Child hunger leaders from across North Carolina — including representatives from school nutrition departments, food banks, churches, and state government — convened in Asheville this week for an annual conference hosted by the (CHI).

“​​In this room, we are a community united by one common value: Kids deserve access to healthy food, no matter what,” said Lou Anne Crumpler, director of the CHI.

During conference sessions, which spanned a variety of topics related to school meals, one topic loomed large: the ramifications of changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was cut significantly by the , signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2025.

This year also marked the first time the conference was held in western North Carolina — aligned with a CHI project, funded by , that will examine child hunger and strategies to reduce it in the wake of .

“Hurricane Helene tested our infrastructure and our spirits,” said Jehan Benton-Clark, vice president of grantmaking and strategy at Dogwood Health Trust. “Western North Carolina has been navigating workforce shortages, market instability, and uncertainty in public funding. And yet, this region also represents what is possible when people show up for one another.”

Preparing for historic SNAP cuts

More than in North Carolina, including roughly 600,000 children, receive SNAP benefits each month. In addition to alleviating hunger, SNAP — particularly in rural communities, where food benefits play a crucial role in sustaining local grocery stores.

SNAP brings roughly $2.8 billion in federal funds annually to North Carolina, generating a $4.2 billion impact, according to a from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS).

“SNAP is the backbone of food access in rural North Carolina — SNAP is making sure that all of rural North Carolina has grocery stores that remain open,” said Kate Hanson, executive director of .

The , also called H.R. 1,  reduced federal funding for SNAP by , which amounts to a roughly 20% cut —

Beginning in October 2026, the bill increases the share states have to pay toward SNAP’s administrative costs from 50% to 75%. According to the NC DHHS presentation, additional costs to cover this increase annually are $69 million for county governments and $16 million for the state.

Separately, beginning in October 2027, the bill requires states with a above 6% to cover a portion of food benefits. Historically, the federal government has covered 100% of SNAP food benefits. Based on North Carolina’s most recent SNAP payment error rate, the state’s cost share for SNAP benefits could total annually.

If the state and counties are unable to absorb these additional costs, SNAP could face reductions or end entirely, threatening food access for hundreds of thousands of households.

“I’ve been calling on the federal government to delay implementation of H.R. 1 until fiscal year 2030 so that we states and the counties have adequate time to reduce our error rates, and to hold states harmless for the errors that occurred during the chaotic period of the federal government shutdown,” said Gov. Josh Stein in a prerecorded statement. “We need the General Assembly to fully fund SNAP in the state budget because we cannot risk losing this program.”

During a keynote address, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson discussed the temporary that occurred during the federal government shutdown in November. Following a brought by more than 20 states, including North Carolina, the Trump administration to be used for partial SNAP payments.

Jackson commended the work of staff at NC DHHS — who he called “unsung heroes” — for their work around the clock to ensure there was not a gap in SNAP benefits. In February, the North Carolina Department of Justice , the Dogwood Award, to the NC DHHS SNAP team who worked to “pull off this miracle,” Jackson said.

“Had it not been for them … food would not have been on the table for over a million people across the state,” said Jackson.

During a panel on SNAP, Hanson announced a new campaign called and urged attendees to share the importance of SNAP with their elected officials.

How cuts to SNAP impact access to school meals

Cuts to SNAP are directly tied to school meals because they impact one of the key ways students access free school meals: direct certification.

School districts regularly receive data from the state that allows them to automatically enroll students in free school meals based on their household’s participation in SNAP. As participation in SNAP declines, fewer students will be directly certified for free meals, and schools will have to return to collecting applications, which are often difficult to get families to fill out. Participating in SNAP also automatically enrolls children in , a grocery benefit available in the summer.

According to Rachel Findley, senior director of the Office of Nutrition at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI), more than 850,000 students were on SNAP in June 2025 — and that figure is already declining.

“That number will continue to decrease, and what that means is these students are no longer categorically eligible for free meals,” Findley said. “Now, our hardworking school nutrition central office staff are going to have to get free and reduced applications completed by families who haven’t completed a free and reduced application — perhaps the entire time that child has been in school.”

Declines in SNAP participation will also impact the (CEP), which allows eligible schools to serve all students free breakfast and lunch without collecting applications. That’s because CEP eligibility and reimbursements are calculated using the (ISP), a formula based on the number of students directly certified for free meals, such as by participating in SNAP or Medicaid.

As ISPs decline, some schools may lose CEP eligibility entirely, and others may no longer be able to afford to operate CEP — both of which would reduce access to free school meals.

When SNAP benefits lapsed in November, Findley said calls poured in from superintendents and community members across the state trying to figure out how school meals could help get more food to students. Findley’s answer was: “I can’t recreate this program to do things it was never regulated to do.” She described this as an “aha moment” where people realized: What do we do now?

“It’s going to be catastrophic for our students in North Carolina if SNAP benefits expire. It’s going to be catastrophic for school nutrition programs who rely on that categorical eligibility in order to operate meals at no cost for students,” said Findley.

Learn more about how cuts to SNAP are tied to school meals in .

Working to secure free school meals for all students

The coalition, launched with support from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, advocates for all North Carolina public school students to have access to breakfast and lunch at no cost to their families. The coalition is co-led by the , , , and CHI.

“Feeding kids isn’t controversial — it’s foundational for a full and a healthy life,” said Merry Davis, director of Health Through Food at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation.

Advocates of free school meals for all, including ensuring access to meals that can support students’ learning and health, reducing stigma in the cafeteria, eliminating school meal debt, and more.

— California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont — have passed legislation that provides free school meals to all students. Dozens of other states, including North Carolina, have introduced bills that would do the same.

In April 2025, a “” bill was introduced in the General Assembly, sponsored by four Republican House members. Although the bill did not move forward, it garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, with more than 50 sponsors.

According to Marianne Weant, director of programs at the North Carolina Alliance for Health, support school meals for all.

During the conference, Chanel Jones, a teacher in the and 2025 Piedmont Triad Region Teacher of the Year, shared her perspective on the importance of school meals for all.

In her remarks, Jones said she cares about school meals for all students because she has seen firsthand how hunger impacts her students, including a lack of focus, irritability, or deciding to put their head down.

“Hunger is quiet, it is subtle. It is often invisible, and yet it changes everything about a child’s ability to fully show up in a classroom,” she said.

At Broadview Middle School, where Jones teaches, all students receive free breakfast and lunch.

“And I can say without hesitation that is how it should be for every student in North Carolina,” Jones said.

Feeding western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene

In September 2024, caused widespread destruction in western North Carolina. Two days after the storm, 25 of North Carolina’s 100 counties were .

MANNA FoodBank, which serves 16 western North Carolina counties and the Qualla Boundary, lost nearly everything in the storm, including both of its warehouses and all food, equipment, and computer systems.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Claire Neal, CEO of MANNA FoodBank, said they devised a plan to receive donations in the morning and distribute items in the afternoon. Without cell service, internet, or open roads, “we were really just kind of relying on the kindness and capacity of our local neighbors,” she said.

What came next was “the scariest moment” of her professional life when she arrived at the donation site in the morning and realized how little food would be available to distribute.

“But the truth is … people gave what they had. They pulled things out of their garages to give to their neighbors,” said Neal. “And then when the roads opened up, the rest of the country, and really the world, responded in amazing and beautiful ways.”

Another learning from the hurricane, Neal said, was realizing just how long recovery takes. The food bank only recently restored its freezer and cooler capacity — nearly 500 days after the storm — and is now beginning to rebuild its volunteer center and offices.

“I say all of that just to use MANNA as an example … many of our neighbors are still rebuilding,” said Neal. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is something that we can do together.”

Connecting students to locally grown food

Farm to school — which includes purchasing local food for school meals, educational activities related to agriculture and nutrition, and school gardening — offers numerous benefits for both farmers and students.

For farmers, selling to school districts opens new institutional markets that can provide additional revenue and strengthen local economies. For students, eating local products in school meals and snacks can improve access to nutritious, high-quality food and increase interest in topics related to food systems and agriculture.

During a panel, Danielle Raucheisen, program director at the (ASAP), discussed the organization’s efforts to connect local farmers interested in selling to schools with school nutrition directors and child care programs that want to buy local products.

“One way we’re doing this is holding grower-buyer meetings at food hubs here in western North Carolina,” said Raucheisen. “Food hub staff, child care staff, and farmers from the community will learn more about each other and the different systems they all operate in.”

One of the farms ASAP works with is in Fairview. The farm offers grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pork, and pasture-raised chickens.

Virginia Hamilton, director of operations at Hickory Nut Gap Farms, said the farm supplies up to 8,000 pounds of ground beef to local schools each month. Located on 70 acres, the farm also frequently hosts groups of students for field trips and tours, allowing children from all backgrounds to “be a farm kid for a couple hours,” Hamilton said.

During the panel, Hamilton outlined three ways to support farm to school:

• Secure continuous funding for farm to school: To build momentum, Hamilton said farm to school efforts need continuous funding rather than being susceptible to the decisions of donors or politicians. “Every time we have to restart or retool something, it slows down the progress that we’ve made together,” she said.
• Support independently owned regional food infrastructure: “We can’t feed students if we can’t get the food to the schools,” said Hamilton. Infrastructure needed for large scale distribution of local food includes refrigeration, transportation, trucking, processing and slaughter facilities, and packing infrastructure.
• Advocate for farmland preservation: NC FarmLink estimates that the state will lose nearly of farmland to development by 2040. “Farm to school or farm to table just doesn’t actually work without the farm part. When we lose farmland, we can’t get it back,” said Hamilton.

Increasing access to summer meals in rural communities

When school is out for the summer, efforts to feed children don’t end. In 2025, 5.3 million summer meals were served across the state to children ages 18 and under, an increase from the 4.2 million meals served in summer 2024, CHI.

Historically, all summer meals had to be eaten on-site, such as at a park or a library. This can create barriers to accessing summer meals, particularly in rural communities, where children may not have transportation to reach meal sites.

Beginning in the summer of 2023, new provided a solution: Summer meals sponsors in low-income, rural areas are now allowed to provide meals that can be eaten off-site, also called non-congregate meals or .

“SUN Meals To-Go are a game changer,” said Tamara Baker, project and communications director at CHI, adding that serving SUN Meals To-Go also provides a way for school nutrition departments to strengthen their financial position by receiving additional federal reimbursements.

Participation in SUN Meals To-Go has grown rapidly. According to CHI, there were eight sponsors participating in summer 2023, 33 sponsors participating in summer 2024, and 43 sponsors participating in summer 2025.

Two of those sponsors — and — shared their experiences with SUN Meals To-Go during the conference.

Nicole Caudill, director of community meals for Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, said implementing SUN Meals To-Go has resulted in rapid growth in the food bank’s summer meals efforts. In 2025, when the food bank increased SUN Meals To-Go operations, they served roughly 1,200 children per day through congregate meals, and another 1,000 children per day through SUN Meals To-Go — nearly doubling their reach.

“This really opens up doors for us to get meals into rural communities,” said Caudill, adding that more than 54,000 meals were served last year through SUN Meals To-Go alone.

Learn more about SUN Meals To-Go in Hickory City Schools in .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

The students at Circle City Prep aren’t big fans of squash – no matter which type their school chef makes. But they do like brussels sprouts.

Tracey Couillard, lead chef at the school, leans on her days working in Indianapolis restaurants to come up with ways to cook with vegetables and fruits that might be new to the students.

It’s all about “making sure we are intentional about what we are offering, and not just throwing spaghetti at a wall to make it stick,” said Couillard, who started her job a year ago.

The school’s kitchen is a , a nonprofit formerly known as the Patachou Foundation which aims to make sure all students have access to good food. The organization partners with schools to have cafeterias that serve fresh and scratch-made foods. At Circle City Prep, Couillard leads a kitchen team of six other people to prepare scratch-made food for breakfast and lunch for more than 430 students that include fresh vegetables and fruits as well as daily salads.

What students are eating is also getting attention at the statehouse where house lawmakers from public schools that participate in a “federally funded or assisted meal program.” The bill also requires schools to post a menu and ingredients online.

At Circle City Prep, Couillard said the fresh foods help students build healthy habits both inside and outside of school. And it’s led her to build relationships with students too.

“Sometimes kids will be in a sad spot and ask if I can have lunch with them, so then I sit with them and let them talk and let them share their feelings because there are a lot of big feelings between kindergarten and eighth grade,” she said.

