Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

“This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the monthly meeting.

This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

“It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of .

Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

“What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

National security

Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

The that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

“It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

“Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

“Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

Ohio legislation

Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the .

State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

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“If we had to pay for a tuition-based program, she wouldn’t be going,” Gurgul said, who lives in Allen Park with her family. “It’s a big extra cost. Do you pay however many hundreds of dollars a month for preschool? Or do you pay for your car insurance?“

Timing worked in Gurgul’s favor: This summer, Michigan joined a handful of  states in moving closer to offering “Universal Pre-K,” for four-year-olds. It’s an elusive and much-debated goal of advocates nationally, in which state-funded preschool is available and free for all families.

Michigan’s Democrat-majority state legislature this year passed an $85 million increase in preschool funding as a step toward Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s goal of free preschool for all by 2027. The increase covers the cost of 6,800 more preschool seats, both in schools and in private child care centers — meaning the state is now offering preschool to about half of its 118,000 four-year-olds.

The increase immediately allowed Gurgul’s daughter, 4, to attend one of two new classrooms the Allen Park Early Childhood Center opened this fall using the new state money. For Gurgul it’s a big win, even if Michigan still falls short of the 70% preschool enrollment experts define as true “universal” preschool.

“She’s excited every morning,” Gurgul said. “She wakes up and she jumps out of bed and asks, ‘Is it a school day?’ She’s excited to get up and go.”

For many, including Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden who pushed, but failed, to create preschool for every child, the early education programs are as vital to children’s academic and emotional development as kindergarten through high school. 

But there’s no national consensus on what age school should start for children. Even kindergarten isn’t universal, with only .

And , often , about preschool’s impact and whether it is worth the money.

An all-time high of 35% of four-year-olds nationally attended preschool in the 2022-23 school year. But only six states — Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — and Washington, D.C, have full, free preschool, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. 

Several other states’ governors, including Illinois Gov. Elliot Pritzker, are , with a goal of full, free preschool. 

Massachusetts Gov. Maureen Healey and the state’s legislature have that were once prosperous but have declined as industry moved away.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is trying to offer preschool to all four-year-olds, starting with those from low-income families and facing other challenges, such as homelessness. But at the start and have made progress a challenge. 

And California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been inching toward

NIEER reported this spring that 10 states are committed to adding universal preschool, but warned, “Most of those states are far from reaching that goal.”

“A key question for the future is whether states will increase investments enough to keep promises regarding program expansion and quality, including adequate pay for the workforce,” NIEER officials said this spring. 

In Michigan, Gov. Whitmer, a Democrat, used her 2023 State of the State Address to call for expanding the state’s preschool program and making it free for all four-year olds by 2027. 

“This investment will ensure children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn and saves their families upwards of $10,000 a year,” she said. “It helps parents, especially moms, go back to work. And it will launch hundreds more preschool classrooms across Michigan, supporting thousands of jobs.”

Last year, the state agreed to spend $72.4 million more to pay for five-day preschool instead of just four, and increased the family income limit for free preschool from 250% of the federal poverty level to 300%, or $93,000 for a family of four.

This year, Whitmer and the state legislature increased preschool funding by $85 million to add 6,800 new preschool seats. The state also made more middle-class families eligible by again relaxing state income limits to 400% of poverty level, or $124,800 for a family of four.

The increases passed over strong Republican opposition, as is common in state debates. 

Republican State Rep. Nancy DeBoer said the bill, which also covered other school funding issues, diverts money from more important priorities, such as school safety or increasing funding for schools.

“Making our future generations a priority is common sense,” she told the House just before the bill passed. “Neglecting them is a new idea – one that will first hurt our kids and later the entire state. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

And Molly Macec, director of education policy for the right-leaning Mackinac Institute, blasted Whitmer’s plan as “wasteful, unnecessary, unfair” for adding higher-income students. Studies of preschool impact typically show greater effects for low-income students.

“Her PreK for All plan will do nothing more than subsidize preschool for wealthier families,” . “It’s a waste of time and money for the state to pay the bills of people who don’t need help.”

Though Whitmer and staff , the state’s not there yet. By most definitions, universal preschool requires about 70% of the state’s four-year-olds to attend to count. That percentage below 100% allows for families who choose not to enroll their children.

Even if all 59,000 funded seats in Michigan are filled this year — a long shot because thousands of seats sit open each year — the state program would only serve about half of Michigan’s 118,000 four-year-olds.

Use of available seats has lagged, advocates believe, because of transportation issues, parents not knowing their children are eligible, and because preschool schedules don’t always line up with family work hours.

Jefftrey Cappizano, president of The Policy Equity Group, a non-profit that joined several others in creating a , called the increases “a decent step” toward that goal. He and the report noted that, like many states, Michigan needs to add many more preschool seats as well as train more teachers to support such explosive  growth. 

Preschool and child care staffing is a challenge everywhere. After employees left, staffing levels nationally have only

“You have to make sure that the infrastructure is there,” Cappizano said.

He and other preschool advocates also dismissed claims only affluent families benefit from the new income limits. Low-income students have priority under state law, as do those with other challenges such as having parents with low education levels or families that primarily speak another language.

And preschools that may serve the neediest students don’t always fill, so enrolling other students for those spots helps pay for the school and teachers.

Adding new seats also allows preschools to expand or new ones to open in areas that are low income.

“The expansion… isn’t just going to expand to the middle class,” said Eileen Storer-Smith, a program officer of the William K. Kellogg Foundation, which has made advancing preschool in Detroit a priority. “It’s going to expand to children who are eligible, where there just wasn’t a seat for them.”

Zina Davis, founder of the Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center, a child care and preschool center in Detroit, said the increases haven’t allowed her to expand yet, but will soon. She is planning a second center in the city and also looks forward to some three-year-olds at her center with higher-income families becoming eligible for state funding when they turn four.

The state funding changes also let her increase pay for her staff.

“It benefits everybody,” Davis said. “It benefits the programs for sustainability. It benefits the families, because now we have more slots available. And it also benefits the staff that are able to get livable wages.”