School meals bill faces headwinds as it comes before House after death of key proponent

CONCORD, N.H. — A legislative proposal championed by the late state Representative Arthur S. Ellison to expand access to free school meals will come up Thursday before the New Hampshire House, where lawmakers have been advised to reject it.

Ellison, 80, a three-term Democrat from Concord, kept advocating for the measure long after he knew he was dying. He did not attend hearings or session days while in hospice care in February and March, but he kept coordinating with his colleagues, seeking updates and advising on strategy.

Representative Stephen L. Woodcock, a Democrat from Center Conway, said Ellison’s mild-mannered but persistent calls for policy makers to find a way to “feed the damn kids” were evident until the very end.

“When I sat with Arthur on his last day at the hospice house, it wasn’t about grief, it wasn’t about passing,” Woodcock recalled. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘How are the bills coming?’”

The pending proposal, House Bill 1212, would provide free lunches to students from households earning up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level, which is about $105,000 for a family of four. That threshold is significantly higher than the current parameters, which allow free meals for kids from households earning up to 130 percent of the poverty level and reducedprice meals for those from households up to 185 percent of the poverty level.

Woodcock said they had discussed their ultimate desire for New Hampshire schools to one day provide free meals to all students — a goal the Concord Monitor called Ellison’s “one dying wish” — but Ellison backed two more-modest proposals in the current term, hoping to win support for a smaller undertaking to demonstrate the merit of a full-scale initiative.

While hospitalized in February, Ellison told the Boston Globe over the phone he had assumed even those measured proposals faced long odds in the GOP-controlled legislative chambers.

“It’s a tough one,” he said, “because the Republicans do not want to spend money on feeding kids. They just don’t. They’ve got other priorities.”

Ellison died March 23. Three days later, the House Finance Committee voted 13-11 along party lines to recommend that HB 1212 be rejected. That recommendation is slated to come before the full House on Thursday. (A similar proposal, House Bill 572, was tabled in January by the Senate.)

Woodcock, who is co-sponsoring HB 1212, said he is optimistic the House will pass the bill. Most state representatives understand that middle-class Granite Staters are struggling and thousands of kids are going hungry, he said.

“It’s a reasonable bill,” he added. “It’s well-thought out. It’s not outrageous.”

Much of the funding for free and reduced breakfast and lunch comes from the federal government, but the added cost of expanding access to free meals under HB 1212 would fall to the state.

That added cost could surpass $50 million per year, though it’s impossible to predict with precision based on available data, according to the New Hampshire Department of Education. The department said it would have to develop and implement a new system and hire new staff to handle applications and income verifications.

Currently, about 24 percent of the nearly 155,000 students enrolled in K-12 schools in New Hampshire are considered eligible for free or reduced-price meals, according to the department’s data. The median household income in New Hampshire is currently less than 350 percent of the poverty level, so HB 1212 would render most households in the state income-eligible for the program.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years, the federal government allowed free meals for all kids regardless of income. Congress declined to renew that initiative thereafter, but states then stepped in to launch expanded school meal programs of their own.

All three states that border New Hampshire (Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts) adopted policies to offer universal free meals beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, according to the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit antihunger research and advocacy organization. All three saw significant increases in participation rates compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to an FRAC report published in February.

Republicans on the House Finance Committee said during their March 26 meeting they are concerned about the prospect of spending tens of millions of dollars to fund an initiative that may not be narrowly tailored to solve a clearly defined problem.