FRAC Chat

The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program, created in March 2020, provides an EBT card with the value of free school breakfast, lunch, and a snack to make up for the free or reduced-price meals that children have missed due to schools that have closed or reduced their hours. For the millions of struggling families who have received P-EBT benefits — the program has offered a lifeline during unprecedented food insecurity and economic hardship. 

Community eligibility election season is here! Community eligibility allows more than 32,000 high-poverty school districts across the country to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students on a 4-year cycle.

A recent “NCSEA On Location” podcast, sponsored by the National Child Support Enforcement Association, focused on how the child support program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work to address food insecurity within families. In general, child support refers to the ongoing payments made by one parent to another parent to provide financial support for a child.

There is a common misconception that college students cannot, or do not, face food insecurity. When we imagine who attends college, we often think of students fresh out of high school, supported by their middle- to upper-middle-class — often white — parents. We imagine modern dormitories with ample amenities and seemingly unending supplies of cafeteria food, all freely accessible with just the swipe of one’s student ID.

However, given the demographic shift in who attends college, what we previously imagined about college students is no longer in touch with reality, if it ever was.

In this guest blog post, Dr. Janet Poppendieck, Urban School Food Alliance Advisory Council Member, highlights 10 key reasons to support free healthy school meals for all. Professor Poppendieck is the author of Free For All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press, 2010).