Chalkbeat talked to Couillard about her daily routine, what makes her cafeteria special, and the biggest thing she’s learned on the job.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to become the lead chef at Circle City Prep?

I was in the Army National Guard for 20 years, and after I retired from the guard, I started working in restaurants around Indianapolis and did that for about 12 years.

This opportunity popped up at a time when I needed a change, and I honestly didn’t know if it was going to be for me. Working in restaurants with adults is very different than working in a school kitchen with kids from kindergarten to eighth grade as your primary customers

But the kids are the best part. I’ve got kids that come into my office when they are having a bad day, and they build Legos while I’m working on something. I’ve got a couple of kids who come in after school and do extra practice on their reading.

I get a lot of joy and feel like I’m actually doing something helpful and making a positive difference in kids’ days.

Tell me about the meals you make at the school.

It’s mostly all from scratch and we do a lot of our own sauces. We’re very mindful of sodium, fat, and sugar to make sure we are serving good healthy foods for the kids to eat. Students have fresh vegetables and fruit. Every day they have a different salad option.

I started a program at the beginning of the school year to introduce them to new fresh fruits and new fresh vegetables, just trying to broaden their horizons.

At first, they were apprehensive because it’s something new but now, the kids get really excited about it, they are really invested in it.

How has the food made an impact on students?

They eat more vegetables now when they are coming through lunch, and that’s just good fuel for their bodies and their minds. They’re more willing to try something new too. It’s shocking to me how many kids I see with salads compared to last year because it’s just different exposure.

When they ask their people at home to cook something we had at school and it doesn’t taste the same, they’ll ask if I can share a recipe with their parents on how we do it so it tastes like it does here, which is really cool.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My day starts between 6:30 and 7 a.m. I check out the breakfast stations and make sure they are set, and oftentimes I’ll be walking the halls while the kids are coming in, touching base with them and making sure they are getting their breakfast.

I sit in on late breakfast. There are kids that come in late almost every day so they are already a little behind the curve. I sit down with them, make sure they have a good breakfast and their mind is set to jump in and go to class. I’m trying to be a positive touchpoint for them when they are starting their day.

In between breakfast and lunch, we are prepping. And at lunch, I’m helping kids move through the line, making sure that they have all the items they need on their tray to have a good meal.

What do you want people to know about what it’s like to have a cafeteria that emphasizes fresh foods?

They have to look at the kids as they are an investment. We are able to run a fully staffed kitchen and feed breakfast and lunch to more than 430 kids a day, and we are operating a scratch-based kitchen in the black.

You can run a successful school kitchen without using all of the processed foods, it takes practice, and it takes a certain amount of skill that maybe you wouldn’t expect from a school cafeteria.

But it’s an investment in the future. You are building healthy food habits and eating habits and trying to develop healthy relationships for kids with food. I’m teaching kids that good food can taste good.

What do you want to do next?

I would love to have a hydroponic garden in the cafeteria space. I would love to have a little green space where we can grow veggies and fruits and things like that. Because we serve salads every day, so how cool would it be to have lettuce growing in our cafeteria? The kids could see this is what is actually nourishing our bodies and this is how it grows to develop more of that connection of where does the food come from and how does it get to our plate.

What have you learned doing this job?

You don’t understand how much of an impact you can have on somebody else’s day. And you don’t always see that impact with adults, but it’s really easy to see that with kids. You can see their whole day shift with just a “Hey, how are ya? You good?”

You give them two minutes and those little time investments make a difference. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned because it’s not hard to make somebody smile and share a little joy.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

In April, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned the focus of his  movement toward school food,  “major, dramatic changes” in school nutrition programs, which serve nearly  across the country each year.

“School lunch programs have deteriorated where about 70% of the food that our children eat is ultraprocessed food, which is killing them,” Kennedy . “We need to stop poisoning our kids and making sure that Americans are once again the healthiest kids on the planet.”

The federal government is working to develop a of ultraprocessed foods, but they are to be industrially produced, ready-to-eat foods that contain high levels of sugar, salt, or additives, such as chips, soft drinks, and frozen meals.

Global consumption of ultraprocessed foods has in recent years. published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August, youth ages 18 and under consumed more than 60% of their daily calories from ultraprocessed foods.

Now, there is a associating ultraprocessed foods with negative health outcomes. In November, a found evidence that increased consumption of ultraprocessed food is a “key driver” of escalating rates of diet-related chronic disease. The series authors to reduce the consumption of ultraprocessed foods, including by restricting ultraprocessed foods in school meals.

Federal efforts to of school meals have largely focused on implementing , which regulate nutrients like added sugars and sodium. However, these regulations don’t necessarily result in less ultraprocessed food — instead, manufacturers often to meet new thresholds. School nutrition programs, faced with tight budgets and limited staff capacity, often rely on ultraprocessed products like frozen pizzas, packaged sandwiches, and packaged breakfast pastries.

As the federal government and other entities work to reduce the consumption of ultraprocessed food, what will it actually take for schools to stop serving them?

“Our government right now has … more of a ‘takeaway’ mentality,” said Jayme Robertson, school nutrition director for and schools, regarding federal school nutrition standards. “If you change that and instead focus on more fresh, more local, more raw ingredients, more scratch cooking, then that’s where the real impact is going to happen.”

Robertson and other believe a paradigm shift is needed for schools to reduce ultraprocessed food and implement more scratch cooking, which involves preparing meals with whole, raw, or minimally processed ingredients. While data on the prevalence of scratch cooking is limited, the latest found that most school nutrition programs make less than 25% of meals from scratch.

“We need to stop penny pinching and start looking at the long-term outcomes of what serving less processed food in schools would produce. And we need to make sure our school districts have the resources they need to actually do this,” said Mara Fleishman, CEO of the . “If we want Americans to stop eating ultraprocessed food, let’s start in kindergarten.”

The technical challenges of scratch cooking

Before scratch cooking can begin, school nutrition programs have to secure necessary equipment, hire staff with culinary expertise, purchase ingredients, and plan menus that meet federal requirements.

Equipment

“When you go into schools that don’t have running water, don’t tell me to scratch cook,” said Dr. Katie Wilson, executive director of the .

Many school nutrition programs cannot scratch cook due to limited or outdated kitchen facilities that prevent the storage, processing, or cooking of whole ingredients — such as a lack of coolers or freezers to store fresh ingredients.

Buying new equipment or renovating facilities can pose a major cost. School nutrition programs operate financially independently of school districts as self-sustaining, nonprofit enterprises. The roughly $4.60 per lunch provided by must be used to cover the cost of food, supplies, labor, equipment, and overhead costs, often leaving little room in the budget for large capital investments.

Even if a district can afford the upgrades needed to scratch cook, there may be additional hurdles to installing and using that equipment, particularly in older school buildings. For example, Wilson recalled speaking to a school nutrition director who spent $500,000 on equipment that hasn’t been used yet because there isn’t enough power in the school building to plug it in.

Staffing

School nutrition programs often face  staff. In a  of school nutrition directors conducted by the School Nutrition Association (SNA) in 2024, nearly 89% of respondents reported challenges with staff shortages, and the overall vacancy rate was 8.7%.

To scratch cook, school nutrition programs not only need sufficient staffing levels — they also need to hire staff with the skills necessary to cook using whole ingredients, including knowledge of specific culinary skills, food safety, and equipment use. According to Wilson, the majority of school nutrition employees are not paid to attend training, making it difficult for them to build the skills needed to scratch cook.

“It’s about valuing food — valuing what they contribute to the school day and to the students’ life. We don’t value them, and that’s why they’re many times the lowest paid,” said Wilson of school nutrition professionals compared to other school employees.

Ingredients

School nutrition programs often need to purchase more fresh, whole ingredients to scratch cook, which may involve developing new vendor relationships and executing new contracts. But this is not as simple as finding a local farmer to purchase meat and vegetables from, according to school nutrition leaders.

As recipients of federal funding, school nutrition departments must adhere to a variety of , which dictate what procurement techniques can be used based on the purchase amount.

According to Wilson, varying interpretations of federal procurement rules are one of the biggest challenges facing school food purchasing. This challenge is further compounded by the fact that, if a state or locality has different purchasing thresholds than the federal government, the more restrictive threshold must be followed.

“If everybody would get on the same page and just follow the federal standard rules, we could work at changing some of those federal rules to make them better for fresh, whole food,” she said.

Menu plans

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulates the nutritional quality of school meals through , which dictate each required component of the meal — such as how many cups of different types of vegetables must be included — and place limits on calories, saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium.

Scratch cooking involves preparing recipes that rely on whole ingredients but still adhere to these requirements, which takes more planning and results in greater variation than purchasing pre-made, ultraprocessed items that already meet all requirements. If schools deviate from the meal pattern, they risk not receiving federal reimbursement.

“We have forced, particularly small districts … where they don’t have the money or the team to hire chefs or all these other people to help them with this — we’ve forced them to buy pre-packaged, formulated food, because it guarantees they meet the meal pattern,” said Wilson.

Wilson recalled that, during her time as a school nutrition director, scratch-made zucchini muffins were less than 0.1 ounces away from the required weight, disqualifying the muffins from counting as a meal component that day.

“You can’t do scratch cooking if that’s what you’re under when it comes to the micromanagement of the meal pattern,” she said.

The adaptive challenges of scratch cooking

Beyond the technical challenges facing scratch cooking, shifting away from ultraprocessed food and toward preparing meals from scratch requires change management. This presents a series of , or those related to shifting mindsets, values, and culture.

Through her work at the Chef Ann Foundation, which supports schools in implementing scratch cooking, Fleishman has seen that a strong commitment from school nutrition leaders is crucial to success — because scratch cooking isn’t easy.

“In many ways, it’s easier to pull a frozen chicken nugget out of the freezer,” she said. “When you start building a scratch cook program, there is a lot of uplifting that has to be done. So you really need to be in it, you have to see the value of it, you have to believe in it, you have to be in it for the long term.”

The Chef Ann Foundation “sees the transition to scratch cooking as a continuum of gradual progress rather than an all-or-nothing approach,” according to its , with a five-step continuum that ranges from ready-to-eat meals to scratch-made meals. 

Fleishman said that moving along this continuum takes time, and schools often have to start small and introduce new scratch-made menu items gradually as they secure new equipment.

As Yadkin County and Elkin City schools transitioned to scratch cooking over the last five years, Robertson said she has worked intentionally to build trust and buy-in with her school nutrition team. In her first year as school nutrition director, she worked in school kitchens to build relationships, learn about the speed-scratch approach, and understand equipment and staffing levels.

“It really made sense for me to use that first year to observe, to learn, to really immerse myself in how the program was operating, instead of coming in and just making drastic changes,” said Robertson.

Using lessons from that experience, she then created a menu committee and a managers council to ensure “boots on the ground” voices informed the district’s approach to scratch cooking. She said this created a structured way to gather feedback and troubleshoot plans before they were implemented.

“It gave everybody a voice at the table, and it got everybody on the same page in terms of the direction we were moving,” she said.

School nutrition staff then participated in professional development where they watched new scratch-made recipes be prepared, providing them with a visual, step-by-step explanation of how to cook each component. Just like cooking at home, Robertson said that as staff cooked new recipes repeatedly, their comfort level grew.

Fleishman echoed how important creating buy-in with school nutrition professionals is for the success of scratch cooking efforts.

“If you’re able to build a culture of professionalism and value within school food and help your team understand why cooking from scratch is so important and what the impact of their work will be, then you don’t necessarily get some of the pushback that you see,” she said.

Then, once scratch-cooked items are available, there’s still work needed to shift students’ preferences away from the ultraprocessed foods they may be accustomed to eating. 

“It’s not like they’re serving packaged, processed french toast sticks, and then you put the scratch-cooked french toast casserole on the menu and everyone’s like, ‘Yeah I like this so much better,’” said Fleishman. “Ultraprocessed food is highly addictive. So there is a period of transition.”

Marketing to students and families that explains what scratch cooking is, why the school nutrition program is doing it, and why scratch-made items are healthier can help encourage students to try new items.

For example, Robertson shares new recipes through newsletters and on social media, highlighting which ingredients are locally sourced and tagging farmers. She also uses taste tests with students to ensure scratch-made items are things they enjoy eating.

The financial equation

While there’s a common perception that scratch cooking is more expensive than serving processed food, according to Fleishman, it doesn’t necessarily have to cost more. Although equipment purchases can pose a major cost, when comparing a scratch-made item directly with a processed counterpart, the scratch-made item may be less expensive or cost the same, depending on what ingredients are used.

