For years, anti-hunger advocates have been calling on all public schools to offer free meals to every student, no questions asked. And, overnight, a once-unthinkable policy goal became a reality across the country, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture supplied the money, allowing schools to keep kids fed through the pandemic.
The federal government has committed to picking up that tab at least through the summer by extending its reimbursement waivers. But those waivers are expected to expire eventually, and some Vermont lawmakers — including the Senate’s leadership — want the state to make that reform permanent.
S.100 would require all Vermont public schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to every student, regardless of income. And it would offer incentives for school meal programs to buy food locally.
“A silver lining of this really terrible year has been that we have had forced upon us an experiment in what happens when we get to provide universal meals to all kids everywhere in Vermont, at no charge to their individual families,” said Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont. “And what has happened has been really extraordinary.”
It is hard to predict how much universal free meals would cost the state once federal waivers expire because the price would vary, depending on student participation rates, and how many qualify for federally subsidized meals in a given year. But it won’t be cheap.
The Agency of Education estimates the measure could cost as much as $50 million a year, although Education Secretary Dan French has acknowledged that would be a very worst-case scenario.
Advocates peg the cost closer to $20 million to $25 million a year and say the agency’s estimates make completely unrealistic assumptions about participation. Legislative analysts say the cost could be as low as $24 million a year or as high as $40 million.
Groups representing the state’s superintendents, principals and school boards all say they strongly support the mandate — but not its funding mechanism. The bill requires schools to seek as much federal reimbursement as possible for free meal programs, but school districts will have to cover whatever is left over.
French has called the bill’s aims “laudable,” but raised concerns about costs that schools would have to absorb. And he’s argued that Covid recovery work should be top of mind for his agency, which was stretched thin even before the pandemic came to Vermont.
“I question the complexity of this bill and what’s being asked of everyone to do. If there was nothing else going on, I would say, ‘Wow, this could be the flagship policy of our time,’ but unfortunately, we already have so much in-flight already, pre-Covid,” he told lawmakers Tuesday.
But advocates say the pandemic’s economic fallout will linger for years, and aggressive anti-hunger measures like these must be a keystone of recovery work.
“One out of four Vermonters expressing food insecurity — that doesn’t go away a month after the emergency order is lifted,” Sen. Chris Pearson, P/D-Chittenden, a sponsor of the legislation, told the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday.
Senate Education members voted to recommend the bill on Friday, ahead of crossover, a legislative deadline that requires bills move along, lest they die in committee. But lawmakers on the education panel still plan to take more testimony next week, in part to explore alternate funding mechanisms they might recommend to their colleagues in the Legislature’s money committees, who will soon consider the bill.
Agency of Education officials have raised other objections. They worry that families won’t fill out their free-and-reduced-price lunch paperwork without the carrot of a subsidized meal. That could have untold downstream effects for schools that rely on free-and-reduced lunch data, a key proxy for wealth in their district, to qualify for countless federal and state aid programs.
But Horton notes that schools aren’t allowed, under federal rules, to require families to fill out free-and-reduced-price meal paperwork anyway, which means many already don’t. And there are alternative forms available from the federal government that districts could use, she said — forms that schools could even require families to fill out.
“This is a problem for the grownups in our state to figure out. It is not something that should keep us from making sure that every kid in Vermont can easily, freely and, without stigma, eat breakfast and lunch at school every day,” she said.
For decades, federal subsidies have reimbursed schools for free or reduced-price meals for income-eligible students. And even pre-Covid, certain very high-poverty schools used federal programs to offer universal meal programs.
But advocates and many school officials have long argued that the eligibility criteria exclude many who are food-insecure and that stigma prevents many families who would qualify from signing up.
Despite her school’s hybrid remote and in-person schedule, Danielle Peveril, a math teacher at Lamoille Union Middle School in Hyde Park, said she’s noticed that student engagement has improved in some way this year. She credits the currently temporary universal meal program.
“It’s just made a huge difference. I think in their overall participation and just socially. Everybody’s got the same lunch, and it makes them feel like part of the group. It makes a more inclusive classroom,” she said.
At the very start of the year, Peveril said she noticed only a few kids raised their hands to order lunch at the beginning of the day. But as soon as the school made it clear that the program was “for everybody,” participation shot up.
In the past, Peveril said she’s seen kids bullied for participating in the free-and-reduced-price lunch program. To avoid the stigma, many students just didn’t eat.
“I’ve absolutely seen kids skip meals,” she said. “But not this year.”
