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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Alaska students could be provided free breakfast and lunch at school, under a new bill in the Alaska Legislature.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Dibert of Fairbanks prefiled the legislation, , ahead of the legislative session that began on Tuesday. The bill would direct the state to provide sufficient funding to all districts to have breakfast and lunch for any student who requests it, free of cost.

“I’ve seen the effects of feeding our kids, and especially during COVID, when all kids got lunches and breakfast at no cost,” said Dibert, who has been a teacher. “So it was just very enlightening, and I would love to see that again for our families and for our students and for our school staff.”

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funding allowed schools to provide free meals due to federal waivers. But those funds sunsetted in 2022, resulting in some

, over half of Alaska’s students — 51% — were eligible for free or reduced price meals. An estimated 46%, or roughly 48,000 students, were enrolled to receive free school meals.

As an elementary school teacher in Fairbanks for 22 years, Dibert said she herself sometimes paid for her students to eat, rather than see them go hungry.

“Over the years, if a student didn’t have enough money, or their bill wasn’t paid, oftentimes I would even pay with my account,” she said. “I don’t know entirely how big those bills got, because I was on the classroom side of it. But I did really not like seeing kids come into the classroom sad that they couldn’t get breakfast or lunch.”

Dibert, who is Koyukon Athabascan, also cited the current Yukon River salmon crash leaving communities and families who subsisted and shared fish going without.

“My grandparents lived out on the Yukon River, and as a child, they would always send us salmon from the Yukon River. And we always would have food on our table, lots of salmon,” she said. “So with no salmon on the Yukon, I know that’s a hardship to feed families, and it’s costly to families. So in that aspect, this bill could be very beneficial to ease the pain there, to help feed kids.”

Education and health researchers point to universal free meals having for students, including improved academic performance, attendance and student health outcomes.

Dibert said the bill is in the beginning stages of the legislative process, so details will be worked out, but she hopes the program would also promote local foods on school menus, like salmon or moose. “It would be working district by district, for sure,” she said. “I don’t want it to be canned, you know, protein, like, one grain, one fruit.”

The allocations to school districts would also vary by region and food prices, she said, accommodating notoriously higher grocery prices in Alaska’s rural areas.

She said funding the proposal could include some federal or municipal contributions as well.

“It’s not that much to have the opportunity to feed our kids,” she said.

Last year, the Legislature axed funding for making reduced-priced lunches free for low-income students, The estimated $480,000 in funding was to be taken from the Department of Corrections, but lawmakers voted against it.

Once the bill has been formally introduced during a House floor session, it will next be assigned to relevant committees for discussion and debate in the coming weeks.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

Wisconsin School Nutrition Association President Kaitlin Tauriainen says her goal has always been to feed every student.

“It seemed impossible for years, and then COVID happened,” said Tauriainen, who has worked in school nutrition for about 14 years and is also part of the Wisconsin Healthy School Meals For All Coalition. During the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture implemented waivers that allowed schools across the country to serve free meals to all children. “Basically, we were forced into doing it, which was fantastic, and really proved that we were capable and that it was better — like we thought it was going to be.”

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Tauriainen, who works as the child nutrition coordinator for the Ashwaubenon School District in Brown County, said there were less behavioral issues for the district then. She had observed earlier in her career at another school district how improved behavior could be the result of ensuring kids have access to food. She recalled a student who was eating free breakfast and free lunch, but still reported being hungry. Attending a different school that gave him more flexible access to food helped improve his situation, she said.

“He was so hungry all the time that he was just angry and causing disruptions. When they moved him to the charter school that gave him a little more flexibility and freedom to go make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich whenever he was hungry, he turned into a completely different kid,” Tauriainen said. “That’s what some of the teachers were seeing during COVID as well.”

The federal universal school meals program expired in June 2022 after Congress decided not to extend it. Ashwaubenon School District now charges students who don’t qualify under current guidelines for lunches, but it is able to provide breakfast to all students.

Limiting behavioral problems is just one potential benefit of adopting universal school meals that Tauriainen and other advocates detailed to the Examiner. Other benefits include filling in gaps for students who may need the meals but don’t — or can’t — participate. Advocates say universal meals would level the playing field for students and ensure everyone has access to nutritious meals.

Last month, Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly visited Kenosha Unified School District to propose that Wisconsin join to all students.

Under her proposal, Wisconsin would dedicate an additional $290 million per biennium so students, regardless of their families’ income, are eligible for free breakfast and lunch. Her proposal includes an additional $21 million to support other aspects of school nutrition. Those include funding to expand participation in the school breakfast program to independent charter schools, residential schools and residential childcare centers; creating a program to encourage school districts to buy directly from local farmers and producers; and funding for programs to support access to milk.

