The children left behind by free lunch programs, and the proposed $250M solution

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When Angela Girol’s students started getting free breakfast and lunch in 2020, the fourth grade teacher saw huge improvements in their focus and mood.

“[I’ll be] standing in the hall, and they’ll come up and give you a hug, because they’re happy, and their tummies are full, instead of just walking by you and not looking at you, because they’re hungry,” said Girol, who works in suburban Pittsburgh.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture funded these meals during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, suspending income rules so all K-12 students in the U.S. could eat breakfast and lunch at no cost.

After the federal support ended in June 2022, Pennsylvania continued to provide free breakfast at public schools but went back to charging students for lunch depending on their income.

Federal meal programs still waive costs for the state’s poorest children, but nearly 50,000 Pennsylvania kids live in households with incomes just outside the range to qualify for even reduced lunch. Other families that can receive this aid are too embarrassed to admit they need assistance and choose not to apply.

This results in some students going hungry, putting them at greater risk of bad grades, suspensions, and illness. If they eat a school meal that they can’t afford, they risk incurring debt and shame.

The solution to this knot of economic, health, and caregiving problems, advocates argue, is universal free lunch.

Last session, state Rep. Emily Kinkead (D., Allegheny) introduced a bill that would provide free school lunch to all kids regardless of their family income, and another that would erase meal debt. She plans to reintroduce both, and argues free lunch would help students now and far into the future.

“It’s a really simple, really basic way of addressing a lot of the issues that contribute to kids not becoming successful adults,” she told Spotlight PA.

During the 2022-23 school year, 56.6% of Pennsylvania’s public school children qualified for free or reduced lunch, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Based on current participation, Kinkead said her free lunch bill would cost roughly $250 million per year if federal funding levels remain unchanged. There’s a possibility that Congress will cut funding to the USDA’s nutrition program for K-12 schools in low-income areas. If this happens, Kinkead estimated that providing free lunch could cost Pennsylvania taxpayers as much as $500 million a year.

The universal school lunch bill died in a Democratic-led state House committee last session. The debt elimination bill passed the state House with all Democrats on board, as well as several Republicans. However, it was not taken up in the Republican-controlled state Senate.

Kinkead told Spotlight PA that she’s hopeful for GOP support this session, noting previous Republican support for her school debt bill.

“It’s hard to vote against feeding kids, but it has to be brought up for a vote,” she said.

More than half of Pennsylvania’s 3,200 public and nonprofit private schools are enrolled in a USDA program that pays between 40% and 100% of food costs based on the percentage of students who already qualify for free meals.

At schools that don’t participate, annual household income determines whether kids qualify for free lunch. For a family of four, that amount can be no more than 130% of the federal poverty level, or $40,560.

To receive lunch at a reduced cost, a family of four’s income in 2024 must not exceed 185% of the federal poverty level, or $57,720 per year. Kinkead said her legislation would especially benefit kids whose family incomes are just over that threshold. Kids in this group — from households neither decisively poor nor middle class — are more likely to not get enough nutritious food.

Unless school lunch is free to all, there will always be kids whose parents earn a little too much for them to qualify, warned Nicole Melia, the public policy and legislative chair for the School Nutrition Association of Pennsylvania, which represents school food service administrators, dietitians, and cafeteria staff.

Part of the problem, she explained, is federal rules for free and reduced school meals don’t take into account varying costs of living. Families in Philadelphia and Elk County are subject to the same income standard, a uniformity that overlooks significant differences in the costs of housing and food.

Universal school lunches can have a positive impact on attendance, academic performance, and children’s health, research shows. School lunches, on average, are healthier than what kids bring from home because cafeterias must adhere to federal nutrition standards that limit sugar and sodium and require a certain amount of fruits, vegetables, and grains.

On the flip side, food insecurity can have devastating consequences. Daniel R. Taylor, a board member of Pennsylvania’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics who supports free lunch policies, said in an email that children who deal with the issue have weaker immune systems, visit emergency rooms more often, and experience more developmental delays compared to kids with consistent access to nutritious meals.

There can also be a serious financial cost in the form of school lunch debt.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education doesn’t collect data on school lunch debt, nor does the federal government, so the extent of this issue is not known.

When a family doesn’t pay their child’s lunch debt, school districts decide whether to absorb the unpaid bill or send it to collections, which might hurt a parent’s credit score.

“Those are the families that we’re seeing rack up negative debt. They can’t make payments,” Melia said.

Nick Marcil of the Debt Collective, a national organization that advocates for debt cancellation, recalled feeling shame as a public high school student near Philadelphia. When his father was out of work, his mom signed Marcil and his brother up for free lunch. Marcil said he questioned whether he deserved this support but also was relieved that he could eat lunch and not worry about how it would impact his family’s budget.

“I’m sure that it is the case for so many other students across Pennsylvania,” said Marcil, who was part of the push that led the Bristol Borough School District to cancel nearly $22,000 of meal debt.

Melia also saw the effects of stigma when she managed the meal program at Great Valley School District in Chester County.

Before the pandemic, the only kids who got school breakfast were those from low-income families. One morning, one of Melia’s favorite students came in late, so she gave the little girl a meal to take to class. But the student threw the food away.

“She was ashamed,” said Melia. “She was a free student. It was not universally accepted.”

In addition to stigma, there are other reasons that kids go hungry, said Kinkead. Parents might be struggling with large medical bills, or they might be afraid to ask for financial help because a member of their household is undocumented. Others will withhold food as a form of abuse.

“There are a lot of factors that we can’t take into account on paper,” she said.

Back in Pittsburgh, Girol the teacher said she’d like more students to benefit from school lunch and thinks providing it for free would help. She sees too many sack lunches that lack the right nutrition for kids to learn and grow.

“You open up their lunch box and it’s like, all their Valentine candy and their Halloween candy is in there, and it’s a Pop-Tart,” she said.

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