Schools prepare for changes in federal meal waivers
NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — School districts are preparing for federal changes that will help keep student meal prices down despite inflation and supply chain issues, but will bring an end to free meals for all children.
Schools received federal waivers during the pandemic, allowing them to distribute free meals to kids regardless of family income and receive reimbursement. The waivers expired on June 30.
The Keep Kids Fed Act was signed into law in June, giving schools, summer meal sites and child care programs additional resources through the 202223 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The act will extend nationwide flexibilities to summer meal programs through September. It will also provide schools with additional temporary reimbursement of 40 cents per lunch and 15 cents per breakfast, along with additional flexibilities to support schools as needed throughout the school year, the department website states.
However, the act will not provide an extension of free meals for students who don’t qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
School administrators in Northwest Arkansas are urging parents to fill out the lunch forms to find out if their children will qualify for free or reduced-price school meals under federal guidelines.
Neisha Veihl, a parent of a fifth grader in the Siloam Springs School District, said free school meals the past two years have helped her family. Veihl said she has been on both sides of the federal income guidelines and at one point made just $10 too much to qualify for reduced-price meals. Before covid, she said she worried quite a bit about being able to provide lunches for her daughter.
“It became, do I put gas in the car to make it to work or send her lunch money for the week,” she said.
Veihl estimated it will cost her family about $40 every two weeks to pay for school breakfasts and lunches. She sends her daughter a packed lunch some days to stretch her budget, she said.
“We will have to do a little bit more budgeting [this fall], but I think we should be OK if we can send leftovers for lunch as well,” she said.
A family of four must make less than $27,750 a year to qualify for free school meals and $51,338 a year to qualify for reducedprice meals, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines.
Meal prices vary by district. Springdale’s School District charges $1.30 for breakfasts, $2.45 for elementary school lunches, $2.65 for middle school lunches and $3.10 for secondary lunches. Reducedprice meals are 25 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch.
In comparison, Fayetteville schools charge $2.15 for breakfasts, $3.15 for elementary lunches and $3.35 for older students. Reduced-price meals are 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch.
At its June meeting, the Gentry School Board began reviewing recommended meal prices and planned to further review prices at its July meeting on Monday (after press deadline). Recommended price increases for meals were as follows: student breakfasts to increase from $1.50 to $1.60; student lunches from $2.85 to $2.95; adult breakfasts from $2 to $2.50; adult lunches from $3.75 to $4.50; reduced-price student breakfasts to 30 cents and reduced-price student lunches to 40 cents. The board asked that the cost increase be examined to see if it was sufficient to cover actual expenses incurred by the district to subsidize the meals program.
Food insecurity rising
More than 70,000 people in the four-county area the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank serves are food insecure, according to Julie Damer, director of marketing and communications. One in six children in the region face food insecurity, she said. The nonprofit group serves Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties.
Damer defined food insecurity as a person not knowing where their next meal is coming from. Food insecurity isn’t always income driven and can happen to anyone, she said. For example, people may face unexpected expenses such as medical bills or have multiple generations living in one household, she said.
As inflation causes the costs of food and gas to skyrocket, Northwest Arkansas Food Bank is seeing even more people struggling with food insecurity, she said. People are paying more for expenses such as utilities, rent and medical bills than ever before, putting them in situations where they need a little help, she said.
“We are seeing people that never expected to be in this situation, to ask for help for food, in our mobile pantry lines,” she said. “Thankfully we are here to be able to fill that gap for them.”
Impact on schools
The Keep Kids Fed Act will help the Lincoln School District by giving it some leeway on guidelines for serving food and increasing funding, but it will be hard on many families to go back to paying for school meals, Superintendent Mary Ann Spears said.
The Washington County district of 1,007 students had a free and reducedprice lunch rate of 70.5% during 2020-21 school year, according to the Department of Education.
The covid-related federal meal waivers that expired June 30 were a game changer for Lincoln, Spears said. The district saw better participation in its meal programs and the waivers helped its food service budget, she said.
The district looked into providing free meals for all students on its own but isn’t able to pick up the tab, she said.
Administrators in the Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville school districts also reported more students have been eating at school in the past two years.
About 40% of Rogers students will have to go back to paying for school meals this fall, according to Charles Lee, assistant superintendent of general administration. A total of 60% of Rogers’ 15,335 students qualified for free and reduced-price lunches during the 2020-21 school year, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
Parents will need to fill out free or reduced-price lunch applications and see if they meet eligibility guidelines, he said. Schools receive federal money to provide supplemental services in other areas based on free and reduced-price meal rates, so it helps the whole community when families turn the forms in, he said.
Rogers schools have been affected by the increase in food prices and hit with supply chain issues that required the district to do some alternate meal planning, Lee said. Even with the additional federal money, the district likely will have to increase meal prices at some point, he said.
The Keep Kids Fed Act will prevent the Springdale School District from having to raise meal prices this year, according to Gena Smith, Springdale’s director of child nutrition. The price of food is increasing and shortages have required the district to purchase more expensive items in some cases, Smith said. The additional federal money will help the district cover costs and will also give the child nutrition department some extra money to spend on local food, she said.
Seventy-two percent of Springdale’s 21,882 students in 2020-21 qualified for free or reduced-price price meals, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
Schools received a waiver from having to collect new free and reduced-price eligibility forms from students who already qualified for the program for the past two years, Smith said. The waiver prevented districts from seeing a significant drop in their free and reduced meal rate when families no longer had to apply to receive free meals, she said.
Filling out free and reduced-price meal applications will not only help families find out if they qualify for help with school meals; it also could give them access to other benefits such as free or low-cost internet service, Smith said.
The increase in federal reimbursements will help the Bentonville School District maintain the highquality foods it serves students, despite continued inflation, according to Janet Schwanhausser, deputy superintendent and chief financial officer. Twenty percent of the district’s 17,970 students qualified for free or reduced-price meals during 2020-21 school year, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
The additional federal reimbursements will also help the Fayetteville School District face inflation and supply chain problems, according to Amy Jefferson, child nutrition director. It’s likely the district will still have to raise prices in the future, she said. Meal prices under the USDA’s guidelines have continued to increase even though students haven’t had to pay for the last two years, she said.
The Decatur School District, with an enrollment of 570 students in the 2021-22 school year, has been providing free meals for all students since 2018 under the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision, according to Superintendent Steven Watkins. The program allows schools in high-poverty areas to serve free breakfasts and lunches to all students without collecting household applications, the department’s website states.
The federal meal waivers during the covid pandemic helped the district expand its summer meal program and allowed it to provide grab-and-go meals for virtual students, Watkins said.
The Keep Kids Fed Act will still help Decatur because the additional 40 cents for lunch and 15 cents for breakfast will help with rising food costs, Watkins said. While the small district’s child nutrition department has felt the impact of inflation, its size has helped it avoid supply chain problems, he said.