Connecticut must ensure every student gets lunch
“Every kid should be fed a healthy meal in school and no child should be made to feel less than because they can’t afford a healthy meal.”
— Jennifer Bove, East Hampton’s director of school nutrition services
No school child in this country should have to go without lunch. That statement says it all. And none of us should bother saying that it is always a parent’s responsibility to make sure the child has brought food to eat at school when they can’t afford to buy it.
Consider this: Connecticut Foodshare, citing estimates provided by Feeding America, reports that more than 490,000 residents in Connecticut “struggle with hunger” and that more than 131,000 children are food insecure. That means more than 131,000 children do not have access to enough food. Other surveys find rates of food insecurity are even higher. It means not every household has the resources to send a child to school with a healthful lunch.
These hungry people are “from all walks of life — children, working parents, seniors or people living with disabilities. They are your neighbors,” the food agency reminds us.
But school districts across Connecticut are now faced with a conundrum. The federal money that allowed free meals in Connecticut schools since August is drying up. That means, for the first time in more than two years, students must start paying for food, and not everyone is able to do that.
The solution to this problem is making sure that healthful food is available through the state’s schools.
And in the face of loss of funding for school meals, advocates told The Courant that they are pushing for policy that would bring back universal free school breakfast and lunch to the state.
Jennifer Bove, East Hampton’s director of school nutrition services, is one of the people who spoke to The Courant about the issue and she said that the past two weeks of paid meals was “shockingly awful.”
East Hampton has about 1,800 students enrolled.
“I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad,” Bove told Courant reporter Alison Cross. “Our participation has dropped off so much more than what I expected. We are doing less [meals] than we ever have, even pre-COVID. I spend pretty much all my days answering emails, talking to parents, either trying to figure out how to help them set up an account, how to help them apply for free or reduced [meals], explaining why they don’t qualify for free or reduced or explaining why they’re getting charged.”
East Hampton had $170,859.60 in SMART funds that helped feed the district’s students through Dec. 1.
East Hampton is not alone. The state pledged $30 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to the School Meals Assistance Revenue for Transition fund. The aim was to help families transition back to paid meals while temporarily financing free breakfast and lunch after pandemic-era meal waivers expired. But numerous districts have run out of money; more soon will.
Bove told The Courant that since the end of free meals, the district experienced a 61% drop in breakfast participation and a 49% drop in lunch participation. She was very concerned also
that some students approved to receive free and reduced-price meals have also stopped accepting food at lunch and breakfast time, which she attributed to stigma.
If everyone were to receive the same lunch, there would be no stigma, there is no shame in accepting the meal prepared by school staff who care about the kids and know that hungry students to do not learn well.
According to Lucy Nolan, policy director of End Hunger Connecticut!, who hopes Connecticut will become one of the states offering free breakfast and lunch to all students, hungry kids not only do not learn well, but also can be disruptive. She noted one in eight children are food insecure in Connecticut.
State Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, who is a doctor, has offered a way to solve this issue: his plan is for legislation that would make school meals free and available to all students.
Anwar noted, “The advantages these programs provide to students will drastically outweigh their costs and bolster our youth for the future.” If his proposal passes the legislature it would not go into effect until the 2023-24 school year.
The Biden administration also said it is committed to “Advance a pathway to free healthy school meals for all,” which would expand free meal eligibility through the Community Eligibility Provision and National Child Nutrition Programs to 9 million more students in the next 10 years.
California, Maine and Colorado have permanent, state-funded universal meal programs; Massachusetts, Vermont and Nevada will pay for free meals for the 2022-23 school year; Connecticut and eight other states are working to pass permanent policy, according to the Food Research and Action Center.
While such measures are considered, students who qualify for free meals with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child Nutrition Programs or those enrolled in one of 55 Community Eligibility Provision districts can still receive breakfast and lunch at no charge.
If other districts see what Bove saw, those children might be going hungry too.
But with the work of lawmakers like Anwar and others, that could change. We agree with Bove.
“Every kid should be fed a healthy meal in school and no child should be made to feel less than because they can’t afford a healthy meal,” she said.