Welcome back to Chester's news wrap.
So since the early days of the pandemic,
millions of Children were able to get free meals at schools and over the
summer thanks to a federal waiver that's set to expire on June 30.
Earlier this week. The house passed a $1.5 trillion September,
but it does not include funding the child nutrition waivers
that allowed for universal free lunch
joining me now is Jessica gold,
chair of public policy and legislation
committee at the school nutrition association.
And Jessica,
can you tell us a bit more about the federal waivers given to us schools
throughout the pandemic and how much relief did
this funding provide for low income families?
Absolutely, thank you so much.
Um so really,
I think that these waivers hit two major things that we needed at that time.
The first was they allowed us to have better access
to getting the meals to students and uh we have struggled,
especially in summer when our students might not be in school ensuring that we
can get food to them so that they can continue to have nourishment and
one of the more multiple of the different waivers that were
not included in the omnibus were related to the the accessibility,
so having kids being able to grab more than one meal a day
um and also being able to consume them on site versus offsite,
Things like that um that, you know, regardless of where we're at won't go away.
Uh they're not gonna go away this summer for certainty.
The other big area was the funding, we received 22% more funding than
We previously had. And so in July one, we will be going back to um the
old reimbursement which uh
is not enough money to actually pay for feeding um funding those meals,
so the labor and the food costs that we currently have and um that's that's
horrible.
Um because again, we're we're not getting the food into the bellies of our students.
one other big area is in Colorado alone,
We will have to cut 274 summer food service sites.
Um that is 13 million lunches and nine
million students that aren't getting to our kids
because we don't have these waivers that are currently in place.
So what was the reason the government had to say to
For them not to extend the waivers to have 30 million kids potentially go hungry,
you know, we really don't know.
Uh we we we thought we had really great support,
we know that we had bipartisan support and uh we we were pushing hard that it was gonna
be included in the omnibus and when it was pulled out it was a shock to us and so
luckily we have very strong partners in USDA and we are trying to look at what,
what our next steps are to try and um you know,
pass some of the waivers that might not have fiscal notes associated with them and
then also looking at what we can do for funding streams.
So throughout the pandemic,
the public schools have shifted to like
in person online hybrid.
So how does not having these waivers affect the kids who are not going to be in person?
Absolutely. I mean these waivers
essentially will not allow them to be able to have meals.
Um The the other big piece of it too is uh
Right now the it's seen as a school that has 50% more for and reduced.
Those schools are able to offer the summer food service
program um but they're also able to uh allow for
more
diverse ways of
getting food to students after school snack programs.
Uh Just different programs that we can offer and we
have had a waiver that has allowed us to provide snacks
for example at all of our schools in the afternoon.
So all of that will be going away and
I truly believe that in every school there's a hungry kid
and to be able to rip that up is pretty hard.
Now,
another big thing is originally you had to have a family of three
making less than $30,000 a year to qualify for the for these assistants
inflation came along
and now things are even more expensive. So what is the consideration for that?
How is that priced into this?
Ignoring ignoring these waivers,
How are families gonna deal with this.
Uh It's not um and that's
that's the disheartening part for us right now because
we were struggling to really grasp why it wasn't
ah
When we go to the grocery store, it's more expensive.
When we're buying our food, it's more expensive.
We are seeing 20 to 30% increases in our food
costs and then the labor costs on top of that,
Everything is more expensive,
so to lose the 22% increase in reimbursement that we've been
receiving is going to be detrimental to food service programs.
Alright.
I just have a very fast question because I have to wrap this up unfortunately.
30 seconds. What can we do to help?
How can I mean it's past,
but what can people do to get this in there and get something done?
You know,
I think what we can do is I as
many people contacting representatives saying that this is still
a priority and um just asking what can be
done is really the biggest thing and then for for
um just in the meantime filling out those free and reduced applications
is going to be huge as we move into next year.
All right, Jessica.
Gould Chair of public policy legislation
committee at the school nutrition association
Jessica, thank you for bringing awareness to this. It's a super important topic.
Thank you again for coming