School Nutrition Advocates Urge Congress to Extend Pandemic Meal Waivers

ARLINGTON, Va. — School food directors and nutrition advocates are warning that without an extension to pandemic child nutrition waivers, schools across the country will be forced to cancel or scale back meal services for local families.

The waivers, which will expire on June 30 without congressional action, financially supported school meal programs by reimbursing free meals for students at a higher rate to account for rising food, supply and labor costs. Currently, regulatory requirements that compel students to eat their meals on-site are waived under the program, meaning that the waivers allowed schools to package students’ meals for families to pick up in remote-learning circumstances.

While there have been well over 100 waiver extensions since the pandemic began, Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, told The Well News that one of the most critical ones allowed all students to receive free meals without an application.

Typically, summer meal programs are only offered in communities where 50% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. However, Pratt-Heavner said that it’s difficult for schools to determine their percentage of program-eligible students because the census data that they rely on is out of date because the pandemic caused significant demographic shifts in communities.

“There are many communities that are not technically eligible for summer meal services, but do serve large communities of families that really need and rely on these services,” Pratt-Heavner said. “So schools are going to be forced to either drop or severely scale back their summer meal services if the waivers are not extended.

“We have seen more and more communities struggling with hunger in recent months as the child tax benefits have expired,” she continued. “We are hearing reports from our partners at food banks that lines are growing … as families are struggling again to feed their children.”

In the School Nutrition Association’s November 2021 supply chain survey, 95% of meal programs reported staffing shortages and 97% reported challenges with higher costs, nearly three-quarters of which cited a “significant challenge.” Consequently, without an extension to the pandemic-era nutrition waivers, programs will be forced to raise prices on families that are ineligible for free or reduced-price meals.

Food directors and school nutrition professionals had lobbied lawmakers to include an extension of the waivers in the omnibus spending bill signed by President Joe Biden last week, but the extension was dropped from the legislation after objections were raised by Republican lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Now, the School Nutrition Association is looking to pursue all legislative avenues to extend the waivers, Pratt-Heavner said. In a statement shared with The Well News, House Committee on Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va., expressed support for an extension of the program.

“The last thing we should do is create chaos for school leaders by prematurely revoking these necessary school meal waivers and depriving students of the nutrition they need to help them learn and grow,” Scott said in a written statement. “Receiving a nutritious meal should be part of the educational experience.

“By temporarily extending eligibility for free school meals, we would help eliminate not only costly, time-consuming paperwork, but also lunch shaming, which stigmatizes a student for not being able to afford the food they need,” Scott continued. “I would rather provide free school meals to students who might otherwise be able to afford it than deny hungry students a school meal just because they did not complete the necessary paperwork.”

But in addition to an extension for the pandemic-era school meal waivers, the School Nutrition Association is also advocating for permanent changes to child nutrition programs. These changes would include higher reimbursement rates for school meals to address long-term cost challenges, permanently providing free school meals to all students to support academic development and easing regulatory requirements.

This isn’t an issue that can be put off for long if summer meal programs are to go uninterrupted, Pratt-Heavner said. Some schools complete their final semester of the school year in May, and the programs for summer camp and summer school activities need to know whether they can offer kids a meal as part of those programs.

“Back in March 2020 when schools shut down [and] the country closed down, it was school nutrition professionals who kept reporting work and making sure that kids didn’t go hungry,” Pratt-Heavner told The Well News. “And overnight, they had to figure out how to move the cafeteria to the curbside to make these meals available, and they’ve been working so hard ever since while facing one obstacle after another.

“First those operational concerns, and then the supply chain challenges and to be hit with this loss of waiver extensions,” she continued. “It’s just devastating for these folks who have worked so hard to feed our kids at school.” 

Reece can be reached at [email protected]