Ohio is grappling with how to continue providing free school meals to hungry children after federal pandemic assistance is eliminated.
Funds authorized by pandemic legislation provided free food for all children in grades K-12. Regular school operations resumed in the 2022-2023 school year, meaning millions of children no longer had access to food assistance.
Eight states used their own funds to reinstate free lunch programs. California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont did so through legislative initiatives, and Colorado launched a statewide initiative.
Ohio covers the full cost for students who qualify for reduced-price meals.
Previously, children in Ohio received free meals whose families earned 130% or less of the federal poverty level, and children between 130% and 185% received their meals at a reduced price. Now, children from families earning between 130% and 185% of the federal poverty level will also receive their school meals for free. For a family of four, the federal poverty level is $31,200 per year.
The new state budget provides schools with 30 cents for each discounted breakfast and 40 cents for each discounted lunch.
According to 2023 data from the Children’s Defense Fund Ohio, one in five children in Ohio lives in a household that suffers from hunger. That’s 413,000 children across the state, yet according to data from the 2022-2023 school year, one-third of these children from food-insecure households are ineligible for school meals because their families earn more than the federal poverty level.
“We are the most successful country on the planet,” said Lisa Quigley, director of hunger relief at Tusk Philanthropies. “We are the richest country in the world. So why are people starving here?”
Governor DeWine: “We will figure it out”
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is trying to determine the best policy for Ohio.
“The biggest benefit of universal health coverage is that it reduces the stigma,” DeWine said. “Many families can’t afford it. My question is, should taxpayers pay for it? But what we do know is that it reduces the stigma. We’re trying to balance all of those things. We’ll figure it out.”“
There are still many families who earn more than 185 percent of the national poverty line and still rely on free school meals.
“There were still gaps. I had a few families that missed the minimum by, you know, $27, $32,” said Andrea Helton, director of nutrition services at the Wellington Exempted Village School District in northern Ohio.
For Katherine Ungar, senior policy associate at the Children’s Defense Fund, the next step is to convince lawmakers to provide additional funding in the next state budget to pay for all school meals.
“We would like to see the next step in the next budget: real investment in school meals for all students,” said Ungar.
According to a group, public support for free school meals for all is high
Tusk Philanthropies commissioned the Tarrance Group, a Republican research firm, to gauge the popularity of this initiative in Ohio. According to Brian Tringali, partner at the Tarrance Group, the organization’s poll, released on May 20, 2024, showed that public support for increasing these numbers and implementing universal free school meals is very high, even if it means raising taxes.
“A universal food program for Ohio could cost taxpayers as much as $300 million,” said Brian Tringali. “The majority of voters either didn’t care or weren’t sure.”
After the award was announced, approval dropped by just 5%, from 67% to 62%. What’s more, this approval was not skewed towards the left or the right, or towards rural or urban areas.
Steve Tringali, a former teacher and principal of Balmer Elementary School in Massachusetts, sees promising results after introducing free breakfast and lunch for all at schools there.
“The number of students participating in breakfast has increased dramatically,” Tringali said. “You almost have to ask yourself: Did the kids always need this and just never have it?”
A lack of food and nutrients can affect a child’s growth in all areas and make it difficult for him or her to learn and absorb new information. In the eight states that have implemented universal food laws in place of the previous federal requirements, the results have been positive.
“Test scores are going up. Attendance is better,” Quigley said. “There’s less stress, and therefore fewer behavior problems. And the kids are happier, right? Because kids need to be fed, people need to be fed.”
Ohio has a system in place to feed children outside of the school year. Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer in Ohio provides the state’s 837,000 eligible children with federally funded food subsidies of $40 per month per child this summer through a Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT, card.
Brea McClung, an American history teacher at Chesapeake High School in southern Ohio, knows the impact of food shortages and spends her own money to buy snacks for her students.
Inflation has made purchasing more difficult in recent years, so she’s being more strategic. Creating situations where teachers have to spend their own income to feed their students is one thing, but McClung has seen far worse scenarios in her 25 years of teaching.
“Typically, they start out by just paying the lunch bill and then when they graduate, they don’t get their diploma because they owe a huge amount of money,” McClung said.
McClung finds this unacceptable because food is a form of security and security is a protection that the government must provide.
“Food is safety. And I think the number one priority of a school should be safety,” McClung said. “It has to come before anything else. Because if you don’t have that, you can’t learn.”
