Congress just failed kids, schools

Last week, Congress failed kids and the school nutrition workers who have worked heroically to feed them throughout the pandemic. As a result, hungry kids across the country may miss out on more than 95 million meals this summer, and school meal programs are left high and dry in the face of ongoing extreme challenges.

Ready or not, Congress has determined school meals must return to “normal” on June 30, allowing critical nationwide child nutrition waivers to expire by not including them in the latest spending bill. 

Here’s the problem with this decision. 

Step into any school cafeteria today, and it will look vastly different than it did two years ago. First, the staff will be fewer and overworked, as nearly three-quarters of school districts are facing staff shortages in their nutrition departments. 
The meals may look different too. More than 90 percent of schools are unable to secure the food they usually would because of supply chain issues. That means instead of a handful of baby carrots on the lunch tray you might see a kiwi, which costs more. 

But, thanks to child nutrition waivers, schools have continued to safely and effectively serve meals to kids despite unyielding supply chain disruptions, rapidly rising food prices and severe staffing shortages.

They were first introduced early in the pandemic to give schools and local organizations the ability to feed kids whether they were in the classroom, isolated at home or learning through a hybrid model. 

While we are thankful our kids are back in the classroom, there is nothing normal about the environment schools are operating in right now. These waivers are a lifeline for schools to feed students amidst these ongoing challenges.

Yet, instead of helping schools and community organizations meet these challenges in real time, Congress just made their jobs harder. 

Much of the conversation around extending nutrition waivers has been dominated by a focus on “universal free meals,” where no-cost meals are offered to students regardless of their family’s income. But focusing solely on this one benefit is short sighted and dangerous.

There is so much more at stake.

Starting July 1, that school you walked into earlier may be fined if those carrots never showed up. School food budgets, already taking a hit from rising food costs, are going to go deeper into the red because of decreased reimbursements and financial penalties. 

Schools will also lose the flexibility to distribute meals in creative, pandemic-friendly ways that help keep kids in classrooms as COVID-19 cases rise and fall in their communities and districts deal with ongoing staffing shortages.

This means many schools simply won’t be able to offer meals over the summer, which is an important source of nutrition for kids at what is already the hungriest time of year. In Pennsylvania, schools estimate that their summer meals sites will decrease by half because they can’t operate without the waivers. Multiply that by 50 states and you can imagine the effect on hungry kids. According to our calculations, this puts children at risk of missing more than 95 million meals this summer alone.  

Children in rural communities will be at particular risk. Transportation is a major barrier to feeding kids in rural areas and without waivers, meal providers will no longer be allowed to reimagine traditional summer meal service by packing food for multiple days or delivering meals, for example.

The choice to let waivers expire has far reaching implications for the nearly 13 million children facing hunger in the U.S. today. When kids don’t get the nutrition they need, their health, academic outcomes and future economic prosperity suffers. 

Schools are in survival mode. As one food service director told us, they’re not concerned that they will struggle. They’re overwhelmed by the fear that they will fail. We’ve been doing this for more than 30 years, and we’ve never seen such panic from the school nutrition professionals we work with.

These are real people who are stretching every penny, working overtime without extra pay and continuing to show up every day for hungry kids. For the last two years they have been rightfully hailed as heroes, but in one of their greatest times of need, what did Congress do? It left them behind.

Child nutrition waivers are not meant to be permanent, and we must continue the path to normalcy. But allowing them to expire at a time when schools and meal providers are still struggling is downright cruel and puts more children at risk of hunger.

The only question left is what our members of Congress will do to fix this. 

Lisa Davis is the senior vice president of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.