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School meal programs to lose flexibility, funding, if Congress doesn't act :
Shots - Health News A boost in funds and flexibility in how food is prepared and
packaged was a lifeline for kids coping with hunger. But these measures, passed
in response to COVID-19, expire in June, with no extension.
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PUBLIC HEALTH
MILLIONS OF CHILDREN WILL MISS HEALTHY SCHOOL MEALS WHEN PANDEMIC RELIEF EXPIRES
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March 21, 20225:00 AM ET
Allison Aubrey
Twitter
Enlarge this image
Nutritionist Shaunté Fields (center) and bus driver Treva White (behind Fields,
on the bus) deliver meals to children and their families in Seattle. When
schools closed because of COVID-19, Seattle Public Schools began distributing
breakfast and lunch to students through a network of 26 school sites and 43 bus
routes five days a week. Karen Ducey/Getty Images hide caption
toggle caption
Karen Ducey/Getty Images
Nutritionist Shaunté Fields (center) and bus driver Treva White (behind Fields,
on the bus) deliver meals to children and their families in Seattle. When
schools closed because of COVID-19, Seattle Public Schools began distributing
breakfast and lunch to students through a network of 26 school sites and 43 bus
routes five days a week.
Karen Ducey/Getty Images
When schools pivoted to virtual learning early in the pandemic, the National
School Lunch Program was thrown into chaos. Millions of children rely on school
meals to keep hunger at bay, so school nutrition directors scrambled to adopt
new, creative ways to distribute food to families. Some of these changes were
improvements on the status quo, they say.
And as part of pandemic relief legislation, the federal Food and Nutrition
services agency waived the requirement that schools serve meals in a group
setting, increased school-year reimbursement rates to summer levels for school
food programs and granted more flexibility in how food is prepared and packaged.
"It was a game changer," says Donna Martin, who heads the school nutrition
program in Burke County, Ga., a rural district that has a high rate of food
insecurity.
Schools started preparing bag lunches and other grab-and-go options for parents
to pick up at school and take home for their kids. They even used buses to bring
meals, sometimes days' worth, to pickup spots in different neighborhoods.
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For Martin, the new flexibility meant that instead of preparing individual
meals, as is usually required, she used her budget to go all in on healthy
ingredients, and she started sending boxes of fresh food home to families,
enough for several days.
"We were able to give whole heads of broccoli and whole heads of cauliflower and
unusual fruits and vegetables," Martin says of her program. The economy of scale
from bulk buying these ingredients was a win. "We could give much better food,"
she says.
SOME PANDEMIC INNOVATIONS DEPEND ON EXPIRING FUNDS
Even though kids are back in school, Martin says many of her pandemic
innovations are worth keeping. But the waivers that gave her that flexibility —
and a boost in federal funds — are set to expire at the end of June.
Health policy experts say the flexibility has served children well. "When you
improve the ability for the country to deliver food to children, to families,
you improve the health outcomes of Americans," says physician Ezekiel Emanuel,
co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of
Pennsylvania.
The pandemic shone a spotlight on the links between poor nutrition and chronic
illnesses such as diabetes and obesity, as well as the risk of serious illness
from COVID-19, so Emanuel says initiatives that make child nutrition programs
more efficient should continue.
Martin says the expiration of the waivers and increased funding "is going to be
a disaster for my program."
For instance, with the summer coming up and a return to the rules that require
kids to be served meals in group settings, much of her budget will be used on
transportation costs instead of healthy ingredients — sending buses around to
kids' homes where they will be required to eat on the bus in order to comply
with the rules that kids are fed in congregate settings.
"Our county is so rural that the kids do not have a way to get to the schools to
eat at the schools so the buses have to take the food to them," says Martin. She
describes the effect on her program as "catastrophic."
THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
WHY BILLIONS IN FOOD AID HASN'T GOTTEN TO NEEDY FAMILIES
Bus drivers are in short supply around the country, gas prices have spiked, and
inflation has led to higher food prices. "We're going to have to really cut back
on the quality of the meals," Martin says.
School food directors and nutrition advocates lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill
to include an extension of the waivers in the omnibus spending bill that
President Biden signed last week. But that effort was unsuccessful.
"Congress failed kids, bottom line," says Lisa Davis, who leads Share Our
Strength's No Kid Hungry Campaign. A wide coalition of anti-hunger advocates and
school nutrition professionals agree that Congress needs to act.
Because of the failure to extend the nutrition waivers, "many schools and
community organizations will have to stop or scale back meals over the summer.
... This puts children at risk of missing more than 95 million meals this summer
alone," Davis says. She says her organization will keep working toward a
solution.
For now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has its hands tied. Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack does not have the power to renew waivers that are
currently in place. That power rests with Congress.
EDUCATION
SOME FAMILIES ARE BEING FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN REMOTE LEARNING AND SCHOOL
MEALS
"We are disappointed that we weren't able to secure needed resources and
flexibilities to help school meals and summer feeding programs deal with the
serious challenges they are facing," a spokesperson for the USDA told NPR.
FEEDING KIDS REMAINS A STRUGGLE
As schools try to return to many pre-pandemic operations, feeding children
remains a struggle, according to a survey of school nutrition leaders. "Labor
shortages and supply chain disruptions have pushed school nutrition
professionals to a breaking point," according to the School Nutrition
Association's position paper.
With rising food and labor prices, schools say they can't afford to cover the
costs of producing school meals if the federal reimbursement rate reverts back
to the pre-pandemic rates.
"Returning to [prior] National School Lunch Program reimbursement rates would
increase meal program losses and cut into education budgets, impeding efforts to
meet the needs of students and jeopardizing progress in school nutrition
programs," according to the association.
When the waivers were first issued, they weren't meant to be permanent, explains
Davis. But they have allowed schools to make real improvements in their efforts
to reach kids vulnerable to hunger.
"The waivers gave meal providers the ability to reimagine traditional summer
meal service," says Davis. This has been especially helpful for families in
rural areas, where transportation difficulties made it hard to get kids to
school to get a meal in the summer.
These improvements need to continue, she argues: "Letting waivers expire so
abruptly and with such extreme challenges remaining does nothing but pull the
rug out from underneath schools and kids struggling with hunger."
* Pandemic relief
* child hunger
* healthy eating
* school food
* school lunch
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