FRAC Chat

During the holidays and all year long, millions of individuals and families who struggle against hunger are able to access healthy food with support from the federal nutrition programs. To celebrate the nation’s nutrition safety net, FRAC is releasing a seven-part “Remember This December” series that will highlight the impact of seven important federal nutrition programs.

This is the second installment of the series, which focuses on school lunch. Read the previous installment on afterschool meals.

During the holidays and all year long, millions of individuals and families who struggle against hunger are able to access healthy food with support from the federal nutrition programs. To celebrate the nation’s nutrition safety net, FRAC has created a seven-part “Remember This December” series that will highlight the impact of seven important federal nutrition programs.

This is the first installment of the series, which focuses on afterschool meals.

There are a variety of reasons for school meals debt, including a change in household income status, a misunderstanding of school meals procedures, or simply forgetting to refill the account. Whatever the case may be, however, school districts should ensure that communication about the debt is held with the parent or guardian — not the student. The bottom line is that there are solutions to resolve school meals debt without embarrassing children.

On July 24, the administration proposed a rule that would take away Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits from over 3 million people and jeopardize more than 500,000 children’s access to free school meals. The move is bad policy, as it threatens to make children hungrier at home and at school, and reduces access to the good nutrition provided by school meals that support child health, learning, and well-being.

Participation in community eligibility — a powerful tool for high-need schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to all students while eliminating the need for families to fill out school meal applications — is growing across the nation, according to a new FRAC report released this month. Community Eligibility: The Key to Hunger-Free Schools, School Year 2018–2019 shows that nearly 13.6 million children in nearly 28,500 schools across the country (64 percent of all eligible schools) are using the provision in the 2018–2019 school year.