With free meal funds dry, advocates push CT to offer universal school meals. It’s ‘shockingly awful,’ one nutrition services director says.

Federal funds that have kept free meals in Connecticut schools afloat since August are drying up, and, for the first time in more than two years, students will have to start paying for food.

As school nutrition workers and Connecticut families grapple with the new reality, anti-hunger advocates are pushing for policy that would reintroduce universal free school breakfast and lunch to the state.

At the start of the school year, the state pledged $30 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to the School Meals Assistance Revenue for Transition fund, which aimed to help families transition back to paid meals by temporarily financing free breakfast and lunch after pandemic-era meal waivers expired. In as little as three months, numerous districts have run out of funding, and many more are set to join them in the coming weeks.

State Sen. Saud Anwar said that Connecticut should not be comfortable with the fact that the funds are gone.

On Wednesday, Anwar announced his plan to propose legislation that would make school meals free and available to all students.

“A hungry child cannot learn,” Anwar said. “Our society is judged by how they treat their most vulnerable ... And that’s precisely the reason I feel that it’s important for us as the state of Connecticut to make sure that we are able to have universal lunches available to our children.”

“The advantages these programs provide to students will drastically outweigh their costs and bolster our youth for the future,” Anwar wrote in a press release.

He added that if the bill passes this legislative session, the law, at the earliest, would go into effect for the 2023-2024 school year.

In the meantime, students enrolled in free meals with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child Nutrition Programs or children who attend school in one of Connecticut’s 55 Community Eligibility Provision districts will still access breakfast and lunch for free, but those who do not qualify will have to become re-accustomed to paying for their meals.

One district’s struggles

In East Hampton, $170,859.60 in SMART funds kept the district’s 1,800 students fed through Dec. 1. Jennifer Bove, East Hampton’s director of nutrition services, described the past two weeks of paid meals as “shockingly awful.”

“I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad,” Bove said. “Our participation has dropped off so much more than what I expected. We are doing less [meals] than we ever have, even pre-COVID. I spend pretty much all my days answering emails, talking to parents, either trying to figure out how to help them set up an account, how to help them apply for free or reduced [meals], explaining why they don’t qualify for free or reduced or explaining why they’re getting charged.”

The USDA Child Nutrition Programs base family eligibility for free and reduced-price meals on federal poverty guidelines that vary based on household size.

In Connecticut, a family of four loses free meal eligibility once their pre-tax income exceeds $36,075. The cut-off mark for reduced-price $0.30 breakfast and $0.40 lunch is $51,338 for a family that size.

Bove said that the federal guidelines do not encompass all students in need of food assistance.

“We have a lot of families that are just falling right above that level where they don’t qualify,” Bove said. “It’s so frustrating and it’s so upsetting every day. I typically love my job, but I have hated my job every single day since we went back to full pay because it’s just that people are struggling ... We’re telling them ‘You need to find an extra $6 a day per child to feed them,’ and then to not be able to do anything to help them, it’s really frustrating.”

Bove said that most East Hampton students on the free and reduced lunch list enter through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Others may be eligible through the HUSKY Health program, but it’s not guaranteed. Students who are not part of either program must apply for free and reduced-price meals with the district.

Before the pandemic, Bove said East Hampton processed an average of eight applications each year. Since running out of SMART funds, Bove receives one to two free and reduced-price meal applications daily, with 55 so far this year. Bove said that 53% of those applications have ended in a denial.

With inflation sending the district’s food costs up more than 50%, Bove said that East Hampton had to raise its prices by $0.50. In the district, breakfast now costs $2.25 for all students, and lunch costs $3.50 in elementary school and up to $4.50 for high schoolers.

Since making the switch to paid meals, Bove said that the district has experienced a 61% drop in breakfast participation and a 49% drop in lunch participation. Even more concerning, students receiving free and reduced-price meals have also stopped accepting food at lunch and breakfast time.

“Thirty-three percent less of our free and reduced kids are getting breakfast, and 27% less of our free and reduced kids are getting lunch,” Bove said. “That’s telling me that this is a stigma issue... Even though we do not identify [students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals] in any way, shape or form, they feel that stigma. And if they feel like only the free or reduced kids are eating, less and less of those kids will be willing to eat.”

