The Trump administration should immediately extend two waivers that allow schools during the coronavirus pandemic to serve meals at no charge to students, whether in the cafeteria, the classroom, or as grab-and-go meals at the curbside, said former education secretary Arne Duncan on Monday. Democrats who oversee school nutrition in Congress have also urged extension of the waivers through the end of the 2020/21 school year, as have school food directors.
“Let me be very clear, the USDA has the ability to provide that waiver right now,” said Duncan, who took part in an online “Newsmaker” panel hosted by the National Press Club. “And they need to do it, you know, this week, immediately.” Duncan was education secretary during the Obama era.
Lisa Davis, senior vice president of the anti-hunger group Share Our Strength, said the waivers now in effect are scheduled to expire on Aug. 31. “There is an urgency to USDA acting now.”
Besides renewing the waivers, Davis said Congress should temporarily raise SNAP benefits by 15 percent, equal to $25 a month per person, and expand the so-called P-EBT program that helps low-income parents feed their school-age children during school closures. P-EBT benefits are roughly $100 per month, per child.
The USDA has extended some of the coronavirus waivers, involving such issues as meal service time and allowing parents to pick up meals. Chairman Bobby Scott of the House Education Committee and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, urged Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue last week to approve waivers allowing schools to serve meals outside the cafeteria and to make all students eligible for free meals.
Scott and Stabenow referred to Perdue’s motto of “Do right and feed everyone,” saying the USDA “must take every action possible to respond to this crisis.”
Without the waivers, schools would have to revert to the traditional system of charging students for meals and verifying applications for free or reduced-price meals, said Larry Wade, school nutrition director in Chesapeake, Virginia. “We would lose some of our customer base,” said Wade during the “Newsmaker” discussion.
The School Nutrition Association has urged extension of the waivers allowing schools to operate under the Seamless Summer Option or the Summer Food Service Program. Those programs allow schools to serve meals at no charge and without requiring students to eat at school.
Nearly 14 million children are experiencing food insecurity and did not have sufficient food in late June due to the pandemic, said an analysis by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Other studies say the U.S. food insecurity rate has doubled because of the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, an average of 29.6 million students participated daily in the school lunch program.