“In reality, it could cost more — you could buy all organic, regenerative ingredients. But it doesn’t have to. You can scratch cook within the federal reimbursement rate,” said Fleishman, adding that it’s crucial for school nutrition directors to have strong financial management skills in order to manage a sustainable scratch cooking program.

For example, in Yadkin County and Elkin City schools, Robertson said it costs roughly $1.10 per serving of the pre-made spaghetti sauce the district previously purchased, and it now costs $0.95 per serving to prepare a scratch-made sauce. In an of four school districts that participated in the Chef Ann Foundation’s Get Schools Cooking program, the “overall financial health” of school food programs increased after transitioning to scratch cooking.

Robertson has also leveraged strategic menu planning to purchase a core set of ingredients and cut down on unnecessary inventory. For example, she now purchases raw ground beef as a base protein for multiple scratch-made items — including spaghetti, tacos, and hamburgers — replacing several processed items.

What’s needed to support more scratch cooking?

Robertson compares trying to implement scratch cooking in the current policy and regulatory environment as “putting together a Jenga puzzle and hoping it doesn’t fall.”

“You’re asking employees that you’re not paying hardly anything to, to see these regulations through and provide an enjoyable experience. I feel like it’s just becoming harder and harder. It’s almost like you’re being asked to do more with less every single year,” she said.

As more schools work to reduce ultraprocessed foods in school meals and implement scratch cooking, experts point to a variety of possible solutions.

Higher school meal reimbursement rates

As the costs of and continue to rise, many school nutrition programs find it difficult to provide school meals within the per-meal , which is roughly $4.60 for each free school lunch and $2.46 for each free school breakfast, with lower reimbursements for reduced-price and paid meals.

“I do not feel like students thrive on mini powdered donuts … but I know the mini powdered donut is more cost-effective, and it takes me less labor in the morning, and I don’t have the money to put into it,” said Robertson.

In the of school nutrition directors nationwide, nearly all respondents cited challenges with the cost of food (97.9%), labor (94.9%), and equipment (91.4%), and only 20.5% reported the reimbursement rate is sufficient to cover the cost of producing a meal.

Low reimbursement rates can also make it difficult for school nutrition programs to recruit and retain staff. This is particularly true in areas with a higher cost of living where other food service jobs may pay employees a higher wage, making it difficult for school nutrition programs to offer a competitive wage.

Introduced in Congress in October, the would permanently increase the federal reimbursement rate for school meals, adding an additional 45 cents for each lunch served and an additional 28 centers for each breakfast served.

“High costs and insufficient funds are hampering efforts to expand scratch cooking and reduce added sugar and sodium in school meals,” said SNA President Stephanie Dillard in a about the bill. “School meal programs desperately need increased reimbursements to invest in staff and training, upgrade kitchen equipment, and purchase more fresh and local produce.”

Funding for school kitchen equipment

Because school nutrition programs operate financially independently, local school districts often aren’t able to fund equipment for school kitchens. This means state or federal investments are needed to ensure schools have the equipment needed to scratch cook.

In previous years, the USDA has offered , but funds can only be used to cover the cost of the equipment and not the corresponding increase in energy or other utilities needed to use it, which Wilson said poses a challenge.

At the state level, California has allocated from the state’s general fund to provide funding for infrastructure upgrades and equipment in school kitchens, along with staff training, with the goal of helping more schools offer scratch-made items.

Investments in the school nutrition workforce

Investments are also needed to better recruit and train culinary professionals to work in school nutrition programs, school nutrition leaders said.

“Unless we are able to fundamentally look at developing the greater workforce in school food, then a lot of the work that we’re all doing is kind of pushing this boulder up a hill, and it might come back down,” said Fleishman.

To help meet these workforce needs, the Chef Ann Foundation developed the nation’s first for scratch-cooked school meals, currently available in Colorado, Virginia, and California, with more states to come. The apprenticeship programs provide aspiring and beginning school food professionals with the skills needed to create and manage scratch-cook school meal programs.

Adopting universal free school meals

Serving free meals to all students in school meals — along with — providing school nutrition programs with more federal reimbursement funds and giving them a better opportunity to enhance the food they are serving, including through scratch cooking. 

Currently, — California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont — have passed permanent legislation that provides free school meals to all students. Dozens of other states, including North Carolina, have introduced bills that would do the same.

Funding for local food purchases

Given that scratch cooking requires school nutrition programs to use whole, raw, or minimally processed ingredients, funds to purchase local food for school meals can help offset the costs of scratch cooking while keeping school food spending in the local economy.

However, in March 2025, the USDA canceled $660 million for the . Started in 2021, the program provided funding to states to purchase local foods for use in schools, helping farmers sell more of their products to schools and expanding local and regional food markets.

Without this funding, schools face even greater , reducing the amount spent in the local agricultural economy and relying instead on large national wholesalers or distributors.

Looking ahead

Despite the challenges of implementing scratch cooking, Robertson said the shift to preparing more items from scratch has generated strong support from the local community, which has been fulfilling for her staff.

“Staff members will get stopped in grocery stores, by parents or teachers, and they’ll rave about a particular menu item they heard their child talk about,” she said.

Robertson’s mom worked in public education, and she remembers a time when students enjoyed the food they were served in the school cafeteria. They would even ask for recipes. 

“I’m not sure when that stopped, but that’s kind of my ultimate goal — to get back to that and build those relationships,” she said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Agriculture announced a farm-to-table program Thursday for Arkansas schools that will provide meals to students using ingredients raised or grown in-state.

Called the Arkansas Plate Initiative, it will start as a pilot program in five schools in 2026, a from Sanders’ office said.

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“Arkansas students deserve access to healthy, nutritious foods at school, and the Arkansas Plate Initiative shows meaningful progress in our effort to improve child nutrition and support our farmers and producers across the state,” Sanders said in the release. “Not only will this program give students access to fresh, locally sourced products, but it will also teach them about Arkansas’ largest industry and what it takes to keep it.”

Starting in January, the program will feature “monthly ‘Arkansas Plate Days,’” with school cafeterias serving meals using Arkansas-grown foodstuffs such as poultry and rice, and fruits and vegetables.

Participating schools will also “receive educational materials, promotional signage, and ‘Meet the Farmer’ profiles to help students discover more about where their food comes from and learn the importance of supporting Arkansas agriculture,” according to the release.

The program appears to be similar to the federally-funded Farm to School and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latter program also helps local schools purchase locally-sourced ingredients for school meals. It faced sweeping cutbacks in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, despite support from state agriculture commissioners,

The Arkansas Department of Agriculture did not respond to questions regarding the new initiatives’ relation to federal school meal programs nor about how the initiative would be funded.

The new initiative is the latest in a series of nutrition-related moves made by the Sanders administration and state legislators this year. After signing the bipartisan Act 123 of 2025, which provides free school breakfasts to all Arkansas students, earlier this year, Sanders also that the Department of Corrections would provide produce harvested by incarcerated individuals to the Marion School District for breakfasts and lunches.

The announcement also comes at a time of precarity for Arkansas’ agriculture industry, which is heavily reliant on commodity farming. Commodity farmers are facing some of the worst market conditions in years as prices for commodities drop and the costs of producing continue to rise.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

Barren cupboards at home during the summer. Empty stomachs at school in the fall. Advocates predict that may soon be the reality for many of the nation’s children after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which calls for dramatic cuts in federal food aid.

Signed by President Donald Trump after squeaking through the House and Senate, the massive bill will reduce funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, by roughly — approximately 20% — between 2025 and 2034. And new rules are expected to make it harder for needy families to obtain the aid. 

The result: Some will lose at least some benefits, including 800,000 children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.

The controversial bill, which delivers tax breaks to the , comes just a few months after the agriculture department slashed from programs that allowed schools and food banks to buy locally produced goods. 

And it arrives at the same time that 13 GOP-led states, including Texas, are , rejecting federal dollars to feed children during the months when they are most vulnerable, citing .

Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, said the cuts and eligibility changes to SNAP — the deepest since its as the food stamp program — put students’ well-being and education at risk. 

“Children’s learning will be disrupted and their health will be jeopardized,” she said. “It’s really going to be devastating. Every state will be affected by this.”

Currently, people without dependents are limited to three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 80 hours per month and continue to do so until age 54. The new law . 

Under current rules, SNAP recipients responsible for a child under 18 are exempt from the work rule. The new bill .

Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director for the at The Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank, said the work-related rules, which require extensive documentation, will pose an administrative hurdle some families might not overcome. 

“A lot of people who get cut off from these services are people who are working but don’t have the time or energy to fill out all of this paperwork,” she said. 

But perhaps the most significant change to SNAP is a shift in financial responsibility for the program from the federal government to the states. All 23 Democratic governors warned Congress in June that they were unprepared to shoulder this new — some noted they from the program completely — and food banks are  

Child and family health advocates were relieved to see at least one of their fears was not realized: The , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, was expected to lose billions. Those changes were not included in the bill’s final version.

SNAP eligibility among children is a trigger for schools to provide free meals. As fewer kids qualify for food aid at home, those children will not get the nutrition they need and their classmates will also lose access, advocates say.

“As SNAP enrollment drops, fewer schools will be able to offer all students free meals,” Hysom said. “So, we’ll see a rise in stigma in the cafeteria, a decrease in school meal participation, the return of for many schools and increased hunger in the classroom.”

Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund, is worried about the kids who will be pushed out of the program despite their ongoing food insecurity, noting that children of color might be .  

Wilson said schools moving toward universal free meals in recent years — delivered without students having to apply —  The changes brought about by the new bill mark a major step backward, he said.  

“We believe we will see a shift back to an individual eligibility model, which costs more and means fewer students will have access to it,” he said. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2028, any state that has a payment error rate — the percentage of people given benefits who did not qualify or who were denied aid despite meeting the requirements — must contribute a 5% match for the cost of SNAP program allotments. 

State contributions rise incrementally as the error rate increases: those reaching 10% or higher will be required to kick in 15%, though questions loom about how this will be implemented. as soon as others. 

The paperwork requirement is not only burdensome for families, but for those who process the documents, child advocates say. The task comes as the federal government also plans to drastically reduce what it spends on SNAP’s administrative costs, from 50% to 25%, leaving states responsible for the rest.

Gina Plata-Nino, the Food Research & Action Center’s deputy director for SNAP, fears states will not be prepared to properly administer the benefit program. 

“This will cost state agencies a lot of time — and time is money,” she said, adding new applicants might have to wait to be processed. “The state agencies are already at capacity.” 

Plata-Nino said the related calculations will be more complex, especially for families with children. 

The bill also eliminates , an evidence-based program that “helps people make their SNAP dollars stretch, teaches them how to cook healthy meals, and lead physically active lifestyles,” according to the USDA. 

Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that the bill changed the work exemption for able-bodied adults with children from those with dependents under age 18 to those with kids under 7. The reduction to age 7 was in the House version of the bill, but was changed to age 14 in the Senate version that was ultimately approved.

A sweeping plan to slash federal spending would gut vital programs — including cuts to those feeding low-income kids at school and at home. While Congress has yet to propose direct cuts to a critical federal school nutrition program, its budget proposal includes a $12 billion reduction in funding for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Since 2010, CEP has enabled local school districts to partner with the federal government to serve free breakfast and lunch to all students at lower-income schools without collecting individual applications. This program addresses critical gaps in the system to nourish children. 

Additionally, the House is advancing to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest proposed cuts to SNAP in history, worsening food insecurity for millions of families. Many children qualify for free school meals automatically if their families receive SNAP. If Congress defunds SNAP and children lose access to these programs, they will also lose their direct and easy access to free or reduced-price school meals. When support for both school meals and food at home is weakened, the safety net begins to fall apart.

These proposed draconian cuts seek to balance the federal budget on the backs of children and low- and middle-income families, while undermining food systems that support educational readiness and a thriving economy.  

As the executive director of The Urban School Food Alliance, which represents 18 of the largest school districts in the country, I am concerned, like millions of others, about this funding being eliminated. In my day-to-day work, I hear from families about how school meals have changed the trajectory of their children’s lives. 

At a recent haircut appointment, I comforted my hairdresser when she came to tears asking me if school meals would be cut or cost more. She and her husband are still trying to recover from their losses due to service industry closures related to COVID. They both work multiple jobs and after having to sell one car, the free school meals program is what enabled them to keep paying the rent for their apartment. 

For her family and millions more, decisions from Congress to withdraw its commitment to combating childhood hunger would jeopardize children’s health, stability, and, ultimately, academic success. 

