New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Advocates: Free breakfasts for 180K kids in state will be lost without $11.2M
HARTFORD — It’s a tiny amount in the $26 billion state budget that takes effect on July 1, but advocates and lawmakers are trying to secure $11.2 million to continue free breakfasts for 180,000 kids — many in rural and suburban districts — who may lose the benefit when school reopens for the fall term.
Since state lawmakers have decided not to revise the second year of the $51 billion biennial budget approved last year, supporters of the school meal extension are trying to persuade majority Democratic leaders to target some of the state’s estimated $400 million in remaining American Rescue Plan Act funding.
For state Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, co-chairwoman of the legislative Children’s Committee, free school meals are about nutrition, higher attendance rates, better mental health and academic achievement, for which the money is a small price to pay.
“When kids will get up in the morning and take the bus to get to school on time for breakfast, that speaks to the need for community,” Maher said on Friday. “Kids want to see and be with their classmates. We’ve been concerned with disconnected youth and here we are, offering meals and reducing absences.
“We’re talking about workforce development, the future of our children, and yet we look past a fundamental building block of a child’s day, so they are not agitated in the classroom.
“They can focus, pay attention, and help their teachers have less stress. We don’t make them pay for laptops or books, but we’re going to say that if your parents make $39,000 and one cent, you are going to have to pay” for breakfast.
All public school children are now eligible for free breakfast, and kids in families of four or more with incomes of less than $55,500 can get no-cost lunches.
Most urban school systems have free breakfasts and lunches districtwide. But next year, without extra funding, families of four with incomes of more than $39,000 will not be eligible, setting them up for financial strain, hungry students and the potential for cafeteria bullying.
Maher, a first-term lawmaker who was the former executive director of the Person to Person food pantry, said it’s unreasonable to expect low-income parents to pay about $1,300 per child per year for school meals.
“It’s foolish not to pay attention to the next generation of our taxpayers. It’s a very small percentage of our $26 billion budget,” she said. “Children understand when their parents are stressed and they absorb that stress into their systems.”
She said the trauma stays with youngsters through their school years and beyond.
Earlier in the week, Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, told reporters that lawmakers are sympathetic to the issue.
“I think there are some misconceptions about the law,” Ritter said. “Nobody is denied a meal. There is no district that prevents anyone from getting a free lunch. There could be a stigma, I suppose, but you get the same breakfast and lunch as anybody else.
“It’s the (local) boards of ed don’t feel like they should have to pay for it and have students run up a tab, so to speak, if they owe money that the board may have to cover.
Lucy Nolan, policy director for End Hunger CT! said Friday that without pending budget adjustments in the General Assembly, focus is on persuading Democrats to reach into the ARPA funding.
If full funding doesn’t continue in September, students in more than 105 districts will be impacted.
Nolan said, “When it comes to food insecurity, kids don’t learn (their classwork). When they get breakfast they’re better able to concentrate. There is toxic trauma for children from food-insecure homes. “Talk to anybody who was a freemeals kids when they were little, it sticks with them. It’s a statewide issue.”