“Access to food is one of the most basic human needs, and yet many Wisconsin kids are telling us they don’t know when — or if — they will have their next meal,” Underly said in a statement. “When we make sure all our kids are properly nourished, we are nurturing the leaders of tomorrow.”

Hunger and grades

Across Wisconsin, 45.4% of enrolled public schools students — or 782,090 students — participate in the USDA Child Nutrition Programs and 52.1% of enrolled students at private schools participating in the USDA Child Nutrition Programs, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

The current guidelines outline that students in a household of four, with income of $40,560 per year or less, qualify for free school meals. If a household’s yearly income is between $40,560.01 and $57,720, children can receive reduced-price meals. Families are also required to fill out an application annually in order to receive the benefit.

According to the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, one in four Wisconsin students reported experiencing hunger due to lack of food in the home and 2.6% reported going hungry “most of the time” or “always.” Students with low grades of D’s or F’s also reported going hungry at a higher rate — 10.3% of students — when compared their peers with higher grades of A’s or B’s — 2.3% of students.

Universal school meals would help fill in the gaps that the current system allows for, advocates said.

Kenosha Unified School District currently provides school meals to all kids free of charge.

“When we had to return to our traditional system of serving meals in the 2022-23 school year, we heard from families that they missed the simplicity and security of free meals for all,” KUSD Chief Communications Officer Tanya Ruder wrote in an email responding to questions from the Examiner.

This year every school in the district is able to provide lunch and breakfast to all students through the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The policy allows some high-poverty schools and districts to provide school meals to all students regardless of income and without having to fill out an application.

When meals were not universally free, the Kenosha district’s breakfast participation was 23.9%, and lunch participation was 43.8%, Ruder said. Since moving to CEP, those numbers have risen significantly, with breakfast participation now at 29%, and lunch at 55%.

Some families who qualified under the current system may find the application process an obstacle. “The application process is very daunting for some families,” Tauriainen said. “It’s a very simple form to fill out, but it’s just another thing that families have to do to get food to their kids when they might already be struggling.”

Higher incomes, but still hungry

The income requirements also mean that some families that may be struggling financially may not qualify, Tauriainen said, because the application doesn’t consider other circumstances that families may be dealing with.

“It doesn’t take into account anything other than your gross wages, so whatever your income is before taxes, doesn’t take into account any medical bills you may have, or other issues that you might have going on financially at home,” Tauriainen said.

Jennifer Gaddis, an associate professor at UW-Madison who researches food systems in schools, said a gap still exists for some students. “There are actually a lot of children and families, who are food-insecure, but who don’t actually meet the federal threshold for eligibility for free or reduced school meals,” Gaddis said.

Gaddis and Tauriainen said providing school meals for free would benefit students in many ways.

“School meals are literally the only thing that is economically means tested,” Gaddis said. “Everything else kids participate in, regardless of their household income status — like math class, English class, busing — they’re not being charged a different amount or getting a different service necessarily that is tied to their household income status.”

Providing meals to all students would reduce the stigma that the current system can create, she added.

School meal debt has also become an issue again as schools have gone back to requiring students to pay for lunch unless they qualify for free food. In Wausau, a pastor to help pay off students’ unpaid meal debts. Madison Metropolitan School District in May stood at almost $230,000.

Ruder of Kenosha Unified said that providing meals free to all students would prevent them from being denied lunch or breakfast when their account funds run out.

Nutritional and academic benefits

Universal school meals could also allow many students to eat more nutritious food since school meals follow the federal dietary guidelines. Some have found that participation in school meals has been linked to healthier diets. 

“We get a bad rap, because people think of what school lunch used to be like back when they were in school, and things have changed so much since 2010,” Tauriainen said. “We’re offering whole grains, fruits and vegetables, multiple options every day, so that students pick something that they like to eat — low fat, low sodium, low sugar entrees.”

Tauriainen also noted that many school districts are trying to serve more food prepared from scratch and use more locally sourced foods for meals. Some school districts in the state serve food grown by the students, including Ashwaubenon School District, which has a 34-unit hydrophobic garden to grow lettuce.

Ensuring that kids are fed helps create a foundation for students to focus, study and be present in the classroom, producing stronger academic outcomes as well, Gaddis said.

