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NPR Education
Food Fight: How 2 Trump Proposals Could Bite Into School Lunch
By Cory Turner
February 19, 2020
Two pending rule changes meant to reduce what the Trump administration
calls abuse of federal benefit programs could also mean hundreds of
thousands of children lose access to free school meals.
The first proposed change: The Trump administration wants to tighten
states' standards for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,
also known as food stamps. States have long been able to simplify
enrollment in SNAP, allowing families who live in near poverty to apply
for the benefit with less paperwork and somewhat more flexible rules to
qualify. But the administration believes some households are getting
benefits they don't deserve.
"Too often, states have misused this flexibility without restraint,"
said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in July, when the
change was proposed. "That is why we are changing the rules, preventing
abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food
assistance the most are the only ones who receive it."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposal would force states to
tighten SNAP enrollment standards. As a result of the proposed change,
USDA estimates more than 3 million people would lose access to food
stamps.
What does all this have to do with school lunches? Depends on who you ask.
"The truth is, the real impact of this rule on school lunches is
virtually zero," Sam Adolphsen told the House Oversight Committee
earlier this month. He's policy director for the Foundation for
Government Accountability, a nonprofit group. "In fact, in 34 states,
not one single child will lose their school lunch eligibility as a
result of this rule."
At the same hearing, sitting just a few feet away, Diane Sullivan told
a different story. She is an anti-poverty advocate with the group
Witnesses to Hunger and has two sons in high school. "Without SNAP, in
addition to having less food at home, my sons could lose access to free
school meals," she said, calling the move "a gut shot to those least
equipped to take the blow or to fight back."
Sullivan and Adolphsen clearly see these cuts differently. Who's right?
Let's start with the Trump administration's official estimate of the
nationwide impact. The USDA says that as a result of tightening SNAP
standards, 40,000 children will lose access to free and low-cost school
meals. Hundreds of thousands more will lose free meals but still
qualify to eat at a reduced cost. Sullivan says her two high schoolers
likely fall into this group. "That's $252," she said, "an annual
expense my already overwhelmed budget cannot absorb."
Advocates are worried about one more big problem: When those 3 million
people lose access to SNAP, the children among them will also lose
their automatic access to free school meals. Instead, they will have to
apply.
In 2004, Congress passed a law requiring that school districts
automatically enroll children in the free school lunch program if their
families already receive SNAP benefits. No application needed.
Paperwork can be an enormous barrier for low-income families, and
lawmakers agreed: Failing to fill out a form should never keep a child
from eating. But that is exactly what advocates fear will happen now,
under the administration's new rule.
According to the government's own estimate, the change could push as
many as 942,000 eligible children out of the lunch program, at least
temporarily.
"Food is one of the most important school supplies a child has," said
Lisa Davis of the No Kid Hungry campaign, who also appeared before the
Oversight Committee.
She said limiting access to free or reduced-price school meals could
have big consequences for students: "It exacerbates all of the other
problems hungry children face — diminishing their academic performance,
their mental and physical health, and their opportunity to achieve
their full potential."
Perdue says the administration is trying to make sure those who need
the help most are the ones getting it. In defending the change,
lawmakers have repeatedly cited the story of one man, Rob Undersander.
The Minnesota millionaire says he received SNAP benefits for a year and
a half because, he says, as a retiree he had little income and his
considerable assets weren't taken into account. Undersander says he
wanted to highlight waste in the program and get "the law changed in
Minnesota so that the money goes to the truly needy."
"I am not a fraud," Sullivan told lawmakers. She said SNAP benefits had
been vital to her family but that, under the new rule, their household
income would disqualify them. Last year, during a period when Sullivan
was not enrolled in SNAP, she said the family car needed repairs. "The
fruit bowl on my kitchen table often sat empty. I stretched the meat
and veggies intended for one meal into two. My fear is that we will be
pushed back into the same situation if this rule is implemented."
In a statement, the USDA points out that most children affected by the
rule change — 96% — would still qualify to receive either free or
low-cost school meals; families would simply need to submit the
paperwork.
"All households have the opportunity to fill out an individual
application for free and reduced-priced meals as schools are required
to make the applications available," the statement reads. "This
opportunity is available at any point throughout the entire school year
and only needs to be done once per school year, typically at the start
when parents are filling out other school forms."
But child advocates say this paperwork burden could keep eligible kids from eating.
"Experience tells us that far too many will fall through the cracks,"
Davis told lawmakers. "Confusion about eligibility, complex paperwork,
human error and stigma all create barriers to enrollment."
Since the administration posted its proposed rule, as it is required to
do, there have been nearly 184,000 public comments. So many, in fact,
that the rule is not expected to be finalized until the spring.
The other proposed change
The other big change the Trump administration is pushing would also
drive children out of the school lunch program. The Department of
Homeland Security has proposed stiffening the nation's public charge
rule to require aspiring citizens to prove they won't rely on public
assistance, including SNAP.
While noncitizens don't qualify for most federal benefits, many live in
households with someone who does, often a U.S.-born child who can
legally receive SNAP benefits. But, again, if parents withdraw from
SNAP, out of fear that receiving the benefit will block their path to
citizenship, their children will also lose automatic enrollment in the
school meals program.
"It's a huge barrier because this has frightened a lot of people," says
Patricia Gándara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. "We
hear from folks in the schools where these children are attending that
the parents won't come in and sign up for the free lunch. And so school
personnel know that the children are eligible, but the parents won't
sign the forms because parents are also very afraid of signing anything
that looks like they are using any benefit for fear of losing their
status, their green cards."
While the impact of this rule change is difficult to quantify, since it
won't go into effect until late February, one study by the Urban
Institute found that a fear of the public charge rule has already had a
chilling effect on some immigrant families.
The rule technically excludes benefits received by children, but many
parents either don't know this or simply don't trust the government.
While the new rule has been the subject of a heated legal battle, the
U.S. Supreme Court recently voted 5-4 that it could go into effect
later this month.
Hitting schools' bottom line
There's one last way these rule changes could affect students: by hitting schools' bottom line.
The school lunch program includes a provision that allows schools that
serve a lot of low-income students to provide free meals to everyone —
without having to collect individual applications. The provision saves
schools time spent processing paperwork, and it eliminates the stigma
some students feel around receiving a free meal.
For a school to qualify, at least 40% of its students must be certified
to receive free meals. But if these new rule changes push too many
children off school meals — and they fail to reenroll — some schools
could drop below that 40% threshold and lose the ability to provide
free meals to all. As many as 2,100 schools nationwide could be at
risk. The needs of their children won't have changed — just the
schools' ability to serve them.
The proposed changes could even hurt schools' bottom line beyond the
cafeteria. Districts receive extra help from the federal government, in
the form of Title I dollars, to serve vulnerable, low-income students.
But districts commonly dispense these funds to individual schools based
on enrollment in the free and reduced-price lunch program.
"If you have students leaving the free and reduced-price lunch program,
who should be participating, you will underestimate the number of
low-income students served in a school," says John King, head of the
Education Trust and a former education secretary under President Barack
Obama, "and the school will therefore get less funding."
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