Hunger has pernicious effects on a child’s trajectory in school and life.

Undernourished children struggle to focus in school, leading to lower academic performance, higher absenteeism, and increased emotional and behavioral problems. Children are less likely to reach their full potential as adult members of society without consistent access to the nutrition that  school meals provide.

Our national school meal programs cost about $23 billion annually — less than half a percent of the total federal budget — but  nearly $40 billion in human health and economic benefits. As the national conversation around healthy eating moves front and center, the value of school meals should be celebrated.

In another economic blow, the Trump administration’s decision to cancel supporting local food purchases further underscores the compounded danger of these cuts. These programs don’t just provide meals — they sustain American farmers, ranchers, and local food economies, ensuring a flow of healthy food to schools and food banks. Cutting this funding would intensify food insecurity and hinder our agricultural economy at a time when both are more critical than ever.

These are not feel-good talking points; these are issues of national security. A healthy, well-educated population produces a strong, productive nation. And a resilient, local food system ensures a robust, plentiful supply chain that readies itself for natural disasters and other times of crisis. 

Because of the universal free meals provided through the CEP program, 44% of California’s food-insecure families who previously didn’t  for federal assistance now have access to reliable, daily nutrition. In addition to reducing the stigma of free meals, the program minimizes administrative burdens and helps families, who often hold multiple jobs yet struggle with food insecurity. Another benefit is that the program reduces error rates and ensures the neediest students receive the benefits. This essential and enriching student program is now at risk.

A found that the proposed changes to SNAP and CEP could mean an estimated 832,000 children would need to start filing school meal applications, based on a sample of 37 states and the District of Columbia. The analysis also found that at least 18 million students nationwide could face higher costs for school meals.

Any proposed disinvestments in CEP and SNAP move us in the direction toward scarcity, worsening outcomes and harm to working families. The ripple effects of repealing these vital programs will damage communities and undermine our children’s health for years and generations to come. 

Budgets are a statement of our values. Families rely on their Congressional representatives to protect, advocate, and represent their interests, including a commitment to fiscal responsibility. Still, there is no “budget reconciliation” if it is negotiated at the expense of our children and families. 

While fiscal responsibility matters, we cannot afford to undercut investments in programs that directly support our children, economy and workforce. Instead of slashing investments that nourish hungry children at school and support our American farmers, federal leadership should continue to invest in programs like CEP and SNAP that have years of well-documented success in solving some of our country’s most complex issues. 

This is the time for parents, educators, and communities to speak up against these highly damaging budget proposals. Over the past decade, we have made significant strides in bringing locally sourced and freshly prepared meals to our schools, improving children’s overall health and well-being. We must stand with parents, school nutrition directors, educators, and farmers fighting to protect these essential programs. 

The choice is clear: We can either defund our children’s futures, subject millions to hunger and exacerbate the economic hardship of millions of families. Or we can invest in all Americans by championing their health, education, and potential — starting with the unwavering commitment to nutritious school food that every child needs to grow, learn, and thrive.

Regardless of political ideology, we can all agree that no child should go hungry or be deprived of the opportunity to succeed.

In 2020 and 2021, the COVID pandemic exposed weaknesses in the United States’ supply chain for key items in American households.

The Biden administration spent millions of dollars through the U.S. Department of Agriculture on new programs that helped farmers sell their produce to local schools, create produce boxes for households and provide more direct food access to their communities.

The Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) and Local Food for Schools (LFS) programs provided incentives for schools and community organizations to buy food from local farmers. They allowed states to create contracts with farmers so schools could purchase their foods and gave farmers the promise of a guaranteed sale when harvest time arrived.

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Now, with rocky trade partnerships and tariffs looming, President Donald Trump’s administration has for the programs, leaving farmers across the country heading into their growing season unsure who will buy their produce.

“We really figured out how to get local farm product into community spaces under LFS and LFPA,” said Thomas Smith, the chief business officer at the Kansas City Food Hub, a cooperative of farmers near the Kansas City area. “We were making our whole organization around meeting those new needs, because we believe in the government’s promise that they believe in local food.”

The Trump administration canceled about $660 million in funding for the programs that was to be paid out over the next few years. Through the programs so far, USDA has paid out more than to states and other recipients.

KC Food Hub took on the challenge of helping farmers, school districts and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education work together to streamline the processes under the Biden-era programs. It was almost an instant success.

In 2024, the cooperative brokered more than $500,000 in sales for small farmers in the Kansas City region — more than the group had seen in its first five years of operation.

KC Food Hub hoped that the new partnerships would continue putting money back into farmers’ pockets and was aiming for over $1 million in sales for the farmers they represent. Now, they’re huddling with school districts across Kansas and Missouri to try and keep some of the contracts alive in the absence of the federal money.

How purchasing agreements relieve stress for small farmers

The local food programs were an extra pillar of support for small farmers across the country.

USDA show that since 1980, the number of farms across the U.S. has decreased from about 2.5 million to 1.88 million in 2024. Part of that struggle, Smith said, is like many small-business owners, farmers are forced to take on many different roles.

“What they really want to be doing is farming, knowing their soil, knowing their land,” Smith said. “But because there is no distributor like the Food Hub in most communities, they have to be business people, too. They have to be in the board meetings, meetings with school administrators. And that just puts so much stress onto the food system.”

Over the years, as small farms have dwindled and larger operations have consolidated agricultural production in the United States, the middle market and distributors like the Food Hub have phased out.

When it comes to large-scale distributors, there are plenty of places a farmer could turn to sell their products. But the return for that farmer when selling to a large distributor is much lower.

“You get pennies on the dollar,” Smith said. “No respect to your work, no respect for your worth.”

There are other USDA programs that dedicate money to states through their nutrition assistance programs and set aside funds for seniors and low-income families to from local farmers.

Studies show ripple effects through local economies when higher quantities of local food are purchased. A 2010 found that for every dollar spent on local food products, there is between 32 cents and 90 cents in additional local economic activity.

For Mike Pearl, a legacy farmer in Parkville, the programs pushed him to expand faster than he’d planned. Now, without the guarantee of those contracts, he’s scaling back his production plan for the year.

“If you think about it, it was an early game changer,” Pearl said. “We were able to, for the first

time … grow on a contracted basis for a fair price for the farmer, in a way that we never would have been able to do before.”

That encouraged Pearl to increase production and begin making upgrades before he felt completely ready to do so, he told The Beacon. New equipment, growing more produce and hiring more staff were all side effects of the local food purchasing agreements.

“I’m not sure that a lot of vegetable farmers were actually ready for it,” Pearl said. “I wasn’t prepared for it. But we made some changes to grow a bit more and do as much as we can on a short runway. We were set up for a perfect storm.”

Anything extra Pearl produces will be donated, as his farm is one of the largest donors of food in the Kansas City area. But other farmers are left with questions about what will happen with their crops — and their revenue.

It raises a question of trust that Maile Auterson has encountered throughout her life as a fourth-generation farmer in the Ozarks and the founder of Springfield Community Gardens, which facilitates local produce boxes and the LFS programs in the Springfield, Joplin and Rolla areas.

“We promised the farmers,” Auterson said. “The biggest insult to us is that we cannot follow through on the promises we made to the farmers that we had made with that money.”

The area her group serves was set to get $3 million in federal funds over the next three years. While Auterson is trying to fulfill some of those contracts, the trust that small farmers were building with the government through the program has been severed, she said.

“We talked the farmers into participating and scaling up specifically for this program,” Auterson said. “Then when we can’t follow through, the government has done what they were afraid the government would do, which would be to not look out for the small farmer. It’s a terrible moral injury to all of us.”

What’s next for small farmers and local food purchasers?

Smith said the Food Hub is in talks with its participating school districts — including Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs and Shawnee Mission — to continue their purchasing agreements even without the federal funds.

So far, even with the funding cancellation, 95% of 2024’s produce sales are set to be maintained through this year, Smith said.

“As small farmers, they can’t meet the streamlined industrial agriculture price points, but we can come close,” said Katie Nixon, a farmer and the co-director of New Growth Food Systems, which is affiliated with the West Central Missouri Community Action Agency.

“Our quality is usually a lot higher,” Nixon said. “Lettuce, for example, will last three weeks in the cooler, whereas lettuce coming from greenhouses in God knows where will last a week before they turn to mush.”

The Blue Springs School District saw a 40% increase in the use of its cafeteria salad bars after switching to local produce, Smith said. And school districts often find less waste and more savings, despite the slightly higher price when purchasing the produce, Nixon said.

Research shows that farm-to-school programs, like sourcing local produce and teaching kids about farming, resulted in students choosing healthier options in the cafeteria and eating more fruits and vegetables. Schools also saw an average 9% increase in students eating their meals from the school cafeteria when they participated in farm-to-school programming.

During Trump’s most recent Cabinet meeting at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kenendy Jr. said the administration is planning a massive overhaul of the federal school meals program.

“It’s going to be simple, it’s going to be user friendly. It is going to stress the simplicity of local foods, of whole foods and of healthy foods,” Kennedy . “We’re going to make it easy for everyone to read and understand.”

Auterson and Nixon feel that the cancellation of the program is retribution for those who benefited from policies and funds initiated during the Biden administration.

“They’re hurting everyone,” Auterson said. “Everyone is suffering from them being retributional.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Last summer, hundreds of thousands of Hoosier families who qualify for food benefits and reduced-price school meals got a summertime boost: $120 per child monthly for food while schools were closed.

But relief for those 669,000 children may only have been a one-time blip. Indiana won’t participate in a federal summer food service program, known as SUN Bucks, in 2025. 

“We made a great step forward last summer in giving families the ability to purchase the food that they need for their kids when they need it. And it just feels like a giant leap backwards to take this program away that the federal government is still operating and we could opt into it,” said Kate Howe, the executive director of the Indy Hunger Network. “But Indiana has decided that they don’t want to.”

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Awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, SUN Bucks with free summertime meals and meals-to-go programs to ensure schoolchildren don’t go hungry. School breakfasts and lunches are often the only reliable source of nutrition for many students, and they lose access when the academic year ends.

Thirteen states opted out of the SUN Bucks in 2025, mostly those that didn’t participate in 2024. Indiana, however, has withdrawn after a year of participation, the state confirmed.

Indiana notified the federal oversight agency that it wouldn’t be participating on Feb. 20, 2025, but didn’t rule out future years, according to a  signed by the deputy director of the Family and Social Services Administration and housed on the Department of Education’s website. Plans were due to USDA by Feb. 15.

The Indiana Capital Chronicle messaged three state entities on Monday but didn’t receive requested details — including why the state withdrew from the program and the cost to administer it — before the publication deadline.

“While SUN Bucks will be discontinued for 2025, students in low-income areas of the state can still receive free summer meals at approximately 1,000 locations (schools and other organizations) through the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program,” wrote Courtney Bearsch, a spokeswoman for Indiana’s Department of Education.

Bearsch pointed families toward the USDA’s  and Hunger Hotline to identify participating locations. The hotline is accessible Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern Time at 1-866-3-HUNGRY (1-866-348-6479) for English speakers or at 1-877-8-HAMBRE (1-877-842-6273) for Spanish speakers.

Securing food in the summer

While in school, children can qualify for free or reduced price breakfasts and lunches. According to state data obtained by the , nearly half of Indiana’s students qualified for free or reduced meals in 2024, or more than 509,000 children.

However, the state wasn’t able to tell the Indiana Capital Chronicle why USDA reported 160,000 additional students participated in the SUN Bucks program.

Summer food service programs, in one form or another, have existed for decades. Traditionally, children would need to be on-site to receive meals and wouldn’t be permitted to take food home.

But the COVID-19 pandemic made large gatherings dangerous, forcing a pivot to grab-and-go meals and, eventually, a direct financial boost to families receiving food benefits.

The initial phase of the direct-to-family program was tied to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It increased funding for participating families using Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, or EBT. Following the end of the public health emergency on May 11, 2023, the federal government in favor of SUN Bucks — which also go onto EBT cards but are more narrowly tailored depending on family circumstances.

In Indiana, SUN Bucks were distributed to . According to the USDA, 669,000 children between the ages of 7 and 18 years old were served by the program in 2024 — though students were .

“Obviously, that provides a lot of flexibility,” observed Howe. “If they have allergies or dietary restrictions, having that money to purchase the food that works for your family is really important. I have a child with a peanut allergy … so if my son went to a meal site where they were serving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, he wouldn’t be able to eat that.”

Howe’s organization doesn’t directly participate in summertime food programming, which routinely relies on local school districts or local community centers, but does advertising and outreach.

