The child-nutrition bill written by House Republicans “is harmful to children’s health,” said the USDA in the strongest criticism yet of the bill by the administration.
In a statement, the agency said the bill “heaps administrative costs on schools and plans to bury parents in more bureaucratic red tape, all while subsidizing well-off children at the expense of our less fortunate children who need help.”
As proof, the USDA pointed to language in the bill, HR 5003, that would narrow the use of the so-called community eligibility provision (CEP) that allows schools in poor neighborhoods to serve free breakfast and lunch to all students, and its proposed elimination of the “paid meal equity” provision that forced some schools to charge more for full-price meals.
The bill would raise sharply the threshold for community eligibility, which is based on the portion of students at a school whose families receive food stamps, welfare benefits or other indicators of financial stress. The higher threshold would disqualify 40 percent of the 18,000 schools now using the community eligibility provision, says the think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Critics say schools would lose economies of scale in running their food programs and be forced to spend more time and money to determine which students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
“The Congressional Budget Office projects the House bill would cut $1.6 billion over 10 years from the school meals program. How? Kicking children out of the program is the only way to achieve this magnitude of savings,” said the USDA. A cost estimate of HR 5003 was not available on the CBO website. “Many schools may stop offering breakfast altogether without CEP.”
“While CEP has helped schools administer these programs, it has also allowed taxpayer dollars to subsidize students who are not eligible for assistance — something Congress has tried to avoid since these programs were first created more than 50 years ago,” said the GOP leaders of the Education Committee last week. Under the CEP formula, schools pay a large share of the cost of meals for students who are calculated as ineligible for free meals while the federal government reimburses schools as if the students paid full price to eat.
In an indication of election-year tensions, the Education Committee leaders said community eligibility was “created by the Democrat-led Congress in 2010.”
The paid-meal equity language was included in the 2010 child nutrition law because many schools charged less for a full-price meal than it cost to prepare the meal, said the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest. The result was that the school-lunch program subsidized the cost of meals for higher-income students. “Implementation of equity in school meal pricing can significantly boost school food service budgets and allow for improvements to school meal quality,” CSPI said in a fact sheet.
Participation in the school-food program declined because of the higher prices and introduction of unpopular foods due to requirements for meals to contain more fruit, vegetables, whole grains and dairy and less salt, fat and sugar, say critics of the 2010 reforms. They also say the reforms raised costs for schools. Participation in school lunch rose during the 2008-09 recession and began to decline in the 2011/12 school year before leveling off in 2014/15, according to USDA data.
The House bill would increase the school breakfast reimbursement rate 2 cents per meal. The increase in USDA spending would be offset by the constraints on community eligibility.
In contrast to the House bill, the child-nutrition bill awaiting a vote in the Senate “offers a viable, positive step forward,” said the USDA. Neither the Senate nor House bills is expected to provide additional funding for child-nutrition programs, which cost $23 billion a year.
The Senate bill would allow a limited number of states to issue EBT cards to families whose children receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year so they can buy specified foods at retail stores during the summer. The “pay for” the EBT program apparently would be more stringent standards for schools to meet in verifying students are eligible for the school meal program. The House bill also sets stricter rules on double-checking eligibility.
In a report a year ago, the USDA said error rates for school lunch and breakfast are unacceptably high — 15.8 percent for lunch and 23.1 percent for breakfast. Errors can occur anywhere along the bookkeeping chain — when students are certified for or denied financial assistance, when a tray of food is counted as a reimbursable meal, or when the number of reimbursable meals is tallied.