Community Eligibility Continues to Grow

The Community Eligibility Provision allows high-needs schools and districts with high concentrations of low-income students to offer free meals to all students, and eliminates the need for household school meal applications. In the 2016–2017 school year, the third year of the program’s availability nationwide, the number of participating high-needs schools continues to grow.

More than 9.7 million children in 20,721 schools and 3,538 school districts are participating and have access to breakfast and lunch at no charge each school day through community eligibility. This represents an increase of 2,500 schools and 1.2 million children over the 2015–2016 school year.

In Connecticut, 21 of the 46 school districts eligible to participate in the program (45.7%) are doing so, just about the national average. Over 75% of the schools in those participating districts are providing free meals to all, well above the national rate (54.7%).


Source: Food Research Action Council, 3/27, Community Eligibility

Nutrition plays an important role in food banking

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' policy and advocacy training was held in Washington DC June 23-24. Foodshare Fundraising Assistant, MaryAnn—who also happens to be a Registered Dietetic Technician—attended as Co-Chair of the Food Security Committee for the Connecticut Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

One of the topics focused on Child Nutrition Programs Reauthorization, a federal bill that provides funding for School Meals, WIC, Farm to School, Child and Adult Care Food Program, Fresh Fruit and Vegetable program, and the Summer Food Service Program. Since child nutrition programs are intended to reduce food insecurity and increase diet quality for children, the Academy is opposing many provisions which may actually negatively impact child health and food security. Some examples include:

• Moving the threshold for community eligibility from 40% to 60%: the impact and the burden of more paperwork on parents, teachers, and school nutrition administrators will divert attention away from serving healthy meals to children, resulting in fewer children having access to healthy meals. 
• Instituting a block grant pilot for school meals programs: Block grants do not respond to increased need during economic downturns, do not keep up with rising costs of food and supplies, do not require science-based nutrition standards for children, and allow states to divert federal funds from the intended program goals.
• Eliminating evidence-based nutrition standards for children's meals which are working in 98% of schools.
• Eliminating the word "fresh" from the fresh fruit and vegetable program: This small change could draw attention away from what should be the focus of this successful program. Introducing students to the world of produce, such as eating an apple for the first time, is an experience proven to build lifelong healthy eating habits.

Following the training, MaryAnn had this to share, “Nutrition is a hot topic among food banks, and meeting with our legislative aides to discuss the importance of good nutrition, while advocating to improve these bills has made me even more committed to helping others in the areas of health and nutrition.”

Thanks MaryAnn, we are lucky to have you on our team!

Community Eligibility Cutbacks?

A discussion draft of the child nutrition reauthorization bill that the House Education and Workforce Committee may soon consider includes a provision that would severely restrict schools’ eligibility for community eligibility, an option that allows high-poverty schools to provide school meals at no charge to all students.

Currently a school qualifies for community eligibility if 40% of its students are automatically qualified for free school meals based on their participation in another anti-poverty program. The proposal would raise that threshold to 60%. If the proposal becomes law, 7,022 schools now using community eligibility to serve nearly 3.4 million students would have two years to reinstate paper eligibility applications and return to monitoring eligibility in the lunch line. Another 11,647 schools that qualify for community eligibility, but have not yet adopted it, would lose eligibility.

Source: Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, 4/18/16, Community Eligibility

How to Dramatically Lower the Poverty Rate Overnight

A new study by the Brookings Institution argues that it might be a lot easier to significantly reduce poverty in the U.S by getting more people to take advantage of existing anti-poverty programs for which they are already eligible.

In fact, the report asserts, the poverty rate would have been 20 percent lower in 1998 if all families with children had participated in the programs for which they were eligible, and “deep poverty”– income below half the federal poverty level –would have been 70 percent lower.

Read more...

Congress Begins Summer Meals Reauthorization

Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Lisa Murkowski have introduced a bill to make the Summer Meals Program available to more children and simplify the administration of the program. The Summer Meals Act would:

• Allow community-based organizations to participate if 40% (rather than the current 50%) of the children in the area are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
• Allow local government agencies and private nonprofit organizations to feed children year-round – after school and in the summer – through a single Summer Food Service Program process.
• Provide funding for transportation grants to fund innovative approaches and mobile meal trucks.
• Allow all sites to serve a third meal.

Source: Food Research Action Center, Summer Meals

Become a Foodshare e-advocate and help to support anti-hunger legislation like this!

Grant from the Walmart Foundation

We’re excited to announce that Foodshare has been awarded a $50,000 grant through the Walmart Foundation’s State Giving Program. This funding will help us purchase some essential pieces of equipment that will support our daily efforts to process food donations. This includes the purchase of a new reach truck, since our current reach truck (pictured here) is reaching the end of its usable life. A new reach truck will help to ensure that we’ll be able to continue to access our entire inventory, in particular the food that’s stored on the highest shelves!  We’ll also be able to purchase a new scale and pallet jack to help us process all of the produce donations that we receive through our recently expanded facility at the Hartford Regional Market.

In addition to this generous gift, local Walmart stores have donated over 390,000 meals worth of food to Foodshare so far this year! Thank you to the entire Walmart community for all that you do to support Foodshare and our food-insecure neighbors! 

Learn more about what you can do to help increase the food supply in your community!

MORE STUDENTS WILL EAT FREE MEALS NEXT YEAR

Community Eligibility, which Congress passed in 2010 as part of a broader school nutrition measure is finally expanding to all 50 states. Last year, more than 4,000 schools in 11 states participated. But now the question facing district officials in newly eligible states, including Connecticut, is whether it makes financial sense to participate. Since the federal government pays for only a share of the expansion, states must pay the balance. As a result, not all school districts are expected to participate. In schools where nearly all students are already receiving free lunch, will see little change in federal funding. That’s because they are already being reimbursed for nearly all lunches served at the higher free-lunch federal rate – which can top $3 per meal – rather than the lower rate, which can be well below $1 per lunch. But if eligibility is closer to the 40% participation threshold, the school will have to make up the difference.

 

Source:  Stateline, 6/13/14, Community Eligibility

COMMUNITY ELIGIBILITY DOES MORE THAN BATTLE HUNGER

Community eligibility, which helps schools provide free meals to all students if at least 40% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, is available to schools nationwide starting this fall. Several of the program’s provisions have helped participating schools reduce administrative costs. Families don’t have to complete applications or provide information on their income, and schools don’t have to process those applications or have a cashier figure out whether to provide a free or reduced-price meal every time a child goes through the lunch line. Plus, students who aren’t hungry exhibit fewer behavioral problems while their attentiveness and school attendance increases, and they don’t have to worry about the stigma attached to receiving free meals And the drop in per-meal cost that occurs when more children receive school meals helps cover the cost of providing those meals. Schools in Connecticut have until June 30, 2014 to decide on implementing community eligibility.

 

Source: Talk Poverty, 5/20/14, Community Eligibility

COMMUNITY ELIGIBILITY—A NEW WEAPON AGAINST HUNGER

Community eligibility can help schools in high-poverty areas meet the food needs of school-aged children by serving free meals to all students.  Now operating in 11 states, community eligibility will be available nationwide for the 2014-2015 school year. Roughly 4,000 schools in those 11 states have opted to participate in the program. They report that (1) more children are eating breakfast and lunch at school as a result and (2) they are achieving administrative savings from streamlining their meals programs.  Those savings, combined with the drop in per-meal costs when more children eat, help to cover the costs of providing meals to more students.

States must publish, by May 1, a list of schools and school districts that are eligible for Community Eligibility. 

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/28/14, Community Eligibility; Connecticut Eligibility List