Gaddis takes a historical and international comparative approach to studying school nutrition. Other countries with universal school meal programs, including Japan and Finland, have integrated school nutrition and home economics, she said, so students are “learning about, not only how to think about food and nutrition, but how to prepare things for yourself and how to do so in an economical way, and why you should also have respect for the people who are doing work in the food system.”

It’s an approach that addresses all students.

“It’s not seen as this anti-poverty program in those countries, it’s seen as a really integral part of the school day and an opportunity for people to learn really important life skills,” Gaddis said.

The Wisconsin proposal is part of Underly’s larger budget request, which would invest an additional $4 billion in schools.

It could face a tough road to becoming a reality given Wisconsin’s split government, where Republican lawmakers, who remain in the majority in the Legislature, have said they oppose growing “the size of government” and want to use most of the state’s budget surplus to cut taxes.

Tauriainen said she hopes universal school meals can gather bipartisan support, however.

“Being hungry shouldn’t be something that’s on one side or the other of the aisle,” Tauriainen said. “I really hope that the Legislature can come together and realize that this is something we really need to do for our kids.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

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. 

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. 

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

Summer can be the hungriest time of the year for students who rely on free or reduced school meals and a new federal program is trying to help those families. 

Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (S-EBT) — also known as SUN Bucks — is a new grocery benefit program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will give families $120 per eligible student to buy groceries during the summer.

Ohio is that has opted into the SUN Bucks program.

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“We have a lot of Ohio children who rely on their school meals for their breakfasts and lunches, and in the summertime sometimes it’s very difficult for households to be able to provide meals,” said Brigette Hires, director of nutrition for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. “This new Summer EBT has really helped to just have another safety net for households in the summertime to be able to provide nutritious meals for their families.”

The SUN Bucks program is estimated to help 840,000 Ohio students afford groceries during the summer and is the first new permanent federal nutrition program in more than 50 years.

“This program gives direct resources to families to be able to go to the store, and pick out the foods that are best for them and their families,” said Hope Lane-Gavin, director of nutrition policy and programs for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks.

Children should receive their one-time SUN Bucks payment of $120 by July 31. SUN Bucks will be added to current Ohio Direction Cards or will be mailed on a new card to eligible children.

“The distribution is happening a little bit later in the summer time than it will in subsequent summers,” Hires said. “It’s mostly just because in standing up a brand new program, there’s a lot of different processes that have to be put into place.”

Going forward, she anticipates the benefits will be distributed closer to the beginning of summer.

Eligible families who do not receive the Summer EBT benefits by July 31 should contact the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services at 1-866-244-0071.

Students who are eligible for SUN Bucks can also participate in other nutrition programs such or local food pantries.

“The programs are meant to work together to really help households provide nutritious meals for their children,” Hires said.

SUN Bucks allows families to decide what food they want to buy which comes in handy when being mindful of different cultures, food allergies and picky eaters.

“Kids are really picky,” Lane-Gavin said. “That’s the reality. Kids are picky, and that’s okay. They still need to eat.”

Who is eligible for SUN Bucks?

Many Ohio families will be automatically enrolled while others will need to apply at .

Eligible children who fall under these categories will automatically receive SUN Bucks and do not need to fill out an application:

• Children whose family receives SNAP or Ohio Works First benefits.
• Children receiving Medicaid that met the free and reduced-price lunch threshold during the previous school year.
• Children who were individually approved to receive free or reduced-price school meals through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) last school year.

These children may be eligible, but need to apply:

• Migrant children.
• Children who are experiencing homelessness.
• Children in families earning less than 185% of the federal poverty line based on their monthly income ( for a family of four).
• Children who receive free or reduced-price school meals but did not fill out a NSLP application.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network 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 .

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

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

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

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

The federal program ended June 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schools provide a multitude of services.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Districts have a lot to worry about.

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

Students have a lot to worry about too.

Maybe we should make sure it’s not food.

Lawmakers want increased student outcomes.

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

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

Student hunger looks different in every school district in Ohio, but legislative intervention could resolve the issues, from the funding gap to the stigma attached to meal support, advocates say.

Districts across the state have held fundraisers to pay down unpaid meal accounts, and alternatives to hot meals are available, often in the form of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and other cold offerings.

But combatting student hunger often comes with a “pride gap” – those that are too embarrassed to ask for help – and students who would rather not eat than face a cafeteria of students who will be able to identify their free or reduced lunch status.

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Schools do what they can to make sure food is available for students, but they can’t eliminate that stigma that puts kids into “categories.”

“It still doesn’t eliminate that category of kids, it doesn’t capture hunger in totality,” said Alexis Weber, food service director for Austintown Local Schools. “Because someone’s income might not directly indicate whether or not a student is hungry.”

