Advocates urge Congress to extend pandemic relief that provides free school meals to kids

Public health advocates are calling on Congress to extend a waiver program that was implemented early in the coronavirus pandemic to provides free meals to students, including millions of children in Florida. The waivers are set to expire at the end of this school year.

The federal government gave schools more flexibility in how and where they could deliver meals and increased reimbursement rates to cover more kids and in some cases healthier food options.

If the waivers expire at the end of June, children could lose out on an important source of nutrition, according to Jamie Bussel, senior program officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Families are going to have a harder time affording food and schools are going to continue to face some pretty significant financial difficulties,” she said.

According to the foundation, school food service departments suffered more than $2 billion in federal revenue losses between March and November 2020.

Advocates also point to a recent survey that found 95% of school food service departments are struggling with staff shortages and 97% are facing rising costs due to supply chain issues.

Efforts to include an extension of the waiver program in an omnibus spending bill President Joe Biden signed last month failed. A group of federal lawmakers have since introduced bipartisan legislation to extend the flexibilities until the fall of 2023.

Some Republican lawmakers argue the waivers are too costly and that the pandemic is no longer disrupting everyday life enough to justify continued relief.

COVID-19 may more manageable now, says Bussel, but economic problems have not stopped.

“I think families in Florida, families across America are facing continued vicious challenges of rising food prices, loss of, you know, economic assistance like the expanded child tax credit, and having free school meals for all has helped,” she said.

States like California and Maine have made providing free school meals for all students permanent.

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