I was cutting the crusts off the sandwich I had prepared for our 6-year-old grandson, making sure to use the correct peanut butter, jam and bread (potato), and I thought about the millions of families across the country feeding their finicky eaters, balancing their parental need to provide nutrition for their young ones against what those children will eat, and what the family can afford. And then I thought about doing that for thousands of children every day, which is the responsibility of school district food services departments.
Public schools across the country serve more than 4.5 billion meals every year, and for many young people that is the one nutritious meal they get during the day. As one person I spoke with said, “I was very happy to come to school … it meant that I would be able to eat.”
We have taken getting meals at school for granted, but having the federal government involved in funding those meals is relatively recent, and given the budget decisions of the federal government, it would serve us to take another look at how we feed all of our children at school.
History
Several European cities began feeding their neediest children in the late 18th and 19th centuries when it became apparent that the children were too malnourished to learn anything at school. These early feeding programs were carried out by private citizens groups, religious organizations, or other community agencies.
Similar efforts were going on in the United States. The earliest federal aid did not come until the 1930s, during the Great Depression, which led to the government providing more food to children in schools, for two reasons. There were millions of children without enough food to eat and there were farmers who could not sell their crops to their destitute communities, and so some of that unsold food went to the schools.
The government passed the National School Lunch Program in 1946 after it became clear that many men were not fit to serve in the military because they were malnourished.
The School Breakfast Program (SBP) was a pilot program within the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, with its roots in the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children in Oakland, California. The SBP became permanent in 1975.
And then came COVID. Children were not going to school, but millions of children still needed to be fed. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), signed into law March 18, 2020, allowed states to apply for waivers that would provide meals to all children for free, during the school year and over weekends, holidays, and vacations including summer vacations.
Post-COVID, all but eight states have cancelled the universal free meals programs; fortunately, Massachusetts is one of those eight. The state has committed to funding those meals through a mix of federal funds, the state budget, and money that comes from the Fair Share, or millionaire’s tax, that the voters approved in 2022.
Nutritional need
One in five American children faces food insecurity — more than the populations of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined. There is significant research that illustrates that making sure children have enough to eat improves their academic performance, their overall health, their behavior at school, and cuts down on trips to the nurse and days absent.
Challenges
There are many challenges to feeding all of our children at schools, some logistical, some financial, some political and social. The federal government pays just over $4 per meal but only a fraction of that goes directly to food; the rest pays for salaries, equipment, and supplies, and the food services department must pay for itself. In addition, the logistics, staff, and physical space required to put out 1,000 meals a day are staggering, and some districts simply do not have the resources to meet those challenges. For many districts, they don’t earn enough to purchase nutritious and appetizing food that will encourage students to eat the meals provided. They tend to order prepackaged meals that are cheaper, less appetizing, less nutritious, but within their abilities to deliver on a daily basis.
Another challenge is the structure of the school day; long lines and short lunch periods in noisy, crowded lunchrooms can make for an unappetizing and unrelaxing setting to take meals, and many older students tend to avoid it when possible.
There has also been significant social stigma for many students who have needed free or reduced meals, who would rather go hungry than be identified as coming from a poor family or having the family go into lunch debt. The current policy of providing free meals for all students has made a significant difference in Massachusetts, and as a result the health, grades, attendance levels, and involvement of low-income students has shown marked improvement.
Feeding students in Greenfield
Greenfield takes advantage of several programs to offer breakfast, lunch, snacks, and food for weekends, holidays and over the summer to approximately 1,000 students every day. Every meal is prepared on site using the freshest ingredients possible. Food services director Greta Shwachman describes what they do this way:
“Students can eat free breakfast, free lunch. We have pretty high need in Greenfield and high participation. We try to offer a variety of choices every day. We try to do a mix of things that are very classic kid items, like chicken nuggets and pizza, but then we’ll also serve dumplings, or we’ll do pupusas, or try to introduce some global flavors to expand their palates.”
Greenfield, as a small district, practices collaborative purchasing with other districts, working with the Farm to School program, food hubs and vendors that connect them with local farms. This enables the schools to provide fresh, local, nourishing produce and fruit to the children and it enables small local farms to have a reliable and stable market for their goods. As Greta puts it, “We are the largest chain restaurant in the entire country, if you add up every single school and compare it to McDonald’s. I mean, we are huge, and we have huge purchasing power.”
It’s a win-win; the kids get healthy, local produce and the school system is supporting local farmers and the region’s economy.
One of the most difficult questions facing food service in Greenfield and around the country is the impact of funding cuts from federal government. They have made such severe cuts to programs such as Medicaid, SNAP and supports for small farmers that it is unclear how that will affect food at school. Massachusetts has made it clear that we will continue to support universal free meals for all students, but that will require more money from the state budget.
We know that more children will be hungry as SNAP and Medicaid cuts take effect, and that will have an impact on their learning and their health. We know that more small farms will struggle to survive, as contracts and programs they were counting on are cancelled. And we know that, whatever happens, food services at the Greenfield Public Schools and districts around the state will do everything they can to feed and support our children.
Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000 and then at university as a professor of education until he retired in 2017. He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@gmail.com.