The Agriculture Department on Tuesday extended waivers to help school meal programs and childcare institutions provide kids with healthy food, as schools eye a return to in-person learning by fall 2021. Critically, the Department announced that these measures on meal services will remain in place through June 30, 2022.
The waivers of school food rules were put in place early in the pandemic and were set to expire on Sept. 30. They were designed to help families’ access meals kids would normally eat at school, even while campuses were closed or while kids were toggling between in-person and online learning due to the pandemic. Notably, they authorize schools and community centers to serve as meal pick-up sites for all kids, regardless of income. They also allow families to collect multiple meals at once, saving already-overstretched parents the burden of making multiple trips; schools have also been able to deliver meals directly to students’ homes.
“USDA will remain relentless in ensuring our nation’s children get the critical nutrition they need,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement. “States and districts wanted waivers extended to plan for safe reopening in the fall. USDA answered the call to help America’s schools and childcare institutions serve high quality meals while being responsive to their local needs as children safely return to their regular routines.”
Anti-hunger advocates, who have consistently called for extensions through 2022, celebrated the move. Although hunger has decreased from the pandemic peak in December, food insecurity remains high, especially among households with children. Among those households, 11.2 percent reported they “sometimes or often” didn’t have enough to eat during the week of March 17-29, the most recent data available.
“The waiver extension through the 2021-2022 school year will have a tremendous impact on closing the childhood hunger gap, improving child nutrition and wellness, enhancing child development and school readiness, and supporting learning, attendance, and behavior,” said Luis Guardia, president of the Food Research & Action Center.
The waivers will also “help communities recover and Build Back Better from this devastating crisis that has caused both financial and health fallout across the nation,” added Katie Wilson, executive director of the Urban School Food Alliance. “What a smart investment in our nation’s future—our children.”
The extension of free school meals to all children, regardless of income, comes amid growing demands for a permanent universal school meals program. Advocates say providing meals to all kids would ease administrative burdens on school nutrition staff, eliminate the stigma around receiving low-cost or free lunch, and help schools meet families’ needs during periods of economic uncertainty.
The extensions also increase the reimbursement rate for school-meal operators, helping school nutrition programs cope with significant financial losses due the pandemic. As the crisis drags on, school cafeterias will continue to see additional costs, from protective gear to managing grab-and-go systems. The waivers and reimbursements will allow staff to “focus on safely serving students without having to worry about meal applications or collecting payments,” said School Nutrition Association President Reggie Ross. “Families struggling to make ends meet will know their children are nourished and ready to learn.”
The announcement landed as Congress moves toward a long-overdue Child Nutrition Authorization and amid a heated debate not only over access to school meals, but over what foods end up on kids’ plates. Nutrition standards for school meal guidelines have not been updated in over a decade.
Following the announcement, Stacy Dean, deputy under secretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, testifying before the House Agriculture Appropriations Committee, said that the Department would be “making sure to update all nutrition standards in our program to reflect the most recent set of Dietary Guidelines for Americans.” Republicans, along with groups such as the School Nutrition Association, have argued that districts should benefit from flexibilities to nutrition guidelines — which restrict sodium, and promote whole grains.
The flexibilities on school-meal programs are just one of many pandemic-related waivers that advocates and legislators alike say should remain in place well beyond the public-health emergency — and could be part of the administration’s upcoming recovery plan. Rep. Barabara Lee, a California Democrat, called for the permanent elimination of SNAP “time limits,” which restrict benefits to just three months in a 36-month period when recipients aren’t participating in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week. Congress suspended the rule for the duration of the pandemic; once the public-health emergency ends, however, states will have to seek exemptions for high-poverty areas. Republicans have also pushed hard in the past to maintain or expand these food assistance limits.
Dean, referring to findings that the time limit disproportionately affects Americans of color, called it an “example of a policy that probably really exacerbates racial inequality, just because the labor market is not an equal-opportunity place, and asking individuals to work part-to-full time just won’t play out the same on racial and ethnic lines.”
Extensions on pandemic-related waivers to child nutrition and general food assistance programs have been a constant source of concern for advocacy groups, who say that partisan bickering and legislative backlog drain on-the-ground resources and confuse eligible families. Looking forward, Dean stressed the need to build “an emergency disaster authority into child nutrition and WIC”—which serves pregnant women, new mothers, and young children—“so that [the administration is] not dependent on Congress offering” new flexibilities every several months.