July 11, 2024
The Food Research & Action Center interviewed Patrick Tutwiler, Massachusetts’ Secretary of Education, to learn how the state’s Healthy School Meals for All policy has impacted students, families, and schools.
What changes did you see in Massachusetts when free school meals started being offered to all students?
I was previously the superintendent of a large public school district that provided free school meals to all students through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). It was hard not to see the impact this had on my students and school environment. After seeing the sustained increase in participation in breakfast and lunch and the stability improvements to school nutrition departments — I was all in. We were no longer talking about school lunch shaming policies or family meal debt. Students — ALL students — were on a level playing field. No more stigma, no more shame.
Through our state’s School Meals for All policy, we have really felt the impact for our families with low and moderate income. The families who make just enough money to not qualify for reduced-price or free meals, but not enough to get by. Now their kids can get a healthy breakfast and lunch at school every day and they do not have to worry about finding the money for it. That money can now go toward rent, utilities, clothes, and medical costs. We know nowadays that all these costs are expensive, including the price of food, and so, whatever help we can give goes a long way.
How has participation in school meals changed after state-supported free school meals began, in comparison to school year (SY) 2018–2019 when meals were divided into free, reduced-price, and paid categories?
Massachusetts stepped in to continue funding free school meals after the USDA waivers during the height of the pandemic ended. We sustained high student participation in lunch and breakfast and provided a significant investment in school nutrition programs to sustain and improve the nutritional quality of meals. This was also at a time when the state’s K–12 enrollment decreased by 37,896 students from SY 2022–2023 compared to SY 2018-2019.
Almost seven out of 10 students across our state are eating school lunch, which can be the healthiest meals children eat in a day. Over 185,000 free or reduced-price-eligible students attend schools where, if it were not for the current state funding, meals would not be free of charge to all families. We have not faced the significant decrease in participation other states are seeing.
Compared to the 2018–2019 school year, the 2022–2023 school year (the first year for state-supported School Meals for All):
- 12.2 million more lunches were served;
- 61,500 more students ate lunch every school day;
- 9 million more breakfasts were served; and
- 43,400 more students ate breakfast every school day.
This predictable monthly revenue helped schools with budgeting and created new opportunities to reinvest in their food programs. This included updated menus, and purchasing fresh local food from local producers, including but not limited to farmers, food hubs, and fishermen, with all products originating within 400 miles.
More data about the first year successes of the state-funded School Meals for All program is available here.
How does access to food shape the educational experience for students?
As a former teacher, principal, and superintendent, I have seen firsthand the impact consistent access to food has on a student’s educational outcomes and opportunities. Students cannot learn or play when their hierarchy of needs is not met — when they do not have food to eat. Access to food enables students to have more of their cognitive resources available for learning instead of consumed by concerns about where their next meal is coming from.
In Massachusetts, we have been focused on healing and stabilizing our education system — from early education and child care through higher education. And a key piece of that work is holistically supporting students inside and outside the classroom.
And we are starting to see some results. Our five-year graduation rate for the 2022 cohort this year was 91.9 percent, the highest five-year rate for any cohort since we began calculating graduation rates in 2006. Our chronic absenteeism rate decreased by 4.9 percentage points from 24.5 percent as of March 1, 2023, to 19.6 percent as of March 1, 2024 (the rate of students who missed 10 percent of the school days to date.) That means more kids are in school where they can access these critical school meals.
What advice would you give to other states that are considering offering free school meals to all students?
It is worth the investment. And we will make back every penny spent on the economic mobility of students and their ability to thrive and succeed in school and into the future.
To love our students is to acknowledge and understand who they are, to validate their lived experience and journey of the people who look like them, and to provide them with what they need to realize their dreams. As educators and education leaders, the work we do with students is more than Lord of the Flies, polynomials, and the periodic table. It is also about the leveling of the playing field for historically marginalized groups, breaking cycles of poverty, and working with students to help them establish control over their own lives — partnering to create the conditions for them to realize their dreams. That’s what it means to love our students and what I believe School Meals for All embodies and we should strive toward.
