Students are back in the classroom — and school breakfast and lunch are now free in many states.
Michigan, Minnesota and Colorado are among six states implementing free universal lunches this year, while several other Midwestern states are taking more gradual steps to expand food access to students. It's a change happening across the country as students, parents and school districts get used to free school lunches during the COVID pandemic.
Carrie Link is the child nutrition supervisor for the Colorado Department of Education. He says when the federal waivers expired last June, participation plummeted.
“During the 2021-22 school year, schools in Colorado served just over 100 million waived meals nationwide,” he said. “Last school year, when things got back to normal, we saw a drop in meals to about 76 million.”
Last fall, Colorado voters approved the Healthy School Lunches for All program, and Link expects the number of meals to return to pandemic-era levels.
In Minnesota, districts are already reporting a 15 percent increase in meal participation compared to last year after implementing a universal free lunch program at the beginning of the year.
Emily Honer, director of nutrition program services at the Minnesota Department of Education, said while it's early in the school year, there has been a clear impact.
“That really showed us how necessary this program is,” he said. “When we were able to provide the meals for free, the students came and the students ate the meals because they needed it.”
Families nationwide have racked up nearly $20 million in school meal debt since universal free lunch ended. reportwere found. That doesn't surprise Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and after-school programs for the Food Research and Action Center.
“School meals debt came back with a vengeance last school year. And it's because families didn't realize they had to pay, they didn't realize they had to fill out an application for school meals,” he said.
The end of the program also coincided with food inflation and higher housing costs, putting further pressure on families.
“There's so much pressure on families to make ends meet,” FitzSimons said.
“We can't afford it”
School districts in many parts of the country struggle to offer free lunches, even though many of their students qualify for free or reduced lunches under federal rules.
The entire rural school district of Amboy, Illinois is eligible for free lunches through the federal community eligibility provision. That's because more than 40 percent of families in the small area of northern Illinois use federal assistance programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Program.
However, the district expects to lose money by participating in the federal program, Human Resources Director Amy Wittenauer said.
“We can reassess it at the end of the year and say, 'We're just losing too much. We can't afford it,” he said.
Illinois lawmakers are considering more money to support districts like Amboy after passing Free School Lunch for All last spring.
The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, said this fall that he hoped his fellow lawmakers would increase support for the program from $9 million a year to $120 million a year.
“We were spoiled during COVID when it came to funding coming into our states,” West said. “Now we are trying to keep up with the programs we started and we are seeing that they are working. It's just time to redefine our funding as a state (for) what's best for our communities.”
More states are facing a lack of funding for school meal assistance.
Brian Munoz
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Public Radio St. Louis
In Ohio and North Dakota, new state funding will expand reimbursements for schools to cover the cost of free and reduced-price meals. Similar legislation to expand refunds or fund universal free meals was introduced this year in Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri.
Critics of the statewide free programs say they pay for meals that some families can already afford, while individual students can get free meals through the National School Lunch Program. Students qualify if their family income is less than 130% of the federal poverty level. They can also qualify for reduced-price meals if their family earns less than 180% of the poverty level.
But advocates say the benefits of statewide free lunch programs far outweigh the costs.
FitzSimons, with the Center for Food Research and Action, said nationally, only 67.5 percent of school districts eligible for the Community Eligibility Provision participate. In states like Iowa and Nebraska, the rate is significantly lower.
She said there remains a stigma about receiving free school meals.
“We're seeing participation go down as kids get older. “Offering free meals to all students really gets rid of the idea that the school lunch program is only for low-income kids,” FitzSimons said. “And so we're seeing an increase in participation across the board.”
How to pay for a free meal
In Colorado, fewer students will go hungry because of the state's efforts, according to Link, the education department's director of nutrition.
To offset the program's $100 million annual cost, Colorado sets aside specific funds to pay for free school lunches. The Healthy School Lunches for All program is funded in part by limiting tax credits for the state's wealthiest residents.
Link said they also plan to expand in the coming years so schools can use more local products.
“This legislation also supports local farmers, creates advisory boards to get input on school lunches from families and the community. provides some additional training and grants to improve the kitchen skills and meal quality of those directly serving meals, and financial support to fund front-line staff and food service,” he said.
In Minnesota, the universal free lunch program will cost $200 million each year and will be paid for through state education funding.
Honer said that along with increasing the quantity of school meals, they are proud to be increasing the quality as well. While parents may have memories of less-than-appetizing school lunches they had as children, she encourages families to go to their schools' websites and see what's on the menu.
“We have our schools in Minnesota doing what they can with local produce, changing the meal so there's variety, including different foods,” he said.
While states are expanding access to school lunches, the federal government is making similar moves.
The USDA recently proposed lowering the participation threshold for the community eligibility provision. Currently, 40% of a school must use federal aid programs. The proposed rule would reduce that to 25%.
The Biden administration's 2024 budget proposal also called for an additional $15 billion to support the community eligibility provision.
FitzSimons said the USDA's universal free lunch program during the pandemic has changed thinking about school lunches. Last year, he said, more schools participated in the Community Eligibility Scheme than before the pandemic.
“(There was) a pretty significant jump in the number of schools using it,” he said, “and it was because schools didn't want to go back to not being able to provide free lunches to all kids.”
This story was created in collaboration with Harvest Public Media, a partnership of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. He reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
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