Hunger landscape

Food insecurity is very much a part of the landscape in Ohio, with Feeding America ranking Ohio 13th in percentage of children with food insecurity. The Children’s Defense Fund Ohio found that 1 in 6 children in Ohio “lives in a household that faces hunger,” yet 1 in 3 children in food insecure households who are eligible for the school meals program don’t participate for fear of judgment.

“The program inherently labels and puts kids into categories,” CDF-Ohio stated in a white paper on student hunger. “The stigma felt by students that the program is only for low-income kids causes many children not to participate.”

Participation in the school meals has been linked to “positive educational and health outcomes for children,” according to CDF-Ohio, and students are less likely to have “nutrient inadequacies.”

According to the Ohio Department of Education, participation in the National School Lunch Program from 2017 to 2022 has largely remained the same, even as school enrollment goes down.

In the 2021-22 school year, statewide participation in school lunch was 57.6%, up slightly from the 2019-2020 school year, when it was 54.1%. The 2020-2021 year wasn’t calculated because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the ODE.

Free and reduced lunch programs are supported through the federal National School Lunch Program, and free breakfasts are also a part of the strategy to get children fed while they’re required to attend school. The ODE said not all schools participate in the NSLP, but of the more than 3,700 schools who do, more than 91% operate both the NSLP and the School Breakfast Program.

“These figures are increases from school year 2019-2020 (pre-pandemic),” the ODE stated in a December 2022 report.

A household is eligible for free school meals currently at 130% of the federal poverty level, meaning $36,075 or less for a family of four. For a reduced-price meal, households are eligible at 185% of the federal poverty level, or up to $51,338 for a family of four.

But a gap exists between the federal funding and district-level general funds, which school nutrition administrators have said can be filled through state investment.

School admin focus on universal meals

As budget talks continue at the Ohio Statehouse, Weber and other school food service leaders told the stories of their districts, imploring lawmakers to consider funding for universal lunches in the state, not only to reduce the hunger, but also to eliminate identification of those receiving financial help.

Chesapeake Union Exempted Village School District Superintendent Doug Hale told the Ohio House Finance Committee that the expiration in June 2022 of pandemic-era waivers that allowed schools to provide free school lunches to all students regardless of family income made Appalachian districts like his “brace themselves for the challenge to come.”

“I’m here to testify that hungry kids can not perform academically, and we have hungry children in our district,” Hale said.

What Hale also found as he worked through the challenge was that his district’s struggles weren’t unlike districts in the rest of the state.

Chesapeake’s student meal debt sits at $60,000, according to Hale. Other districts, like the Lancaster City School District and Westerville City Schools, have $40,000 in meal debts.

“I’m here to tell you that Chesapeake, Westerville and Lancaster, we serve kids, that’s as far as we’re alike,” Hale said.

In a snapshot by the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio, the group found several schools with thousands in student meal debt, including Washington Local Schools in Lucas County ($38,000), Lorain County’s North Ridgeville City School District ($14,040), Minford Local Schools in Scioto County ($13,771), Delaware City Schools ($8,693), Alexander Local Schools ($7,000), and Wellington Exempted School District in Lorain County ($4,108).

Pickerington Schools currently has more than $46,000 in charges, according to Brent Kasler,  supervisor of food services.

The stigma of free and reduced lunches, particularly in high schools, flows through rural, urban and suburban districts all the same.

“This means many high school and middle school students who need these meals go without,” Hale told the finance committee.

Hale’s testimony was bolstered by other district nutrition officials, who on primary and secondary education in March.

Daryn Guarino, of the Alexander Local School District in Athens County, told the subcommittee that while the district has an alternative option for students who have a negative balance and can’t receive the hot lunch, there are students who don’t come back to the cafeteria once they’re told they can’t receive the same lunch as other students. This included a six-year-old, he said, in a situation that made him question whether he wanted to do the job.

“I’m sorry, but despite everyone’s best efforts and intentions, a student went without lunch for several days because they were ashamed that they didn’t have the money to pay for it,” Guarino told the OCJ. “Our willingness to feed them did not get them fed. I wish I were lying.”

Donating to districts

For now, donations are accepted to help pay down meal debt, typically through individual districts’ treasurer’s office.

“We usually have individuals or organizations that will contact a school about helping to pay off a student’s negative balances,” Pickerington’s Kasler told the OCJ.

Donations sent to the treasurer’s office in Pickerington are transferred to the food service account, where balances in school buildings can be paid off.

Other districts contacted by the OCJ also said financial support should be directed through district treasurer’s offices.

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