While community centers and participating schools will still offer sit-down or grab-and-go meals, those may be harder for some families to access.

“Maybe you have 13-year-olds that you feel comfortable leaving home alone during the summer when you’re at work, but you don’t feel comfortable having them walk around the community to access meals at a free meal site,” said Howe, naming pedestrian safety as a concern.

“In rural areas … there might be one meal site per county. And for those you might have to walk or bike many miles in order to get the free meal,” Howe continued. “So those meals just become inaccessible to a lot of kids.”

from the Indiana Department of Education shows that the sites are clustered around population centers, potentially shutting out students in rural areas. Outside of cities, most options are tied to local school corporations.

The loss of the program was a setback for advocates like Howe working to feed Indiana’s hungry, especially in the face of economic uncertainty.

“The cost of groceries keeps rising. It’s getting harder and harder to buy those foods that your family needs,” concluded Howe. “Just having that little bit of help really makes a difference to families that are struggling.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

Every school in Kentucky’s LaRue County provides free breakfast and lunch to any student who wants it.

It’s been that way for a decade, ever since the federal government launched a program allowing LaRue County Schools, and thousands of other districts nationwide, to skip the paperwork asking how much families earn.

In these communities, lots of kids already receive other kinds of assistance for low-income families. Federal officials saw a way to make the subsidized meals program more efficient: Cover meal costs based on how many children are in similar assistance programs, rather than verify every family’s income.

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But LaRue County Schools won’t be able to do that anymore if sweeping changes to social programs proposed by congressional Republicans become law. GOP lawmakers say they want to ensure only eligible families get help and that taxpayer dollars are reserved for the neediest students, so that federal subsidies for school meals remain sustainable. But by one estimate, the Republicans’ plan would affect nearly a quarter of the students in the nation’s public schools.

, increase test scores, and decrease suspensions, likely because it eliminates the stigma students often associate with the free meals. Taking them away from students on a large scale could also have downstream effects on everything from families’ household budgets to local unemployment.

Stephanie Utley, the LaRue County district’s director of child nutrition, said that inevitably, fewer kids would eat school meals, either because their families no longer qualify for free breakfast and lunch or because they cannot produce documents to verify their income.

When fewer kids eat school meals, it’s harder for districts to cover their costs. To save money, Utley would likely swap higher-quality foods for cheaper ones, she said.

Apples and beef from local farms would go. The high school would serve fewer salads — they’d be too labor-intensive to prep. And a popular chicken breast sandwich would become a ground chicken patty.

Utley may have to lay off staff, too, she said, which would hurt the rural community’s economy.

“We’re the biggest restaurant in town,” she said. “It would be a nightmare.”

GOP school meals proposals would impact states

Republican lawmakers are considering a trio of proposals to help offset tax cuts sought by President Donald Trump that would be “devastating” to children and schools, said Erin Hysom, the senior child nutrition policy analyst for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.

One proposal would dramatically increase the share of students who need to be enrolled in aid programs — such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — for schools to be eligible to serve free meals to all kids through the .

Right now, schools need to show 25% of students are enrolled in those kinds of assistance programs to participate in community eligibility. The House Republican proposal would raise the share to 60% — higher than the threshold has ever been. That would kick more than 24,000 schools off of community eligibility, and some 12 million students would no longer automatically qualify for free meals, .

Essentially, only communities where nearly every child qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch could serve free meals to all kids.

“They’ve really moved the needle to the upper echelon of poverty,” Hysom said. “You couldn’t get any higher than that.”

Another proposal would require all families who don’t automatically qualify for free school meals through programs like SNAP to submit documents to verify their income with their application. That would burden families and schools with time-consuming added paperwork. Schools could end up cutting staff who serve food and work on school menus to hire more people to process applications.

Together, those changes would save $12 billion over 10 years, according to , the Republican chair of the House budget committee.

A third proposal would change how families qualify for SNAP and likely for free school meals. That would increase the paperwork burden even more.

All of that would make it more costly for to run their programs, because they rely heavily on federal reimbursement. whether they .

These three proposals are part of a process known as budget reconciliation that GOP lawmakers are using . As of Wednesday, that would keep funding essentially flat for the Agriculture Department, which pays for the school meal program, through the end of September.

School staff and child nutrition advocates are taking the House’s budget reconciliation proposals seriously. The Trump administration has already .

Free school meal cutbacks would have ripple effects

If fewer kids have access to free meals at school, more families would likely struggle to afford groceries at home. Many families who don’t qualify for free meals struggle to pay for food. This school year, a family of four qualified for free school meals if they made under $40,560 a year.

When schools eliminated free school meals for all following the pandemic, there was a , an issue school staff say will only intensify if these proposals go through.

Right now, schools typically have to verify the family’s income for 3% of their applications. If schools had to check income for every application, the burden would be enormous, school staff and child nutrition advocates said.

Many families who eke out a living working multiple jobs would have a hard time gathering up all the required documents to show how much they earn. Though children can participate in the school meals program regardless of their immigration status, undocumented parents may be afraid to hand over personal documents when Trump is threatening mass deportations.

“Eligible children are going to fall through the cracks,” Hysom said.

Many schools are already facing financial pressures from higher-than-usual food and labor costs, a . On top of that, schools are navigating new and stricter requirements for how much salt and sugar can be in food served by schools.

Schools have to buy most of their food from American sources, but if Trump puts certain tariffs in place for the long term, that could create new financial constraints.

“Cost is absolutely a concern,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, which represents school nutrition directors and conducted the survey. “When avocados or tomatoes from Mexico become much more expensive, that will cause an increase in demand for domestic produce, and an increase in price, as well.”

Shannon Gleave, the president of the School Nutrition Association, understands the need to make sure the school meal program runs as it should.

In Arizona’s Glendale Elementary School District, where Gleave is the director of food and nutrition, kids can speed through the lunch line because everyone qualifies for free meals. But staff scan student ID badges to make sure each kid only takes one meal, and that children with dietary restrictions get the right food.

Upping the verification requirements a little could work, she said. But verifying 100% of applications “is not an efficient use of time.”

“There is no way my existing staff could do that now,” she said. “You have to figure out a way to be good stewards of resources, but also look at the amount of administrative burden that it’s going to entail.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Wisconsin School Nutrition Association President Kaitlin Tauriainen says her goal has always been to feed every student.

“It seemed impossible for years, and then COVID happened,” said Tauriainen, who has worked in school nutrition for about 14 years and is also part of the Wisconsin Healthy School Meals For All Coalition. During the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture implemented waivers that allowed schools across the country to serve free meals to all children. “Basically, we were forced into doing it, which was fantastic, and really proved that we were capable and that it was better — like we thought it was going to be.”

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Tauriainen, who works as the child nutrition coordinator for the Ashwaubenon School District in Brown County, said there were less behavioral issues for the district then. She had observed earlier in her career at another school district how improved behavior could be the result of ensuring kids have access to food. She recalled a student who was eating free breakfast and free lunch, but still reported being hungry. Attending a different school that gave him more flexible access to food helped improve his situation, she said.

“He was so hungry all the time that he was just angry and causing disruptions. When they moved him to the charter school that gave him a little more flexibility and freedom to go make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich whenever he was hungry, he turned into a completely different kid,” Tauriainen said. “That’s what some of the teachers were seeing during COVID as well.”

The federal universal school meals program expired in June 2022 after Congress decided not to extend it. Ashwaubenon School District now charges students who don’t qualify under current guidelines for lunches, but it is able to provide breakfast to all students.

Limiting behavioral problems is just one potential benefit of adopting universal school meals that Tauriainen and other advocates detailed to the Examiner. Other benefits include filling in gaps for students who may need the meals but don’t — or can’t — participate. Advocates say universal meals would level the playing field for students and ensure everyone has access to nutritious meals.

Last month, Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly visited Kenosha Unified School District to propose that Wisconsin join to all students.

Under her proposal, Wisconsin would dedicate an additional $290 million per biennium so students, regardless of their families’ income, are eligible for free breakfast and lunch. Her proposal includes an additional $21 million to support other aspects of school nutrition. Those include funding to expand participation in the school breakfast program to independent charter schools, residential schools and residential childcare centers; creating a program to encourage school districts to buy directly from local farmers and producers; and funding for programs to support access to milk.

“Access to food is one of the most basic human needs, and yet many Wisconsin kids are telling us they don’t know when — or if — they will have their next meal,” Underly said in a statement. “When we make sure all our kids are properly nourished, we are nurturing the leaders of tomorrow.”

Hunger and grades

Across Wisconsin, 45.4% of enrolled public schools students — or 782,090 students — participate in the USDA Child Nutrition Programs and 52.1% of enrolled students at private schools participating in the USDA Child Nutrition Programs, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

The current guidelines outline that students in a household of four, with income of $40,560 per year or less, qualify for free school meals. If a household’s yearly income is between $40,560.01 and $57,720, children can receive reduced-price meals. Families are also required to fill out an application annually in order to receive the benefit.

According to the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, one in four Wisconsin students reported experiencing hunger due to lack of food in the home and 2.6% reported going hungry “most of the time” or “always.” Students with low grades of D’s or F’s also reported going hungry at a higher rate — 10.3% of students — when compared their peers with higher grades of A’s or B’s — 2.3% of students.

Universal school meals would help fill in the gaps that the current system allows for, advocates said.

Kenosha Unified School District currently provides school meals to all kids free of charge.

“When we had to return to our traditional system of serving meals in the 2022-23 school year, we heard from families that they missed the simplicity and security of free meals for all,” KUSD Chief Communications Officer Tanya Ruder wrote in an email responding to questions from the Examiner.

This year every school in the district is able to provide lunch and breakfast to all students through the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The policy allows some high-poverty schools and districts to provide school meals to all students regardless of income and without having to fill out an application.

When meals were not universally free, the Kenosha district’s breakfast participation was 23.9%, and lunch participation was 43.8%, Ruder said. Since moving to CEP, those numbers have risen significantly, with breakfast participation now at 29%, and lunch at 55%.

Some families who qualified under the current system may find the application process an obstacle. “The application process is very daunting for some families,” Tauriainen said. “It’s a very simple form to fill out, but it’s just another thing that families have to do to get food to their kids when they might already be struggling.”

Higher incomes, but still hungry

The income requirements also mean that some families that may be struggling financially may not qualify, Tauriainen said, because the application doesn’t consider other circumstances that families may be dealing with.

“It doesn’t take into account anything other than your gross wages, so whatever your income is before taxes, doesn’t take into account any medical bills you may have, or other issues that you might have going on financially at home,” Tauriainen said.

Jennifer Gaddis, an associate professor at UW-Madison who researches food systems in schools, said a gap still exists for some students. “There are actually a lot of children and families, who are food-insecure, but who don’t actually meet the federal threshold for eligibility for free or reduced school meals,” Gaddis said.

Gaddis and Tauriainen said providing school meals for free would benefit students in many ways.

“School meals are literally the only thing that is economically means tested,” Gaddis said. “Everything else kids participate in, regardless of their household income status — like math class, English class, busing — they’re not being charged a different amount or getting a different service necessarily that is tied to their household income status.”

Providing meals to all students would reduce the stigma that the current system can create, she added.

School meal debt has also become an issue again as schools have gone back to requiring students to pay for lunch unless they qualify for free food. In Wausau, a pastor to help pay off students’ unpaid meal debts. Madison Metropolitan School District in May stood at almost $230,000.

Ruder of Kenosha Unified said that providing meals free to all students would prevent them from being denied lunch or breakfast when their account funds run out.

Nutritional and academic benefits

Universal school meals could also allow many students to eat more nutritious food since school meals follow the federal dietary guidelines. Some have found that participation in school meals has been linked to healthier diets. 

“We get a bad rap, because people think of what school lunch used to be like back when they were in school, and things have changed so much since 2010,” Tauriainen said. “We’re offering whole grains, fruits and vegetables, multiple options every day, so that students pick something that they like to eat — low fat, low sodium, low sugar entrees.”

Tauriainen also noted that many school districts are trying to serve more food prepared from scratch and use more locally sourced foods for meals. Some school districts in the state serve food grown by the students, including Ashwaubenon School District, which has a 34-unit hydrophobic garden to grow lettuce.

Ensuring that kids are fed helps create a foundation for students to focus, study and be present in the classroom, producing stronger academic outcomes as well, Gaddis said.

