How states are responding after federal funding for free school meals for all ends

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Another issue that schools are facing at the start of this school year, paying for school lunches.

  During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government provided funding for free healthy school meals for all public school students, but that program ended in 2022. Most states went back to the systems they had before, but some opted to continue providing free meals for all students.

  Our communities correspondents, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in Michigan, Adam Kemp in Oklahoma, and Gabrielle Hays in Missouri have a look at where their states stand this school year.

  With a welcome to the three of you, Frances, we will start with you.

  How did Michigan respond to the end of the federal funding for school meals?

• Frances Kai-Hwa Wang:

  This past July, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a historic $24.3 billion education budget, which included $160 million for free healthy meals for all of the state's 1.4 million public school students.

  Now, that's breakfast and lunch, pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade, and also for special education students to age 26. The budget had bipartisan support, and the state of Michigan is now one of 10 states in the country that provide free healthy meals for all public school students.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Frances, how needed is this free lunch program across Michigan?

• Frances Kai-Hwa Wang:

  According to Feeding America, one in eight Michigan children live in food-insecure households.

  Advocates say that this move will make for better nutrition, for better learning, eliminate the stigma against receiving free and reduced school lunches, and also will save families $850 a year.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, Adam, over to you.

  Oklahoma, as I understand it, tried to pass a bill that would have funded school meals in that state, but that program stalled, the proposal stalled. So how are schools faring now?

• Adam Kemp:

  Right.

  Yes, Oklahoma actually had a record budget surplus last year and still wasn't able to get this passed. It ended up stalling out before it reached committee. It had bipartisan support. Both Republicans and Democrats were behind it. And it ended up where there were different education budget issues that were going on here in the state that really kept it from moving forward.

  And I have talked to some local school districts here about how they're trying to fill the gap right now. Several are reaching out to local farms. There are community gardens and things like that. But anti-hunger advocates say that those programs aren't enough to keep kids fed and getting them the meals they need at school.

  Right now, there's a chance that this bill could be brought back this coming session. But I have talked to several people who are wondering how one in five Oklahoma children who face food insecurity are going to get those meals every day.

  I talked to Hunger Free Oklahoma President Chris Bernard just about what the impact could be from these kids facing this — these insecurities.

• Chris Bernard, President, Hunger Free Oklahoma:

  We know food-insecure kids or kids who don't have access to food during the school day tend to do worse in reading and math and language acquisition early on.

  And if we're making large investments in education, say, in the academic space or in a new curriculum, you're really just kind of throwing your money away if you don't meet some of these other basics.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, Gabby, Missouri also tried to pass universal meal legislation.

  Where does that stand?

• Gabrielle Hays:

  That's right, Geoff.

  This legislative session, we saw not one, but two different bills, one in the state House and one in the Senate, that aimed to provide, as you said, universal school meals. Neither of those bills made much traction and did not pass at all.

  But I think it's also important, when we're talking about this, to talk about how the state used these federal pandemic school meal dollars in the past, right? We know that there's been a healthy amount of reporting this year on how some families are just now getting these dollars, these benefits from last summer's allocation of funds or last summer's program/.

  And so there's been a bit of an administrative holdup in even the benefits that they got before. And so we have some Missouri families who are already sort of feeling that disruption and still waiting to get the benefits from even last year and year before.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Gabrielle Hays, Adam Kemp and Frances Wang, thank you for sharing that reporting.