Child Nutrition Reauthorization
Priority

Increasing Access to Summer Meals

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The Summer Nutrition Programs (the Summer Food Service Program and the National School Lunch Program) are designed to replace school breakfast and lunch so that low-income children continue to have access to nutritious meals during summer break. Yet, these programs serve only one in six of the low-income children who rely on school lunch during the school year.

Because so few children have access to summer nutrition, USDA research finds that food insecurity rates increase for households with children during the summer, and the increase is greater for states with low Summer Nutrition participation rates. Similarly, many food banks report that the demand for emergency food spikes in the summer months as families struggle to provide for their children. The evidence also is that children’s weight gain spikes over the summer.

The low program participation is not an accident. Over the years, the Summer Nutrition Programs has suffered a series of critical blows that have decreased the number of sponsors and sites, resulting in fewer low-income children having access to nutritious summer meals.

Congress must re-build the program by reversing the previous program cuts and making additional investments. Important legislative changes include:

• The area eligibility threshold should be improved to allow communities to participate if 40 percent of the children in the area are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. Currently, the threshold is 50 percent which keeps many communities with significant numbers of low-income children, but not a high enough concentration of poverty, from participating.

• Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) reimbursement rates should be increased by 10 percent, restoring them to pre-1996 levels adjusted for inflation. Since reimbursement rates were cut in 1996, it has been extremely difficult for sponsors to participate without losing money or for them to provide the most nutritious food. USDA has found that 73 percent expect to lose money operating SFSP.

• Grants should be made available for start-up and expansion, transportation, and outreach costs. Start-up and expansion grants (available until 1996) make it easier to recruit new sponsors and to encourage current sponsors to serve additional sites, both of which are necessary in order to increase participation. Providing funding to get children to Summer Nutrition Programs that offer high quality educational and enrichment activities is a vital way to support access in rural areas. And outreach funding is needed to inform the community about the program.

• The Year-Round Summer Food Pilot should be expanded nationwide and strengthened so that children also can receive meals after school, on weekends, and during school holidays. Currently, the pilot is only available in California, and it only allows children to receive a snack during the school year. Many organizations that operate summer programs also provide high quality afterschool programming during the school year. The pilot (included in the 2004 Child Nutrition Reauthorization) significantly reduces administrative work. Organizations do not have to operate multiple child nutrition programs, each requiring an application and having different rules.

• Performance awards should be given to states that are doing the best job in increasing participation. This is an important way to encourage states to run strong Summer Nutrition Programs, especially since participation varies dramatically (the top performing states serve at least one in three of low-income children who eat lunch during the school year, and the lowest performing states serve fewer than one in 20).

*Nord, Mark and Kathleen Romig. 2006. "Hunger in the Summer: Seasonal Food Insecurity and the National School Lunch and Summer Food Service Programs," Journal of Children and Poverty 12(2): 1 41-158.