Gaddis takes a historical and international comparative approach to studying school nutrition. Other countries with universal school meal programs, including Japan and Finland, have integrated school nutrition and home economics, she said, so students are “learning about, not only how to think about food and nutrition, but how to prepare things for yourself and how to do so in an economical way, and why you should also have respect for the people who are doing work in the food system.”

It’s an approach that addresses all students.

“It’s not seen as this anti-poverty program in those countries, it’s seen as a really integral part of the school day and an opportunity for people to learn really important life skills,” Gaddis said.

The Wisconsin proposal is part of Underly’s larger budget request, which would invest an additional $4 billion in schools.

It could face a tough road to becoming a reality given Wisconsin’s split government, where Republican lawmakers, who remain in the majority in the Legislature, have said they oppose growing “the size of government” and want to use most of the state’s budget surplus to cut taxes.

Tauriainen said she hopes universal school meals can gather bipartisan support, however.

“Being hungry shouldn’t be something that’s on one side or the other of the aisle,” Tauriainen said. “I really hope that the Legislature can come together and realize that this is something we really need to do for our kids.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

WASHINGTON — During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he was reluctant to speak boldly about school choice.

That’s according to Kellyanne Conway, an aide to the president back then, and one of his former campaign managers. “He would say ‘Aren’t we the ones who say it [education] is local? Why would the president of the United States bigfoot all that?’”

Expect that reticence to be a thing of the past, Conway told the audience  devoted to promoting the benefits of school choice — from  in the style of programs in West Virginia and Arizona to charter schools and . On the campaign trail, Trump already has been vocal about his embrace of parental choice. “We want federal education dollars to follow the student, rather than propping up a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,”  at a rally in Wisconsin last month.

(To be sure, Trump did  near the end of his first term offering states the opportunity to use federal money to create school choice programs. When I looked into it a few years ago, I couldn’t find any state that had taken him up on the offer.)

Conway urged participants at the post-Election Day gathering to speak a certain way in their advocacy to lawmakers going forward. “Lead with solutions not problems. The problems can be the second part of the sentence, or maybe the second paragraph.” The panelists — including the founder of a group of charter schools for students with autism in Arizona, the leader of a private school for boys in Alabama and the head of a foundation that supports microschools — were all winners of , fueled by  and run by the Center for Education Reform.

She also urged the crowd not to make school choice about teachers unions, “which is fun to do, especially this week but it doesn’t educate another child.” (The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, generally has opposed private school vouchers and has been celebrating the . “The decisive defeat of vouchers on the ballot across multiple states speaks loudly and clearly: The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement.) 

Lawmakers who need convincing aren’t holding out just because of union pressure, Conway said. In Texas, for instance, rural lawmakers worried about the effect of vouchers on their schools  or torpedoed plans in that state that would allow parents to use public money for private school tuition. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott helped elect enough new members in place of those rural holdouts, however, that .

The school choice event at the Ronald Reagan Building in D.C. was notable for the range of people it featured, including parents and pastors, people who are white, Black and Latino, and several Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams of Pennsylvania. Some of the speakers told stories about opening their own charter schools and private schools. They urged the president-elect to take action on choice, including allowing  for children in low-income families to follow those kids to private schools or other settings outside public schools.

In Congress, with Republicans taking hold of the Senate and expected to retain control of the House, lawmakers already have proposed legislation that has, until now, mostly been a nonstarter. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is likely to become chair of the committee that oversees education in his chamber, introduced  this session that would give families and corporations tax credits if they contribute to groups that give scholarships to students to attend private or parochial schools. It would target students whose families earn no more than 300 percent of the area median gross income. Cassidy’s wife, Laura, runs a charter school for children with dyslexia in Baton Rouge.

“I think that there’s going to be a real opportunity to promote innovation in school choice,” Cassidy said. “There is great promise in this administration, and I am looking forward to working with them.”

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Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

“This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the monthly meeting.

This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

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“It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of .

Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

“What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

National security

Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

The that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

“It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

“Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

“Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

Ohio legislation

Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the .

State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

When Espie Chapman began teaching introductory agriculture classes at Kailua Intermediate School three years ago, the plot of land near her classroom was mostly vacant except for a small orchard of fruit trees.

Chapman had no farming experience, but she was determined to create a space where her seventh and eighth grade students could grow fresh fruits and vegetables. She asked the teens what they wanted to plant and got to work purchasing wheelbarrows and seeds for her class.

The school’s garden now produces fruits and vegetables like bok choy, spinach and papaya that Chapman’s students transform into soups and salads to sample during class.

“We just try and look at what’s in our farm, and what kind of recipes can we do with that,” Chapman said. “If they’re going to try and eat it, we’ll make it happen.”

Chapman’s class teaches teens about nutrition and sustainability, but while students are cooking the kind of locally sourced and culturally relevant lunches that the Hawaii Department of Education aspires to provide in all schools, they can’t actually serve meals in the cafeteria.

DOE previously ran a pilot program to train schools on food safety and enable them to serve produce from their gardens, but the program has been on pause since the Covid-19 pandemic. Without it, Chapman would have to figure out how to meet strict federal and state protocols on her own to supply the school’s cafeteria with produce from the garden.

DOE did not respond to questions about the status of the Garden to Cafeteria program and whether schools will be able to participate in the future.

Approximately 85% of Hawaii schools have gardens, but only a few have serious agricultural programs where students earn certifications as food handlers or gain firsthand experience harvesting and selling produce and using sustainable growing methods.

Typically teachers use school gardens for lessons ranging from the life cycle of a plant to a poetry unit focused on nature. But some want to take their lessons a step further by using produce from the gardens in school meals, exposing more kids to fresh fruits and vegetables and giving students a sense of ownership over what they’re eating.

DOE has historically struggled to increase the use of local ingredients in school lunches, and advocates say gardens can encourage students to eat healthier.

“School gardens can galvanize a community,” said Natalie McKinney, chief program officer of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which promotes environmental education and runs a learning farm in Haleiwa.

‘A Hidden Gem’

Third grade teacher Rex Dubiel Shanahan planted a garden at Sunset Elementary when she first started teaching in 1987 and takes pride in showing students how to plant seeds or make kimchi using the carrots they grow.

“You can teach almost everything through the garden,” Dubiel Shanahan said.

Sunset Elementary participates in the Aina In Schools program, which is run by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and provides schools with activities that tie gardening to lessons in science and nutrition. But, Dubiel Shanahan said, she would like more schools to have access to resources on sustainability and healthy eating for students.

In recent years, DOE has offered more professional development opportunities for teachers interested in starting gardens. It has developed resources for schools to create peace gardens to support student mental health and is helping teachers incorporate more lessons about native plants into their classes, said Jennifer Ryan, the department’s school garden coordinator.

Even with more resources and professional development available, it can be daunting for teachers to maintain school gardens on their own, said Waikiki Elementary Principal Ryan Kusuda. Schools don’t have a dedicated source of funding to hire full-time garden coordinators, and many campuses rely on families and teachers when it comes to weeding, harvesting and other tasks.

Waikiki Elementary has the extra budget to pay for a sustainability teacher and a part-time farm manager dedicated to facilitating student learning and keeping up the garden, Kusuda said, adding it would be difficult to maintain the space solely through volunteers.

“It’s a hidden gem,” Kusuda said, adding that the school has roughly 80 fruit trees supplying tangerines and starfruit that students can sample during class.

In some cases, schools use gardens to help jump-start students’ careers.

In Leilehua High School’s career and technical education program, students in the natural resources pathway are responsible for 3.5 acres of land on which they grow lettuce, beets, radishes and more. CTE teacher Jackie Freitas requires her students to earn their certifications in food handling and gain experience selling produce to teachers and families every week.

“We are trying to help our community and provide them with fresh produce that they can afford and that they know is safe,” Freitas said.

Other schools have taught their students the importance of eating local by drawing on their gardens to supply produce to their cafeterias.

Last month, students at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science supplied 160 pounds of kalo from their garden to the cafeteria. Cooks at the Big Island charter school turned the taro into poi, which students enjoyed with their lunches of kalua pork and rice, said teacher Wendy Baker.

While the gardens don’t produce enough fruits and vegetables to supply 600 lunches every day, Baker added, occasionally incorporating food from the garden in school lunches helps students appreciate the time and effort that goes into their meals.

“When they help the garden, the garden helps them,” Baker said.

But including produce from the garden in school meals raises the stakes when it comes to requirements around food safety.

Schools already follow best practices around harvesting and preparing produce, such as requiring students to sanitize their hands and thoroughly wash their fruits and vegetables, said Debbie Millikan, a member of the Hawaii Farm to School Network and director of sustainability at Punahou School. But when it comes to growing food for school meals, campuses need to comply with additional state and federal guidelines like testing their water for E. coli every year and tracking the exact location where students harvest produce.

If students get sick from school meals, Millikan said, it’s important for schools to identify the source of the problem and know where their ingredients originate.

“Food safety and garden safety is absolutely critical, no matter whether you’re growing it at home or growing in a school garden,” Millikan said. “The record-keeping part is really critical because you’re serving a large group of students a large amount of food.”

In 2018, DOE started a Garden to Cafeteria pilot program to adopt federal regulations around food safety and apply them to schools. Participating campuses were required to document their compliance with water, soil and food safety requirements in order to incorporate fruits and vegetables from their gardens into meals.

A dozen schools participated in the three-year pilot, but frequent turnover in DOE’s food services branch put the program on pause as schools reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Dennis Chase, program manager at the Hawaii Public Health Institute. Most schools, including past participants in the pilot, haven’t been able to serve food from their gardens since.

McKinney at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation said she’s hopeful DOE will revive the program. Schools are unlikely to grow at the scale they need to produce all their own food, she added, but it’s important to incorporate more local produce in school meals so students will be more receptive to trying new fruits and vegetables in the future.

Other Ways To Meet School Food Needs

Numerous schools on the mainland — and a few in Hawaii — have been able to tackle food safety issues to grow food for their lunch programs, proving that the challenge is not insurmountable.

San Diego launched a program 10 years ago to train teachers and garden coordinators on how to safely plant and harvest food for school lunches, said Janelle Manzano, the district’s farm-to-school program specialist. Before the pandemic, she added, 10 to 15 schools participated in the program, although the number dropped to five last year.

It’s been difficult for some campuses to revive their gardens after the pandemic, Manzano said, but she’s hopeful more schools will start growing their own produce in the coming year.

At Leilehua High School, Freitas was undeterred when DOE’s Garden to Cafeteria pilot ended. Last year, Freitas received a Good Agricultural Practices certification from the United States Department of Agriculture for the school’s hydroponic greenhouse. The greenhouse is subject to audits twice a year to make sure students are following safety requirements for harvesting produce and tracking their cleaning and sanitation schedules.

The certification means Leilehua’s greenhouse is held to the same standards as commercial farms and can supply produce to the cafeteria like any other vendor, Freitas said. While the garden’s safety procedures have not changed much, she added, students are now required to keep a more detailed record of when they clean their tools and harvest produce.

Freitas said her students are still working with cafeteria staff to determine how the produce can fit into the school’s meal plan, but she’s hoping the process will help them understand how they can contribute to food production in Hawaii and take pride in their work.

“It can be done,” Freitas said.

This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.

Nearly 800,000 kids are eating free meals in school after the Legislature expanded access — but the state will need to come up with more money if it wants to continue the program.

That’s according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which announced on Tuesday that 70% of Washington’s kids now have access to school meals at no cost to students or families.

But the state underestimated how many students would participate — leading Superintendent Chris Reykdal to to continue feeding this many kids.

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The office’s request says that the gap in funding can also be attributed to adjustments in how much the federal government reimburses for its free meal program and an increase in students who meet the income requirements. About 50.1% of students are designated as low-income this year, up from 46.8% in the 2019-2020 school year.

“As we all battle rising inflation and our budgets getting tighter, these programs provide much needed financial relief to families statewide,” Reykdal said.

Hungry students are more likely to have attention and behavioral issues, face academic challenges and develop poor eating habits.

The Legislature has gradually increased Washington’s free school meal program over the past four years, an effort spearheaded by state Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane.

Under Riccelli’s , passed in 2023, if at least 40% of a school’s population was eligible for the federal free and reduced meal program, then the school had to provide the meals at no charge to any student who requests a breakfast, lunch or both. The new rules took effect in the 2023-2024 school year.

Beginning in the current school year, the program expanded to schools where at least 30% of the population is eligible for the federal meals program.

According to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the number of lunches served at Washington schools operating the new free meal program increased 32% from the previous year, and the number of breakfasts served increased 50%.