Bove said that inflation and lagging participation raises production costs. As a result, she had to stop buying higher-quality, less-processed products and halt East Hampton’s farm-to-school program that brought farm-fresh local produce and meat to the district.

“It hurts the local economy. I’m not going to be able to buy from these farms anymore and it hurts the quality of food that I serve,” Bove said. “We do a lot of cooking from scratch as well. I don’t know that I can afford to keep the staff on to do that... It affects everything across the board.”

Bove said that she is “incredibly frustrated” by the perceived lack of state and national focus on the issue.

“Every kid should be fed a healthy meal in school and no child should be made to feel less than because they can’t afford a healthy meal,” Bove said. “I don’t know what’s more important than feeding children. And it frustrates me beyond belief that our legislators aren’t prioritizing that.”

The push for universal meals

The movement for universal school meals has gained traction across the nation ever since federal waivers offering students no-charge breakfast and lunch launched in March 2020 and expired in June 2022.

In September, the Biden administration announced its commitment to “Advance a pathway to free healthy school meals for all.” That plan includes expanding free meal eligibility through the Community Eligibility Provision and National Child Nutrition Programs to 9 million more students over the next decade.

California, Maine and Colorado have already established permanent, state-funded universal meal programs. Massachusetts, Vermont and Nevada have funded free meals for the entirety of the 2022-2023 school year, and nine additional states, including Connecticut, are working to pass permanent policy, according to the Food Research and Action Center.

Lucy Nolan, the policy director of End Hunger Connecticut!, hopes that this legislative session, Connecticut will join the list of states offering free breakfast and lunch to all students.

“We know that kids who eat at school get better nutrition and their meals are healthier, regardless of their income,” Nolan said. “We talk about learning loss. We know that hungry kids don’t learn well, they can be disruptive in classes. So this is a way to help regain where we were pre-pandemic.”

She said that in a state where one in eight children are food insecure, the need to reintroduce free meals is pressing.

“It would be great if the legislature could come in at the beginning of the session and pass a bill right away to at least pay for the rest of this school year,” Nolan said. “Then, we would move forward with a longer-term solution.”

Nolan said that ideally, End Hunger Connecticut! would like to see a plan that supplements USDA funding with state dollars to keep meals free for every student. The organization is also working to include a permanent farm-to-school program in the state.

“Not only does it help kids learn about where food comes from, but it also helps our farmers in Connecticut. It’s an economic boost for them as well. So it’s kind of a win-win,” Nolan said.

Erin Perpetua, the director of Food Services for Norwich Public Schools and the president of the School Nutrition Association of Connecticut, said that through her district’s farm-to-school program, students learned that corn kernels come off an ear, and not a frozen bag or can.

Because 40% or more of Norwich’s student population is eligible for free meals, the entire district receives funding to offer free breakfast, lunch and dinner through the Community Eligibility Provision.

Perpetua said that since transitioning the district to the Community Eligibility Provision system six years ago, the funding and sustained participation in the free meal program has allowed her to purchase higher-quality foods. The switch has also alleviated the administrative burden of processing free and reduced meal applications.

Because of Norwich’s Community Eligibility Provision status, Perpetua’s students won’t be affected by the end of the federal funding, but she said her colleagues in districts across the state are “panicking.”

Chief among their concerns is the debt which is already accumulating in some towns from students not paying for their meals.

Perpetua said at a meeting last week one district that went back to paid meals in November already has $13,000 in unpaid meal debt.

“If we have negative balances, we don’t pay it, the school board pays it. This is not money that has been budgeted for,” Perpetua said. “If some schools have $13,000 now and you still have another six months or seven months of school left, what kind of negative balance is that school district going to have to pay? That’s money that’s going to be taken from the students’ learning and applied to these meals.”

After seeing the benefits of free meals in her district, Perpetua is supportive of extending the benefits to all of Connecticut’s students. She said that it is time to treat school nutrition in the same manner as other resources.

“Some of these kids, the only meals that they might get are just meals that we serve in the schools,” Perpetua said. “Students are provided books, they’re provided busing, they’re provided even basics like pencils, pens, paper. Some of them, if not most of them even get tablets and stuff like that, which is great for education, but if a child is hungry, they’re not going to learn.”