By Cindy Long
Susan Jones, a nutrition services professional in Colonial School District, New Castle, Delaware, has seen far too many students skip lunch because they were afraid they couldn’t afford it or were embarrassed to hand the cashier the card announcing that they qualified for free meals.
“The best possible use of my tax dollar would be to feed a kid,” Jones says, who dreads seeing hungry kids avoid the line and the stigma of the “free lunch” label. “Universal school meals would make a huge difference at the register. Everyone’s going to get lunch, no questions asked. I hope it’s forever.”
If lawmakers are successful, it will be.
Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Gwen Moore of Wisconsin introduced the Universal School Meals Program Act of 2021, which would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income while eliminating school meal debt.
“In the richest country in the world, it is an outrage that millions of children struggle with hunger every day,” Sanders said in a statement. “Every child deserves a quality education free of hunger. What we’ve seen during this pandemic is that a universal approach to school meals works. We cannot go backwards.”
An emergency nutrition waiver program was implemented in spring of 2020 as COVID-19 closed schools and businesses, triggering an economic crisis and widespread food insecurity. The waivers made it much easier to feed all students, but if universal school meals don’t continue, educators say, many students will fall back into hunger.
There is a large refugee and immigrant population in the Phoenix Union High School District, where Vanessa Jimenez CONTINUE READING: Educators call on Congress to ensure healthy school meals for all students - Education Votes
