It’s getting close to summer and school vacation has started in many states, soon to be all of them. For most kids, that’s exciting news. For kids experiencing food insecurity, it can mean hunger as they lose access to free meals at school.
Many areas do have a free summer meals program, either through USDA programs or through local efforts. But those are a patchwork of programs that can be hard to access, forcing people to go to specific locations within limited times. Particularly in rural areas, getting a free meal might mean making a drive that wipes out any cost savings.
School meals, by contrast, are easier to deliver. The kids are in school, where there’s a cafeteria. All states or districts need to do is … feed them. But that remains a challenge, thanks to the nation’s broken politics.
Universal free school lunch was temporarily a reality under COVID-19 relief laws, and it made a difference. A 2021 survey of large school districts found that 95% of the districts said universal free meals reduced child hunger, 85% said it eliminated the stigma that school meals are for poor kids, and 82% said it supported academic achievement. Free meals for everyone also makes it easier on adults, reducing paperwork—89% of the districts said it was easier for parents and 84% said it eased administrative work.
It’s easier to keep a program going than to get it started from scratch, and the pandemic free meals programs have helped some states make progress. In summer 2022, California and Maine put universal free meals into law to extend beyond the pandemic. A few months later, Colorado voters passed a ballot measure allowing districts to offer free meals, and districts are increasingly opting in. So far in 2023, New Mexico and Minnesota have also passed free school meals laws.
That leaves a lot of states to go, though. Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut all extended universal free school meals through the 2022-2023 school year, and Nevada extended them through 2023-2024 as well. And free meals bills have been brought up in more than a dozen other states. But we’re talking about hungry children, and progress is far too slow.
In its recently passed budget, Connecticut slightly expanded free school meals, raising the eligible income level to 200% of the poverty threshold. That’s going to create its own problems, as families have to show eligibility in a new system, and school districts have to figure out how to deal with the paperwork. In North Dakota, a bill expanding free school meals to the same 200% of poverty level first failed by one vote, then was passed after a flood of bad publicity over the fact that lawmakers raised their own meal budgets while voting down meals for hungry kids.
When these bills get debated, the public gets a chance to hear what Republicans really think about child hunger.
“Yes I can understand kids going hungry, but is that really the problem of the school district, is that the problem of the state of North Dakota? It’s really the problem of parents being negligent with their kids,” North Dakota state Sen. Mike Wobbema said in March. He later told Civil Eats, “I’m just a conservative Republican kind of guy who lives by the tenet of personal responsibility.” That is, he thinks that the possibility of a family living just above the federal poverty level struggling to pay for food is a failure of personal responsibility rather than a failure of a system in which so many people live paycheck to paycheck, one illness or broken car away from disaster.
He’s not the only Republican who is similarly dismissive of childhood hunger.
“Mr. President, I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry. Yet today. I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don’t have access to enough food to eat,” state Sen. Steve Drazkowski said during debate on the universal school lunch bill that ultimately passed. “Now, I should say that hunger is a relative term, Mr. President. You know? I had a cereal bar for breakfast. I guess I’m hungry now. That to some might be, maybe that’s the definition in the bill. I don’t know, I didn’t see a definition of hunger in the bill, Mr. President. But I think most reasonable people suggest hunger means you don’t have enough to eat in order to provide for metabolism and growth.”
Apparently there’s no space between, “Breakfast was a while ago and I could go for some lunch,” and having your growth actively stunted by starvation for Drazkowski, but for the record, one in six people in Minnesota experienced food insecurity in 2021. That’s 483,000 people. One in 11 kids experienced food insecurity. And just a few months before Drazkowski’s comments, Minnesota Public Radio reported on nonprofits seeing increased need for food assistance.
Hunger is an education issue, which means it absolutely is a problem for school districts and states. Both teachers and students say hunger affects learning, with 80% of teachers in one survey seeing hungry kids struggle to concentrate and 76% seeing decreased academic performance. One 2013 study found that kids with regular access to breakfast have better scores on math tests.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar have introduced federal school meals legislation, but with Republican control of the House and the filibuster in the Senate, we know exactly how far that’s going. Until Democrats have the White House and strong control of the House and Senate, or until Republicans start caring about hungry kids, universal free school meals will continue to be a state-by-state fight.
To find free summer meal locations near you, text “FOOD” or, for Spanish, “COMIDA,” to 304-304.
