Make school meal programs permanent
It is hard to learn when you are hungry.
The American dream has at its roots that all people should start life with an equal chance to achieve success. How far you go and what you are able to achieve depends on your choices, some luck and most importantly how willing you are to work to achieve your dreams. That is the promise of a nation of immigrants, the golden light that continues to shine like a beacon for all nations.
The challenge and obligation on all of us is to ensure that young people have the opportunity to learn, grow and enter the workforce with the skills needed to prosper.
It is hard to concentrate on math and science when your stomach is grumbling. It is hard to thrive when your diet is cheap processed food, because that is all your family can afford. It is hard to dream of bright futures when food security keeps you grounded in the need to just get through another day.
A program that has provided free breakfasts and lunches to children for the past two years as part of the COVID-19 relief packages is slated to end following the 2022 school year.
When students start school next fall, it will be a return to normal with students and families responsible for providing their lunches whether they are brought from home or through the school lunch programs. Economically struggling families will once again need to go through the process of applying for free and reduced lunch.
Educators will once again take on the role of bill collectors going after parents and guardians who won’t or can’t pay their children’s lunch bills. The national embarrassment of headlines about student lunch debts will quickly return.
It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a growing call to make permanent the COVID-era program to ensure that young people’s basic nutrition needs are met regardless of family circumstance.
Prior to COVID, the federal government, through the USDA’s National School Lunch Program (NSLP), spent about $14.2 billion per year on the free and reduced lunch programs. Projections are that it would take about $20 billion a year to include all students.
While $20 billion is a lot of money to spend, it needs to be viewed in the perspective of the enormity of the federal budget. According to the Department of Defense, in 2022 the U.S. Military will spend $20.3 billion on “missiles and munitions”, just a small part of the $245.6 billion that will be spent on purchasing weapons systems.
While simplistic, there is truth in the age-old “guns vs. butter” balancing act between security spending and spending to improve the lives of people. In light of America having scaled back the generation-long conflicts in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is time to reinvest in public programs.
The student lunch program is an ideal spot to invest those resources into the next generation of Americans so that the focus can be on learning and not on worrying how their families are going to cover their lunch fees.
