally conservative Democrats in the Senate.

But the new $1.75 trillion released Thursday, leaves out some programs that would have directly impacted the K-12 system, such as funding for school construction, while reducing original amounts reserved for student’s at-home internet access and teacher and principal preparation. Progressive leaders in the House say they still want to see the of the reconciliation bill before agreeing to vote for a separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill — another major piece of Biden’s first-year agenda. That leaves both bills in jeopardy for now.

“No one got everything they wanted — including me,“ Biden said after meeting Thursday with Democrats at the Capitol.

Two years of free community college, another signature Biden campaign promise, has been eliminated from the package. It extends an increase in the child tax credit, but just for one year, instead of the four Biden wanted. There will be enough to expand free school meals to 8.7 million students for five years and provide 29 million children with $65 per month for food during the summer.

The bill is a “commentary on what is achievable with such a small and slim majority in the Senate and the House,” said Sean Worley, a senior policy associate at EducationCounsel, a consulting firm advising districts on policy and legal issues. The Biden administration, he added, proposed a “very robust … new vision for what education speeding could and should be. They just ran headfirst into some political headwinds.”

The hard-won agreement over the size of the legislation was expected to be a step toward getting a vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which includes electric school buses, broadband access and eliminating lead pipes from schools. But progressives have repeatedly threatened to withhold their support for the infrastructure bill until they have a guarantee that the social spending package will pass. With a budget process known as reconciliation, the president doesn’t need any Republicans to vote for the plan, but he’s had a hard time getting consensus within his party. It took multiple meetings with Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to reach this point. Experts note that just because some of the family and education programs have been cut from the legislation doesn’t mean they won’t resurface in a future bill, and Congress still has other unresolved budget issues to address in early December: approving a budget for fiscal year 2022 and lifting the federal debt limit to continue paying for past spending bills. 

For now, however, Biden is aiming for a win with an early-childhood proposal that would reduce families’ costs for child care and allow states to launch or expand universal pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds

“This is a fundamental shift in education,” he said Monday while visiting at East End Elementary School in New Jersey’s North Plainfield School District. “We’re going to make sure it’s available for everybody.” 

The fact that the plan — paid for with taxes on corporations and those earning over $400,000 a year — still includes $400 billion for both child care and pre-K “speaks to the recognition of early care and education as critical to our nation’s infrastructure and the well-being of families,” said Lea Austin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. She said both working mothers and those with a background in the field — including Senate education committee Chair Patty Murray — have come together “to change the conditions.”

The child care provision promises to limit costs to no more than 7 percent of a family’s income and increase wages for staff. But Austin said she wants to see pay and working conditions for providers match those for preschool and elementary school teachers.

Some experts say it doesn’t make sense to expand pre-K without also improving preparation programs for K-12 educators. Biden’s original plan would have included $197 million for grow-your-own programs that recruit and train young people to become teachers in their own communities, as well as $198 million each for teacher residency and principal preparation programs. Those three provisions have been reduced to $112 million each. 

“It would be a head-scratcher to pump all this money into pre-K but not also bolster the educator pipeline – it’s core to successfully expanding high-quality pre-K,” said Danny Carlson, assistant executive director for policy and advocacy at the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

In a statement, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said the plan makes “historic down payments” on pre-K and child care, but she didn’t address the lack of K-12 programs in the plan. 

“Any transformational change is hard to get done, and this historic compromise is no different.” the statement said.

Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, which advocates for modernizing schools, was more direct.

“We are deeply disappointed that funding to repair or replace crumbling schools in our most underserved communities has been left out of the final [Build Back Better Act],” she said in a . “The disparities in conditions result in disparities in education delivered and student achievement.”

Worley said there’s a chance Democrats would either try to add those initiatives to the fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill — which Congress has to address by Dec. 3 — or revive the proposal next year in a fiscal 2023 budget. But he notes that the administration already  faced a tough time winning support for proposed increases to Title I for low-income schools. And that bill would have to win support from Republicans, who have so far rejected most of Biden’s attempts to increase government spending.

Biden’s free community college plan could also make a comeback in a reauthorization of the HIgher Education Act, which is now 13 years past due, said Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy at the National College Attainment Network.

During a last week Biden said it looked like he would still be able to get a $500 Pell Grant increase into the bill.

“Increasing the Pell Grant is meaningful to … recipients, but the size of the bump will determine how much so,” Warick said, adding that “an emergency as low as $300 can lead to a student dropping out.”

The nonprofit’s shows a gap of $855 between the current Pell Grant award of $6,495 and the average community college student’s expenses. A $500 increase, plus another $400 proposed increase in the fiscal 2022 appropriations bill, would cover that gap.

Another signature piece of Biden’s plan would have been a four-year extension in the higher child tax credit that was included in the American Rescue Plan last March — $3,600 a year for  children under 6 and $3,000 for older children. Now the increase will last for one year.

Any extension is good, said Chris Swanson, who leads the Institute for Innovation in Development, Engagement and Learning Systems at Johns Hopkins University. But he added, “The reality is things are not getting better for the American people. We still are in the midst of a pandemic coupled with major shifts in economics and employment.”