In the 2024-2025 school year, 1,523 schools are serving free meals to all students who requested one — up from 1,269 in the 2023-2024 school year.

Riccelli tried to pass a universal free school meals bill , but the state determined it would cost too much at about $115 million a year, Riccelli told the Standard in February.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

NORTHFIELD — Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan stepped in for Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday and greeted students on the first day of school, in an annual tradition

Flanagan, who visited a school in St. Anthony and later Greenvale Park Elementary in Northfield, is taking on a higher profile as Walz barnstorms the country as the vice presidential nominee for president.

Flanagan served Northfield students cheese pizza, which was a subtle plug for a signature achievement of the Walz-Flanagan administration and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor-controlled Legislature, which passed universal free school meals in 2023.

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Flanagan’s visit comes less than a week after the state released Minnesota students’ math and reading scores, which Fewer than half of tested students in the 2023-2024 school year met state proficiency standards in reading and math, which is unchanged from the year prior.

The data indicate Minnesota students have not yet recovered from learning losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flanagan told reporters on Tuesday that the test scores don’t reflect all the investments the Minnesota Legislature has made into education, particularly toward reading through the Read Act.

In 2023 the DFL-controlled Legislature passed historic education funding, including $75 million for the Read Act, which focuses on phonics, or the sounding out of words. This year the Legislature passed an additional $35 million to support teachers while they learn how to teach the Read Act curriculum.

“I am confident that those scores are going to go up, and as lieutenant governor I care tremendously about it. But as Siobhan’s mom, I really care about it,” Flanagan said. “I believe there are parents across the state who want to see achievement go up. So do I, and I think we’re on our way with the investments we’ve made in the last few years.”

The Department of Education last week in a statement said something similar regarding the stagnant test scores.

“Long-term key investments from the 2023 legislative session are currently being implemented, including the largest funding increase for K-12 education in state history,” the Department of Education said. “Once fully implemented, these investments will positively impact students for many years to come.”

In the meantime, Flanagan said that rising attendance rates are an important first step.

“Attendance is one of those things that we know will help close that gap… I am confident that what we have in place, having kids in school, our incredible educators — I think test scores will go up. And just encourage our families and encourage our students to get to school. It really, really matters,” Flanagan said.

According to data released last week, about three-quarters of students attended school regularly in 2023, up about 5 percentage points from the prior year. But attendance rates still remain significantly lower than in the years prior to the pandemic, when about 85% of students attended regularly.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on and .

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.”

“They’re now graduated and in college…they came back [for] summer break. I had a couple of slices of coffee cake for them, and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh!’… because, you know it’s a famous thing,” said Heinz, a staff member at Marina Del Rey Middle School.

Stories like Heinz’s are not unique. LAUSD’s coffee cake is one of the most popular items on the district’s menu. Every year LA Unified serves up 800,000 slices of the coffee cake a year across 700 cafeterias, according to an LAIST .

The coffee cake recipe dates back to 1954 and has undergone several changes due to federal USDA regulations. Evelen Guirguis, who has been with the district for 30 years and is now the cafeteria manager at Marina del Rey Middle School, said shortening, an ingredient “high in calories and offers no nutritional benefits,” has since been cut out.

Baking more now that you are staying home? Remember the legendary LAUSD Old Fashioned Coffee Cake? Here is the original recipe from 1954. Photo credit: Danielle Chiriguaya.

— Los Angeles Unified (@LASchools)

“Before, the (ingredients) came from the government. Now we buy everything ourselves.” said Guirguis. “We have our own vendor now…[which] means we get the best [products] and everything is fresh,”

The current coffee cake recipe is expected to be updated again in the fall — because of a new set of federal regulations — cutting down on sugar. 

Meanwhile the iconic cake remains in high demand. 

“Even though the fat content has declined, it’s still a very moist cake…a big part of nutrition is what you enjoy,” said Manish Singh, director of LAUSD food services.

The district even the recipe during the pandemic, encouraging people to make it while they were home. 

Singh said earlier this month the district ordered 3,500 pieces of coffee cake as part of a staff appreciation day and “it was all gone in no time,”  he said.  “We did a similar thing last year. The first time, they ordered 1,000 pieces and were worried there would be leftovers. It was gone in 20 minutes.”

The cake is so popular, it has even inspired businesses like Runaway Sweet Treats in Los Angeles to offer on its menu items using the original recipe. It’s also a big crowd pleaser on back-to-school night, with parents waiting in long lines to get a slice.  

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho is also a big fan, requesting it for monthly principals’ meetings.

When a student reporter with several boxes of coffee cake returned to the University of Southern California campus, a security guard recognized the packaging and asked for a  piece.

The recipe is not the only thing that has changed. With the decrease in cafeteria-produced food, some schools have contracted the production process to a third-party vendor. The cake is still made from scratch in 25-30 school kitchens, Singh said. 

“Where we have the capacity, and where the staff is able to make it from scratch, we still encourage them to make it from scratch,” Singh said. 

Guirguis is one of the many passionate individuals behind the creation of the legendary cake. Once a week, she and her staff bake nearly 600 coffee cakes before breakfast at 7:45 AM for the students at Marina del Rey Middle School and seven other LAUSD campuses.

From start to finish, it only takes her 30 minutes to bake two trays of fresh coffee cake. Baking the cake, she said, is her favorite part of her job.

When asked why the coffee cake is so popular, Guirguis said, “It’s because we make it with love.”

Learn how to make the legendary treat below:

Los Angeles Unified School District’s coffee cake is one of the most popular items on the district’s menu. Learn more about the 70 year old tradition, and see the full recipe, at The74million.org

COLUMBIA — Poor South Carolina students who eat meals at school for a much-reduced cost would no longer pay anything under a Senate budget proposal.

Students who aren’t considered poor enough to eat for free pay 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch. Nearly 10,000 students statewide qualify for that rate, while 622,000 can eat for free.

The budget clause advocated by Sen. Katrina Shealy would ensure no student would need to scrounge up nickels and dimes to eat.

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That 70 cents per day for students who eat both meals at school — $3.50 a week for Monday through Friday — probably seems insignificant for most, but for the families who qualify for that rate, it can be a big deal, said Shealy, who sits on Senate Finance and is chairwoman of the Senate Family and Veterans’ Services Committee.

Her proposal, sent to the Senate floor this week as part of Senate Finance’s budget package, is expected to cost the state less than $1.5 million in a $13.2 billion spending package. The sum could actually be much less, depending on how many eligible students sign up. If participation remains the same, covering the gap may cost $530,000, Shealy said.

“We waste that much money on much less important things,” she told the SC Daily Gazette.

The Lexington Republican hopes it’s a step toward free meals for all K-12 public school students.

“The only thing I could get was a bite out of the apple,” she said. “Next year, we can work on getting free lunches for everyone.”

She pre-filed legislation in November 2022 that would do that by requiring the state to reimburse school districts any costs not covered by the federal government. The bill has never received a hearing.

Fellow Republicans, notably Education Chairman Greg Hembree, had sticker shock at the predicted cost.

Offering universal meals at K-12 schools may cost , according to a March 2023 estimate by the state’s fiscal experts. But actual costs for that could also be much lower. A guestimate cited at a last August was $50 million to $60 million. Shealy thinks it would be closer to $40 million.

Whatever the true tally, Hembree said, that would pay for a lot of meals whose families don’t need the help.

“I don’t want to do welfare for families that don’t need it,” said the Little River Republican.

However, he said he can get on board with covering the reduced-price gap.

“This is such a small contribution, I don’t have a problem with that,” Hembree told the SC Daily Gazette.

A determines students’ eligibility for free and reduced-cost meals. For example, students in a family of three — whether a single mom with two children, or two parents with one child — can eat for free if their household income is less than $32,320. If their income is between that amount and $45,991, the children pay the reduced rate of 70 cents a day.

The vast majority of South Carolina’s K-12 public schools qualify for a that covers meal costs for all students without parental paperwork. Eligibility increased last fall as the federal government lowered the threshold for qualifying. Still, not all eligible schools in the state participate.

That’s because the federal government’s reimbursements don’t cover the cost of feeding every student, Hembree said.

A clause inserted in the state budget last year — which will roll over — was designed to increase participation. It requires local school boards to either participate where eligible or pass a resolution explaining to the public why they’re not.

The clause also bars so-called lunch shaming. Schools can’t deny meals or serve alternative meals — such as a cold peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a paper bag — to students with a lunch debt. They also can’t make the student do chores or extra work in exchange for meals or deny participation in any school event or field trip.

So, even for students who accrue debt because they can’t pay, there’s little real impact, Hembree said.

“We’ve done what we can do” on preventing children from being shamed, he told senators.

But Shealy said she still worries about schools holding the money over students’ heads to keep them from joining extracurriculars or walking at graduation. Removing the cost completely would make that a non-issue for students receiving reduced-cost meals, she said.

She plans to try again next year.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

Two new education bills have been introduced by Democrats in the Ohio House: One to ensure school meals for any students who request them, and another to increase base teacher salaries to $50,000 per year. The future of the proposed laws is uncertain with Republican supermajorities controlling both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.

A bill introduced by state Rep. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and state Rep. Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, would “require public schools to provide meals and related services to students,” even beyond changes made in the latest operating budget.

“Regardless of whether a student has money to pay for a meal or owes money for earlier meals, each school district shall provide a meal to a student who requests one,” the new bill, , states.

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The bill also prohibits a requirement that a district discard a meal after it has been served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals” or “publicly identify or stigmatize a student who cannot pay for a meal or who owes a meal debt.”

In 2019, a 9-year-old Ohio student’s hot lunch was taken away over a $9.75 unpaid balance, .

The bill comes after changes were made in the most recent state operating budget to provide no-cost meals to any student who qualifies for reduced-price or free meals.

After the budget was passed, advocates praised the , but said more could be done to reduce the categorization of children and the visibility of those who have meal debt.

qualified for reduced-price or free lunches for the 2022-2023 school year, according to data from the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, up from 46.6% the year before. Qualification is based on household income, and children are eligible at up to 185% of the federal poverty line.

Brewer and Mohamed’s bill also requires that districts direct “communications about a student’s meal debt to a parent or guardian and not to the student, except … if a student inquires about that student’s meal debt.”

Teacher pay

In a separate bill, state Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, seeks to increase the base teacher salary to $50,000 per year statewide.

That would be an increase from the current base salary of $35,000 for teachers with a bachelor’s degree. Teachers with less than a bachelor’s degree would have a base salary set at $43,250, while teachers with five years of training but no master’s degree would start at $51,900 and teachers with a master’s degree or higher would start at $54,750, according to the bill, .

Ohio’s average teacher salary has remained lower than the U.S. average since 2014, according to an analysis by, which showed an 11.2% increase in Ohio salaries from fiscal year 2012 to 2021, where U.S. salaries grew by 17.9%.

A found that average weekly wagers for teachers have remained “relatively flat” since 1996, with teachers making more than 14% less in Ohio when compared with other college-educated workers.

Salaries will still be determined based on years of service under the newest House bill, including a maximum of five years active military service.

Both bills are led by Democratic sponsors, meaning the way forward will be rocky in a Republican supermajority Ohio General Assembly, especially when this particular General Assembly has had a .

The bills still need to be assigned to a committee for consideration before public comment and possible votes can take place.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Fueled by Kids, a nonprofit founded and run by teenagers in Bedford, New Hampshire, fills the 67 hour gap between when students receive school lunch on Friday afternoons and again when they receive school breakfast on Monday morning, alleviating the food anxiety that many of these children experience as a result of not knowing when or where they might be having their next meal.

Each week, Fueled by Kids members gather for their club meeting at Bedford High School, then pick up food that they preordered from local grocers. They partner with other high schools to pack bags of groceries — all ready-to-eat or simple enough to be prepared by the students themselves — that then get distributed to more than 20 schools serving over 1,000 students. The recipients are all anonymous to Fueled by Kids organizers, identified by school counselors and principals as students who may face food insecurity over the weekend. All of Fueled by Kids’ funds raised go directly back to purchasing food for distribution.

At Marblehead Community Charter Public School, a food pantry was founded in the wake of the pandemic to support both the school’s families and the broader community. The pantry, which has a separate entrance on the side of the school, is frequented by many, all of whom express overwhelming gratitude, and many of whom feel shame that they need to request assistance. An on-site garden also supports the school’s food programs and provides educational opportunities for MCCPS students to learn about where their food comes from.

