All Alaska students could be provided free breakfast and lunch at school, under a new bill in the Alaska Legislature.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Dibert of Fairbanks prefiled the legislation, , ahead of the legislative session that began on Tuesday. The bill would direct the state to provide sufficient funding to all districts to have breakfast and lunch for any student who requests it, free of cost.

“I’ve seen the effects of feeding our kids, and especially during COVID, when all kids got lunches and breakfast at no cost,” said Dibert, who has been a teacher. “So it was just very enlightening, and I would love to see that again for our families and for our students and for our school staff.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funding allowed schools to provide free meals due to federal waivers. But those funds sunsetted in 2022, resulting in some

, over half of Alaska’s students — 51% — were eligible for free or reduced price meals. An estimated 46%, or roughly 48,000 students, were enrolled to receive free school meals.

As an elementary school teacher in Fairbanks for 22 years, Dibert said she herself sometimes paid for her students to eat, rather than see them go hungry.

“Over the years, if a student didn’t have enough money, or their bill wasn’t paid, oftentimes I would even pay with my account,” she said. “I don’t know entirely how big those bills got, because I was on the classroom side of it. But I did really not like seeing kids come into the classroom sad that they couldn’t get breakfast or lunch.”

Dibert, who is Koyukon Athabascan, also cited the current Yukon River salmon crash leaving communities and families who subsisted and shared fish going without.

“My grandparents lived out on the Yukon River, and as a child, they would always send us salmon from the Yukon River. And we always would have food on our table, lots of salmon,” she said. “So with no salmon on the Yukon, I know that’s a hardship to feed families, and it’s costly to families. So in that aspect, this bill could be very beneficial to ease the pain there, to help feed kids.”

Education and health researchers point to universal free meals having for students, including improved academic performance, attendance and student health outcomes.

Dibert said the bill is in the beginning stages of the legislative process, so details will be worked out, but she hopes the program would also promote local foods on school menus, like salmon or moose. “It would be working district by district, for sure,” she said. “I don’t want it to be canned, you know, protein, like, one grain, one fruit.”

The allocations to school districts would also vary by region and food prices, she said, accommodating notoriously higher grocery prices in Alaska’s rural areas.

She said funding the proposal could include some federal or municipal contributions as well.

“It’s not that much to have the opportunity to feed our kids,” she said.

Last year, the Legislature axed funding for making reduced-priced lunches free for low-income students, The estimated $480,000 in funding was to be taken from the Department of Corrections, but lawmakers voted against it.

Once the bill has been formally introduced during a House floor session, it will next be assigned to relevant committees for discussion and debate in the coming weeks.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

The bowls of Caesar salad, spaghetti and chicken piccata are all made with fresh ingredients. And each bowl has tongs for the half dozen students and a teacher at each table to serve themselves as they rotate the wheel. 

Two students at the Ohio school step to the front of the cafeteria to present what the school’s founding principal A.J. Stich calls the school’s “grace” — its goals for each student when they become adults.

One of the two students reads each line aloud, then pauses for the 102 kindergarten through fourth grade students in the cafeteria to repeat it: 

Each day, I will work to achieve our Age 27 goals:

Being physically and mentally healthy,

Demonstrating character and integrity,

Preparing for a career and for financial independence,

And living my own definition of success.

May this food help our bodies;

We are thankful for the hands that made it and for the friends we share it with.

Family-style meals and the daily repetition of goals for their adult lives are one of several ways the Greater Dayton School sets itself apart from a typical school. 

A private school that only accepts low income students, Greater Dayton is designed to help them with more than academics. Its goal is to let students set their own course in life and be financially independent and healthy as adults, not just graduate from high school or go to college. 

Launched in the fall of 2022, the Greater Dayton School has income limits for all students, other than children of staff who may also attend. The school has a health clinic for students, extended school days until 5 p.m, two teachers in every classroom, individualized learning plans, and even schoolwide toothbrushing times.

Initially housed in a former Salvation Army administration building, the school hopes to grow to about 400 students from preschool to eighth grade. It’s still an experiment that’s too young to show a track record of success, but it already has a buzz around the city and drew Ohio’s Lt. governor to the grand opening of its new, much larger $50 million building this spring

“It’s really about the whole child, not just about academics,” said Larry Connor, a Dayton real estate developer whose and foundation is funding most of the school. “Make no mistake, academics is important. But their physical health and their mental health is integral in obtaining good academic outcomes.”

Though the school is partially funded by state tuition vouchers of $6,165 per student, Greater Dayton spends $30,000 a year or more per student, with Connor and his company’s foundation covering the gap.

“Our objective is to build a model that can be replicated in cities throughout the United States,” Connor said. “We’re trying to take a really long term view, because every community in America has this type of need.”

Stich and other school leaders consulted successful schools across the country such as Meeting Street Academy in Charleston, S.C., Christina Seix Academy in Trenton, N.J., and the Waterside School in Stamford, Conn. as they built their plan to offer all the supports research says low-income kids need.

The school creates personal education plans for each student and lets them set much of their plan for each day — what the school calls their playlist — to give them ownership of their learning. 

It limits classes to 20 students, then places two full-time teachers in each class. Students do much of their work online at their own pace, using programs from Zearn or Lexia while the teachers work with students individually or in small groups. 

Students are grouped with a few grades in each classroom to intentionally mix ages. Eventually, after it adds grades, the school will group students in classrooms of Prek, K-2, 3-5 and 6-8.

“From an academic standpoint, I think it’s wonderful,” said Brittany Wylie, who teaches grades 2-4 as the school grows. “And it’s effective. In years past, if I had a fifth grade classroom, the actual academic level of those students could range anywhere from kindergarten through sixth grade, but I was expected to teach them all just fifth grade curriculum, whether they actually grasp it or not. Here, I feel like I’m actually seeing students understand and digest and then be able to move on.”

Greater Dayton also supports students and families with after school activities until 5 p.m. The extra time solves child care needs of working parents, while also helping close the gap between what suburban and affluent students receive in enrichment activities and what lower income families can afford.

While some students build models of rockets or the Taj Mahal with Legos, others run a store where others buy items with “money” they earn by meeting school goals. Mark Kreider, the school’s financial literacy teacher, oversees the store after spending the day teaching even the youngest students the basics of business and savings.

“There’s no such thing as too early,” Kreider said. “I really think that this idea of building wealth, versus just surviving is such a critical concept for our kids,” said Kreider. “We talk about financial independence…because if you’re in this cycle of paycheck to paycheck, drowning in debt, your options are just incredibly narrow.”

“I don’t know what our kids are going to do when they get older,” he added. “But I just want them to have options. Will they all own a small business? Probably not. But they should at least know how and know how to think about it. It’s almost like a worldview, a perspective. Hey, that’s the dream.”

Students also earn freedom with good behavior, earning the right to work outside the classroom, often on the giant open staircase and terrace with couches that overlook the cafeteria.

Student health is a major part of the school’s mission. Students have more than an hour of physical education each day. Meals are at least 80 percent whole foods, with minimal processing or sugar, other than a dessert only on Fridays.

The school also has created a medical and dental office in the school, run by Dayton Children’s Hospital, so students can receive care as part of the school day, without parents having to take them out of school. Because Medicaid eligibility is a requirement for most students to enroll, the care is already covered.

“When it’s time for kids to go to the doctor, go to the dentist, they walk downstairs, and then they go back to class,” Stitch said.

The school even makes brushing teeth a daily habit by having all students head to the bathrooms at scheduled times to brush, as teachers watch to be sure they do it right.

Mental health is also a priority, particularly since students can come from families facing financial and other challenges. The school has a mental health counselor now for its 102 students and plans to add another as the school grows. 

How much impact the school is having is still unclear. Like other Ohio private schools, its students don’t take Ohio’s state tests. Using NWEA diagnostic test scores and NWEA’s own model for comparing scores to Ohio state tests, the school estimates that students are gaining academically faster than state averages and that 72 percent of its students score as proficient, compared to 45 percent of low-income students in Dayton’s county.

Wylie, who previously taught in the high-poverty Youngstown schools, said the school setting high standards and then rewarding students who meet them creates an atmosphere of accountability and trust that shows students how to thrive.

“We really believe that they can do anything they set their mind to, that they will be successful, and that they are valuable,” she said. “My personal belief is that students from any background, if they haven’t had an example modeled for them, they don’t know any better. They just need the opportunity to be shown.”