Hot, scratch-made breakfasts and lunches are available to every student, every day. The meals are so healthful and delicious that the teachers and staff often opt to eat what’s on the menu. After this universal program launched at MCCPS, the number of students accessing breakfast nearly tripled, and nearly twice as many students participated in school lunch. Lines for lunch became so long that they had to create an additional lunch period to accommodate all of their students. The impact on MCCPS students has been profound — all students now have access to nutritious, homemade meals without the burden of stigma and they are better prepared to start the day physically and mentally.

For many New Hampshire public school students, getting breakfast at school is not a priority.

The Granite State has one of the largest divides in the country between the number of school breakfasts eaten and the number of school lunches eaten, from the Food Research and Action Center. While an average of 95,337 students per day ate school-provided lunch in the 2021-2022 school year, fewer than half of those students – 45,192 – also ate breakfast, the center found in a 2023 report.

That ratio puts New Hampshire in the bottom 16 states in the country. Now, educators and child anti-hunger advocates are urging Granite State schools to increase their promotion of school breakfasts and make it easier for students to eat them.

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“School breakfast has maybe a bad rap,” said Amy Hollar, the SNAP-Ed director at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. “… It’s better than it used to be. And it can get even better the more of us that embrace it and work together to make school meals a priority.”

This school year, nine school districts are competing in the School Breakfast Challenge, in which each district will attempt to increase the number of students eating breakfast by the highest percentage by March.

Organized by New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, an advocacy group, as well as the UNH Cooperative Extension and the New England Dairy Council, the competition aims to empower and encourage schools to launch campaigns promoting breakfast.

Educators and child anti-hunger advocates say school breakfasts help increase nutrition, boost attentiveness, and increase reimbursement to schools.

“We know that kids that eat school breakfast miss less school,” said Hollar. “They’re more alert and focused.”

The competition has been accompanied by a series of webinars to give school administrators ideas on how to boost breakfast participation. And it follows a template crafted in part by the University of Minnesota, which helped spearhead a four-year project in that state to do the same.

Riona Corr, deputy director of New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, said school meals are important in making sure students have consistent energy throughout the day.

And she said bringing in more students for breakfast would increase the amount they are reimbursed, which could help address school lunch debt.

The Food Research and Action Center found that New Hampshire schools could collectively receive $8.6 million more in school meal reimbursements per year if 70 percent of the students who eat lunch at school also ate breakfast.

“Say there’s 50 percent of the school who’s participating in free and reduced lunch,” Corr said. “Why is only 8 percent of those kids participating in free breakfast?”

For schools looking to expand breakfasts, educators have strategies. Schools should make the food more convenient to access and provide more flexibility to students about when they can eat it, they say.

Advocates are pushing “breakfast after the bell,” an approach in which schools allow students to pick up and eat breakfasts after the first class begins. Many schools require students eating breakfast to do so before that first period, which researchers say discourages many from doing it.

“A lot of schools – nationwide, not just in New Hampshire – are allowing breakfast before the first bell, and then not allowing kids to eat afterward,” said Corr.

Under the “breakfast after the bell” model, schools are encouraged to allow breakfast to be eaten in the classrooms, or in an area more convenient than the cafeteria. That could include tables with to-go food bags near entrances, or grab-and-go carts in the hallway.

And students are given more time to eat those meals, even if class has begun.

Meanwhile the UNH Cooperative Extension has developed a toolkit for “nudges,” or techniques school administrators can use to remind students about the breakfasts and encourage them to eat. The tips range from ways to incorporate nutrition advice into classroom curricula to pre-written jokes about breakfast that can be read out over the loudspeakers.

The challenge offers schools three participation tiers with increasing levels of commitment. Tier one is deploying the “‘nudges”; tier two involves attending New Hampshire Hunger Solutions’ webinar series; and tier three involves developing an action plan for a broader campaign.

For schools putting in the effort, the challenge has a modest cash prize for the largest increase in school breakfast take up: The Dairy Council has donated $1,000, which will be distributed to two of the winners, Corr said.

But the competition is only a piece of the overall effort, advocates say. The Cooperative Extension and New Hampshire Hunger Solutions are working with school food service directors and wellness committees to develop campaigns tailored to each district’s challenges and needs, Corr said.

“Where is your barrier? Is it administration? Is it teachers? Is it students?” Corr said.

Those challenges can be hard for some schools to overcome. In some cases, low cafeteria staffing levels can hamper some of the more innovative ideas. Other times, custodial staff will raise concerns with additional cleaning needed if schools allow eating in classrooms.

Students face stigmas associated with school breakfasts. And parents might assume that the breakfasts are not nutritious, thinking back to their own childhood experiences.

All of those hurdles can be overcome, Corr said, but some are more entrenched than others. It’s why the campaign is focusing on nudges as a low-cost way to get involved without overextending staff resources.

In continuing its campaign, New Hampshire advocates are following the footsteps of the University of Minnesota, which in 2013 launched its own breakfast promotion program in 16 high schools across the state.

Nutritionists at the University of Minnesota kept tabs on the schools, sorting some into control groups that received fewer resources and others into experimental groups that received budgets to launch ad campaigns.

One school took on a Hunger Games theme in an homage to the film series that had just opened in theaters, complete with lighthearted videos. Others tried taste tests where kitchen staff would experiment with new variations of recipes like banana bread and students would vote on their favorites.

“There was one school where the admin was, oh my gosh, 110 percent on board,” said Mary Schroeder, an extension educator for health and nutrition at the University of Minnesota. That school produced a video that included every student in the school, she added.

In one of the most innovative and effective strategies, several schools offered free breakfast for all students one day a week, carving out money in its budget to do so. That allowed everyone to try the food without fear of stigma, and helped to combat negative perceptions students may have had about its quality, Schroeder said.

“When they did their pre surveys … many children said that they didn’t like the taste of school breakfast,” Schroeder said. “But then when they asked other questions, they realized a lot of the kids who didn’t like the taste of school breakfast had never eaten school breakfast.”

The program, which lasted four years, produced strong results: The schools in the experimental group that received funding and pursued the recommended strategies saw a 49 percent higher increase in breakfast takeup than those that didn’t, from the extension. And the extra takeup in meals brought in between $90 to $489 per day in reimbursement money to the schools, after accounting for the program start-up costs.

This year, Minnesota lawmakers made the breakfast pitch much easier: The legislature passed a universal school breakfast law making them free for all students.

New Hampshire does not pay for universal school lunches or breakfasts; students who want breakfast will need to pay full price if their family makes more than 185 percent of the federal poverty level.

But advocates in the Granite State say strong efforts by schools can create a word-of-mouth effect that can get more kids buying the breakfasts anyway, benefitting the school and themselves.

“We want to make sure that we can promote a culture where it’s great to eat breakfast at school, because for some kids that’s the only place they’re gonna get it,” said Hollar.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

After the state turned down federal funding for summertime child food vouchers, the South Dakota Department of Education is seeking sponsors for another program that provides summer meals to needy children.

Sponsors feed kids who qualify for free or reduced price lunch during the school year, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reimburses sponsors. , sponsorships are available for Bennett, Bon Homme, Buffalo, Charles Mix, Custer, Gregory, McCook, Meade, Oglala Lakota, and Stanley counties.

Potential sponsors must by Feb. 1 to be considered.

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The ask comes after South Dakota’s decision not to deliver to more than 60,000 kids in the summer of 2023.

That money was available through a separate USDA program called Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), launched during the pandemic and made permanent this year.

South Dakota was to opt out.

Unlike the summer food program now seeking brick-and-mortar hosts for meals, the summer EBT doesn’t tie food aid to location. Instead, it offers EBT cards worth $40 per child per month to eligible families through the summer, which can be used to buy , but not hot foods.

The state signed on for pandemic EBT in 2020 and 2021, but not in 2022 or 2023.

Gov. Kristi Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, that because of “South Dakota’s record low unemployment rate, our robust existing food programs, and the administrative burden associated with running this program, we declined these particular federal dollars.”

The site-based summer food program is not meant to be the only way to provide meals to kids when school’s out, said Nancy Van Der Weide, spokesperson for the Department of Education.

“It is a stop-gap to help those kids who fall through the cracks — the ones who, for whatever reason, are not able to access food via SNAP,” she said via email, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Offering food, as opposed to money for food, “ensures that the meals these children eat are balanced and nutritious, and that meals are available throughout the month rather than until the money runs out.”

“Doing it this way also ensures that money is used efficiently for food that goes to children first. Many schools also operate summer feeding programs from their buildings to achieve the same ends.”

Critics: Denying funds indefensible

The programs are not an either/or proposition, however. The state could take advantage of both if it chose to. While the pandemic EBT program is over and the deadline for the first 2024 summer EBT is fast approaching, says that states could opt in to the program in future years.

The South Dakota arm of the nonprofit group Bread for the World has urged state residents to ask Gov. Noem and Education Secretary Joe Graves to accept the funds for next summer.

The site-based summer food program is helpful but doesn’t touch all South Dakotans, the organization says, particularly those unable to access meal sites.

“Neither program by itself is enough to cover a child’s nutritional needs,” . “Kids need both.”

Cathy Brechtelsbauer, Bread for the World South Dakota’s leader, cited that says just 5.5% of the children who receive free or reduced price school lunch are fed through site-based programs.

Turning away funding is indefensible, according to Brechtelsbauer.

“How can they turn down food for kids who are hungry?” she said.

She was among the signatories of a Nov. 20 letter urging the state to reverse course on the EBT funds. The other name on the letter was Xanna Burg, Director of South Dakota Kids Count.

“South Dakota has not yet committed for 2024,” the letter reads. “There is still time to commit so that school-age children will not miss out on critical nutrition support during the hungriest time of the year.”

Thirty-nine other organizations are listed on the letter. Among them: Augustana University, the American Heart Association, Sioux Falls Thrive, the Boys and Girls Club of Standing Rock, South Dakota Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota.

Fury, the governor’s spokesman, told South Dakota Searchlight via text on Thursday that he stands by the administration’s earlier explanation for declining the federal funds.

Brechtelsbauer called the reference to federal requirements and administrative burdens a smokescreen.

“Forty-three other states did this, so we could figure out how to do it in South Dakota,” Brechtelsbauer said. “If we can’t, we’ve got a much bigger problem.”

School lunch debate looms for 2024 session

The question of who ought to pay to feed hungry kids has become a recurring one for lawmakers and their communities in recent years.

Earlier this week, the Sioux Falls School District announced that it had secured a donor to cover unpaid balances for 1,800 students whose parents hadn’t kept up with school lunch payments. that the debt from unpaid lunch accounts has accrued at about $3,000 a day. Without the donor, the district could have ended the year with as much as $500,000 in school lunch debt.

Moving forward, kids whose lunch accounts fall $20 in the red will be served a sack lunch. A $75 negative balance will cut off meals altogether.

State Rep. Kadyn Wittman, D-Sioux Falls, who brought a bill in the 2023 session that would have offered free school lunch to all children regardless of income, took to X (formerly Twitter) to express her consternation over news of a private donor paying off lunch debt.

“That should be the government’s responsibility,” . “It is cruel and, frankly, unbelievable that South Dakota kids can go hungry during the day if their parents fall behind on payments.”

Her bill to provide free school lunch for all failed in the House Education Committee. The Department of Education opposed the bill.

Wittman plans to introduce a “scaled back” version of the bill in the 2024 session.

“Last year’s bill was way too optimistic. I realize that South Dakota is not ready to offer free school lunches,” Wittman said.

Rather than cover school lunch for all, her new proposal would essentially offer free meals to students who currently qualify for reduced price lunches by reimbursing schools for the reduced price charges. Families whose incomes are between 135% and 185% of the federal poverty line qualify for reduced price lunch; those with incomes lower than 135% of the poverty line qualify for free lunch.

Wittman is hopeful that a coalition of supporters will help move her fellow lawmakers to support the bill, which is estimated to cost $578,916 annually – millions less than last year’s proposal.

According to a pre-session information sheet on the bill, its cosponsors will include Tyler Tordsen, R-Sioux Falls, Sen. Liz Larson, D-Sioux Falls, and Sen. Mike Rohl, R-Aberdeen.

At least one other school lunch proposal will not appear before lawmakers in 2024, however.

Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, had signaled plans to introduce a bill, , that would have paid for lunch for K-8 students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

Deutsch has since decided not to pursue the bill. The lawmaker told South Dakota Searchlight that concerns about a leaner budget, in her weekly column in late October, have convinced him to table the proposal for now.

“Given our budget tightness, I thought this was probably not the year to bring it,” Deutsch said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .