Short window to speak up for child nutrition

 Most of us probably have a specific memory from childhood of nervously walking into the school cafeteria for lunch. The experience can be a nerve-wracking gauntlet of social pressures and self-consciousness.

On top of navigating those familiar anxieties, a lot of kids today also are dealing with food insecurity at home, literally coming to school hungry, or leaving school unsure of when they’re going to eat again.

Earlier this year, when COVID-era relief ended, thousands of families in West Virginia stopped receiving emergency allotments of $100-or-so a month in food money through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, the cost of nutritional staples, like eggs, has doubled.

To put it simply, skyrocketing food prices, alongside cuts to food assistance, have put families teetering on what is being called a “hunger cliff.”

There are many policy solutions on the table, so to speak, but one solution that would increase access to free and reduced school meals is up for public comment. And all of us have a chance to speak up for feeding millions of kids in our state and around the country.

Here’s how: The U.S. Department of Agriculture is accepting comments until Monday on a proposed rule that would increase the ability of schools to participate in Community Eligibility Program, or CEP (read: free meals), by lowering the minimum percentage threshold of identified student participation from 40% to 25%.

Anyone can go to the USDA’s website and make a comment in support of this rule change. If adopted, schools would have more flexibility to invest nonfederal funds to offer no-cost meals to all enrolled students. As a result, more students would have an opportunity to access meals at no cost and with no stigma (reducing the aforementioned anxiety in the cafeteria), families would have school meal debt eliminated and school staff would have less-burdensome paperwork.

Many anti-poverty groups in the state began advocacy for CEP in 2013, the year West Virginia became eligible to participate under the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The Legislature at that time passed the Feed to Achieve Act, which sought to offer free school meals to all students in the state. One component of the legislation required that schools provide nontraditional ways of serving breakfast by 2015, a move that spurred more participation in the CEP program.

Ten years later, most of the counties that implemented CEP in schools where enough kids met eligibility requirements chose to expand CEP countywide. What was heard, at least anecdotally, was that schools that opted in saw benefits like improved nutrition, reduced discipline problems and improved focus among the students.

Imagine having to navigate the social anxieties and pressures of school on an empty stomach. Now, imagine that you can take an easy action to help the millions of kids who navigate this reality every day. All you have to do is go to regulations.gov, where you can make a unique comment, and, if enough of us do so, we will create a chorus speaking up for feeding kids.

A little anxiety in the cafeteria is an inevitable part of growing up, but hunger should never be.

(This op-ed by Lida Shepherd, director of the AFSC WV Economic Justice Project, appeared in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

How to do a good deed without really trying

 Believe it or not, El Cabrero was once a boy scout. Not for too long, of course. I can still remember the Scout Law and Promise, not to mention some crude jokes picked up along the way. As I recall, we were also encouraged to do a good deed or turn for the day every day, although my record is pretty spotty in that department.

However, there's an easy way you can do your good deed for the day. Here's the deal: the USDA is considering a policy that would expand access to free school breakfasts and lunches for kids. It would do this by lowering the threshold for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from 40 to 25 percent. This could help millions of kids, eliminate stigma, give parents a break, improve learning and child nutrition, and more.

The USDA is accepting public comments on this proposed policy until May 8. All the info you need to make a public comment is here, but please put it in your own words. They disregard comments that seem copied and pasted.

I cannot promise this will purify evil karma accumulated over the eons in previous lives beyond number. But it can't hurt.

A little good news

 This isn't earthshaking, but I'll take what I can get these days. The USDA just announced that it will withdraw a proposed rule issued during the bad old days of the Trump administration. The dead rule would have changed eligibility requirements for SNAP and other food assistance programs in ways that were estimated to have cut food aid to three million or more Americans and also affected the eligibility for free school meals for around one million kids.

Unsportsmanlike, in other words. I blogged about it here and here back in 2019 during the public comment period. As I wrote at the time, 

Here's why it's bad: the proposed change eliminates "broad based categorical eligibility" (BBCE), which allows people who are eligible for other assistance programs (such as TANF or welfare, SSI or other programs) to be automatically eligible for SNAP.

Eliminating the BBCE creates a cliff effect in which people could experience drastic cuts in benefits when their living conditions modestly improve.

I take my food fights seriously. It's nice to have one less thing to worry about.

Feeding kids, boosting local economies

 I've spent a chunk of the last seven or eight years working intermittently on child nutrition issues, which has a certain amount of irony. After all, the organization I work for, the American Friends Service Committee, first came to West Virginia in 1922, in large part to work on child nutrition issues. 

How sad is it that it's still an issue year 99 years later?

It's an unfortunate truth that today  a lot of kids rely heavily on schools for meeting their nutrition needs, up to and including volunteer weekend backpack programs. 

I first got involved in 2013 when the state legislature passed the Feed to Achieve Act, which was intended to eventually provide free breakfast and lunch for all public school students. One way that would work was by encouraging more counties to implement the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows them to provide free meals to all students in schools where 40 percent or more are certified as being low income. Basically, it eliminates the application process for free and reduced meals.

It's a winner all round. More kids eat (mostly) healthy meals, which can help with learning, discipline, tardiness and attendance. Schools cut paperwork and often save money. Any stigma for being on free or reduced meals is gone. And working parents get a break. 

Most counties jumped on board as soon as the program became available and others followed suit through the years. Some took some nudging, sometimes for years. But now, 54 out of 55 counties have implemented the program to a degree and 43 have done so on a countywide basis. Often, a county would try it at a few schools and then expand it after seeing the benefits. And the WV Office of Child Nutrition has done a great job in helping to make all this happen.

Enter COVID-19. Last spring, the USDA provided pandemic electronic benefit cards (P-EBTs) worth $313.50 per child to all students to help cover out of school food costs. In schools with CEP, all kids get the benefits; in those without, only those on free or reduced lunch qualify. Many benefitted but some missed out.

This is where child nutrition translates into direct economic impact. That round of P-EBTs brought around $72 million to local economies in the midst of a pandemic-induced recession. The USDA estimates that each dollar spent on EBT food assistance has a multiplier effect of  $1.5, which would increase the economic boost to $108 million.

The USDA recently announced a second round of P-EBT cards to be issued next month. The benefit will amount to $6.82 per day for days out of school in the 2020-2021 school year. That means somebody's going to have to do some arithmetic and the amount may vary from child to child depending on how the number of in-school days. It's been estimated that this will bring $200 million to the state, which with the multiplier means $300 million in much needed economic activity.

That's good news, or at least a silver lining to the pandemic. Still, more needs to be done to encourage the expansion of CEP. And we need to revisit legislation that died the last two years that would require counties to come up with out of school food plans for emergencies and summer vacations. Last year, the bill died just as the pandemic began to hit. One would hope that the need for such legislation would be self evident this year.

Nag nag nag

Today is the last day to make a public comment on a bad policy that could take away free school breakfasts and lunches from a million schoolchildren in the US. Yes, I know I'm being a bore about this but indulge me for one more day.

Short background: the Trump administration wants to change eligibility for SNAP that will cut off over 3 million Americans from food assistance. That's bad enough. But this will also change eligibility for free school meals under the Community Eligibility Provision. To state the obvious, kids tend to learn and act better when they've had nutritious meals. This would make many of them be hungry at home AND at school.

Click here to comment.

Thanks!

Hate to be a bore, but urgent action needed by Nov. 1 to protect child nutrition

The WV Department of Education isn't known for sounding alarm bells about federal policy. So you KNOW things are bad when they release a statement like this:

Proposed SNAP Changes Could Negatively Affect West Virginia Students 

Charleston, W.Va. – Students in West Virginia could be at-risk for losing automatic free school meal eligibility under proposed changes to the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The proposed changes would adjust how students are directly certified to receive services meaning households across the state will lose automatic free or reduced school meals.

The West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services (DHHR) are working closely to quickly and completely analyze the potential impact to West Virginia students during the USDA’s current public comment period.

It is estimated that more than 120,000 West Virginia households could be negatively affected by eliminating broad-based categorical eligibility as a policy in which households may become categorically eligible for SNAP in relation to another benefit, such as non-cash temporary assistance for needy families (TANF). In addition to the direct impact to these households, funding to West Virginia schools could be negatively affected. If the number of directly certified students decreases and those students are not captured by another federal direct certification indicator, school districts may have to discontinue implementing the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Many schools could find that they no longer qualify for CEP or that it is no longer financially viable. Therefore, the proposed rule would take away automatic free meals from additional children who otherwise would not be considered as being directly impacted by changes to the categorical eligibility in SNAP.

West Virginia has benefited greatly from the election of the CEP, a federal meal pricing benefit available to areas of high need. All of West Virginia’s 55 counties have at least one school that qualifies for CEP. During the 2019-20 school year, 43 counties have implemented the CEP for all students meaning all students eat breakfast and lunch for free; 10 counties have elected CEP partially, meaning some schools qualify, while other schools in the county do not; and two counties operate under the traditional method of free and reduced price meal applications throughout the county. Community eligibility uses the number of children directly certified for free school meals, primarily due to participation in SNAP, to determine if a school or district is eligible to implement CEP. The analysis of the proposed changes fails to consider the impacts on community eligibility provision.

“The proposed rule changes are concerning with nearly 1 million individuals estimated to be affected nationally,” said Amanda Harrison, Executive Director of the WVDE Office of Child Nutrition. “We know that hungry children do not perform at their best and when we meet the nutritional needs of our students, student achievement increases.”

The WVDE intends to submit comments to the USDA outlining the impact on Mountain State students and will make those comments public. The WVDE’s Office of Child Nutrition is also exploring other mechanisms or indicators that are in place to ensure that our neediest and most vulnerable students are directly certified for school meals.

If you haven't already, please click here to make your comments. The deadline is Nov. 1.

Urgent: act now to fight hunger in our schools

Short version: please act now to protect free breakfasts and lunches for tens of thousands of WV school children. You can click here to make comments to the USDA opposing rule changes to eligibility that could deny school food not only to thousands of individual students but whole schools and counties.

The deadline to make comments is Nov. 1, so this is urgent.

As an example, I submitted something like this, but you could keep it simple with just a sentence or two.

West Virginia has become a leader in child nutrition thanks to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which expands free breakfasts and lunches to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of students are directly certified as being low income. The changes to SNAP eligibility proposed by the Trump administration would also impact CEP and could take away meals for one million individual students, as well as many entire schools and counties. Research has shown that universal access to school food has many benefits, including improved academic performance for poor and non-poor students, removing stigma, increasing participation in nutritious food programs, reducing hunger, supporting working parents and reducing paperwork for schools. The proposed changes should be rejected.

For background, here's a pretty scary news release from the WV Department of Education about the dangers this rule change poses for WV schools, parents and students. And not just WV but the whole country.

Please act quickly and spread the word. Thanks!

Easy action to help feed kids

In yesterday's post, I wrote about how SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) rule changes proposed by the Trump administration could take away food assistance from one million school children.

Here's how: by changing eligibility for one, the proposed rule would change it for the other.

The USDA apparently realizes at some level that some folks out there actually want kids to eat, so they've reopened the public comment period. It will be open from Oct. 18 to Nov. 1.

Here's a link to make comments:

And here are some talking points.

I couldn't swear to this, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if those who make comments in defense of feeding kids will be reborn in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, where they can work to attain enlightenment under the most favorable conditions.

Don't take food away from kids

Over the last few years, West Virginia has made major progress in school-based child nutrition, thanks to the federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, West Virginia’s 2013 Feed to Achieve Act and the wise decisions of nearly all county school boards.

The main reason for that is something called the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows school boards to provide free meals to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of students are certified as being low income. Nearly every county (with the notable exception of Putnam) participates in the program in some or all schools.

It’s a winner all around. It improves nutrition, learning and discipline; gives working parents a break; and cuts down on paperwork and other costs for schools.

Child nutrition is one of the few areas where West Virginia is something of a national leader. According to the Food Research and Action Center, West Virginia led the nation in school breakfast participation for the fifth consecutive year.

When the ranking was announced in February, state schools Superintendent Steven Payne said, “We know that hungry children cannot learn and when we meet the nutritional needs of our students, student achievement increases and classroom disruptions decrease ... I am proud of the work our schools do every day to meet the needs of their students.”

He’s not making that up. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, research shows that access to nutritional meals improves learning.

Unfortunately, some of that progress could be undone due to collateral damage caused by the Trump administration’s efforts to change eligibility for SNAP (formerly food stamp) food assistance, a move that could cut over 3 million Americans off that program. The proposed rule change is an end run around the will of Congress, which declined to enact such measures when the massive Farm Bill was reauthorized in 2018.

The deadline for public comments on the proposed eligibility changes ended in late September. According to The New York Times, the USDA got buried by over 75,000 comments, the vast majority of which opposed the changes. That number included 70 comments from mayors, 17 from governors and at least three from state congressional delegations.

So what does SNAP have to do with feeding kids in school? It works like this: Changing eligibility for SNAP will also change it for kids who receive free school breakfasts and lunches. FRAC estimates that these changes, if enacted, would cause 500,000 kids to lose eligibility.

In other words, the rule change would cut kids — and some entire schools — off by changing the way kids are certified.

I think that American Federation of Teachers (AFT)President Randi Weingarten nailed it when she said, “In the richest country in the world, no child should be denied access to lunch at school because of their parents’ income level or a cruel attempt by the Trump administration to cut food benefit programs for needy kids.”

She also said, “Hungry children cannot focus on learning. Instead of shaming them, we should be investing in programs that support them and help them feel safe and welcome at school: nutrition programs that promote healthy habits and nurture families facing food scarcity, affordable breakfast and lunch for any kid who needs it, and other community and school supports that build students up, not tear them down.”

(This ran as an op-ed in yesterday's Charleston Gazette-Mail. It may bear an eerie familiarity to an earlier post.)

Taking food from kids

I'd like to send a big "Thank You!" to everyone who submitted public comments to the US Department of Agriculture opposing the Trump administration's efforts to take away SNAP food assistance to over 3 million Americans. The deadline for submitting public comments ended Sept. 23.

(One might think the administration would be otherwise occupied with phone calls to foreign governments or  lawyers or late night tweeting...)

According to the New York Times, the USDA got over 75,000 comments, the vast majority of which opposed the changes. That number included 70 comments from mayors, 17 from governors and at least three from state congressional delegations.

The mean-spirited rule change is an end run around the will of Congress, which declined to enact such measures when the massive Farm Bill was reauthorized in 2018.

Here's another reason why the change is bad, not that any more are needed: by changing eligibility requirements for SNAP, this will also mean changing them for kids who receive free school breakfasts and lunches, which could mean that 500,000 kids lose eligibility.

Over the last few years, West Virginia has made major progress in school-based child nutrition, thanks to the federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and West Virginia's 2013 Feed to Achieve Act. The main reason for that is something called the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows school boards to provide free meals to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of students are certified as being low income.

This is one of the few areas where West Virginia is something of a national leader. In a good way. According to the Food Research and Action Center, West Virginia led the nation in school breakfast participation for the fifth consecutive year.

When the ranking was announced in February, state school superintendent Stephen Payne said that, “We know that hungry children cannot learn and when we meet the nutritional needs of our students, student achievement increases and classroom disruptions decrease. I am proud of the work our schools do every day to meet the needs of their students.”

He's not making that up. According to the Centers for Disease Control, research shows that access to nutritional meals improves learning.

The Trump rule change would cut kids--and some entire schools--off by changing the way kids are certified.

I think that American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten nailed it when she said that "In the richest country in the world, no child should be denied access to lunch at school because of their parents' income level or a cruel attempt by the Trump administration to cut food benefit programs for needy kids.”

She also said that  "Hungry children cannot focus on learning. Instead of shaming them, we should be investing in programs that support them and help them feel safe and welcome at school: nutrition programs that promote healthy habits and nurture families facing food scarcity, affordable breakfast and lunch for any kid who needs it, and other community and school supports that build students up, not tear them down.”

So feeding kids is bad?

If you want to sample just a little of the meanness in the air today, check out this letter that appeared in the Parkersburg WV newspaper opposing providing breakfast and lunch to all students in Wood County: 

Well, how many times have you heard the cliche that there is no such thing as a free lunch? It certainly applies here. So someone is going to give the Wood County School system all the food to feed Wood County students breakfast and lunch? It would be nice for this newspaper to acknowledge who this kind person or company is.

On second thought, I’ll go out on a limb and say that the taxpayers of the state and nation are footing this program (CEP). Just a minor detail that is probably not important.
The CEP (Community Eligibility Provision) is a program for free and reduced priced meals in high poverty areas. If at least 40 percent of a school’s students are directly certified for free meal benefits, the entire school qualifies for the option.

The article also quotes the new superintendent William Hosaflook as follows. “I am proud that Wood County Schools will be participating in the CEP program to help meet a critical need for many students in our county.”

Mr. Hosaflook, I am extremely disappointed and somewhat embarrassed that Wood County qualifies for such a program. At what point do we say enough is enough that the nanny state has to feed our children. Once an “entitlement” has started, it is very, very difficult to take it away.

 Where do you even start with this? God forbid we improve child nutrition, reduce stigma and discipline problems, and enhance school performance with good nutrition.

Whenever I hear someone like that suggest that feeding kids is socialistic, I'm tempted to point out that the whole public education thing kind of is too. But I don't want to give them any ideas.

A friend of mine replied to the letter on social media with the following snark/irony:

You guys think the free meal thing is bad? It turns out, those kids are getting an education for free too! I say "free" but I think we all know who pays for that. Us hard working tax payers, that's who. Why don't these dead beat parents just send their kids to private school? And we even cover the cost of the roads to take these entitled crumb-snatchers to their gilded "free" schools, and their parents to jobs and stores and such!

Look in to it! It goes so much deeper. Libraries, health departments (why can't people research the sanitation of their local restaurants or stop communicable diseases on a community level on their own?), fire departments and even police services all funded by tax dollars and provided to everyone. I mean, what kind of society do we want to live in, people?

I really like the "crumb-snatchers" part. And the fact that the opposition lost.

It took a while, but all public school kids in Wood County can eat for free.

Sometimes screwing up the world just isn't enough

Apparently screwing up climate, health care and the international situation just isn't enough for some people. Now they want to go after meals for school kids in order to make things just a bit cushier for the very rich.

A federal program, the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), passed in 2010 by Congress as part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, made it an option for school boards to offer free breakfasts and lunches to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of children are low income.

The idea is to improve child nutrition and academic performance, save schools paperwork and money, and give a break to working parents. And it's worked really well around the country and especially in West Virginia, where 49 counties participate, including 510 schools and over 190,000 students.

I recently spoke to a school board member in Pocahontas County, which recently implemented CEP countywide. She said more kids were eating, the county was saving money AND test scores were going up.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the majority of House Republicans, including Congressmen Evan Jenkins and Maryland Alex Mooney, voted to drastically cut the program, which would end free meals for hundreds of schools and thousands of kids in the Mountain State. 

The Senate is expected to take up the budget next week. So far the cuts aren't part of the Senate plan but these days all threats are best regarded as credible. Senator Manchin has come out against the cuts, while Senator Capito's office has said something like they'll be watching it or whatever.

More not all bad

This op-ed of mine on WV's recent gains in child nutrition ran in today's Gazette-Mail:

Now that we’re officially back to school, some folks out there may have noticed that more kids are eating school meals and are doing so at no cost to families. As I’ll try to show below, that’s a big deal and a good thing for lots of reasons.

In West Virginia, where we’re used to leading the pack on the bad lists and bringing up the rear on good ones, we’ve even taken the lead on an important child nutrition measure.

For the last two years, our state has led the nation in school breakfast participation. We even beat ourselves by 9 percent in the most recent year. What this means is that over 82 percent of low-income kids in the state received free school breakfasts, compared with a national average of just 54.3 percent.

One reason for the increase was the passage in 2013 of the Feed to Achieve Act, which had broad bipartisan support. One thing the bill did was require schools to offer innovative ways of delivering breakfast to kids.

The old way of doing it, before classes began, just wasn’t cutting it. New ways included grab and go breakfasts, breakfasts after first period and breakfasts in the classroom. And they proved to be a hit.

Some friends of mine have done the math and they found that our state served 5.88 million more breakfasts last year than in 2013.

More schools statewide are also taking advantage of the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows schools to provide free meals to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of students are low-income.

That provision can help improve child nutrition, along with improving learning and reducing discipline problems. It also gives a break to working parents, removes issues of stigma, and can save schools time and money on paperwork.

Feed to Achieve and CEP complement each other. As innovative ways of delivering breakfasts increase, participation rates go up. So do federal reimbursements to schools, which makes CEP more appealing.

At last count — and the numbers change constantly — out of 54 eligible counties, all but six have implemented CEP at some or all schools. The most recent to come aboard was Pocahontas County, where the school board voted to move ahead last month. Over 20 counties provide free meals to all students countywide. And no county that has had CEP since 2012 has chosen to drop the program.

According to the latest data I have, the only eligible counties which have refused to implement the Community Eligibility Program in any schools were Putnam, Monroe, Tucker, Hampshire, Monongalia, and Hancock. (To be fair to Monongalia and Tucker counties, these have gone back and forth in terms of eligibility.)

All in all, Feed to Achieve and CEP have been a good deal for kids, schools and parents. But it’s an even bigger deal than that.

According to the Food Research & Action Center, “Mounting evidence shows that healthy school meals play a key role in supporting the well-being of children, including alleviating food insecurity; improving dietary intake; and mitigating obesity…”

Specifically, the data suggests that free or reduced school meals reduce food insecurity by at least 3.8 percent and also reduces breakfast-skipping. Low-income students who participate have better diet quality than those who don’t.

There are also major potential long-term health benefits. Participation in federally funded child feeding programs is associated with a significantly lower body mass index. According to research published in the Journal of Econometrics, school meal participation reduces obesity rates by at least 17 percent.



The reasons for this are pretty simple. As a school cook in Pocahontas County put it at a school board meeting, “I think we’d see a lot less candy bars, cookies, potato chips and soda pop.”

In a state where it has been estimated that 7 out of 10 health care dollars are spent on chronic diseases often associated with obesity, that’s a huge deal. No pun intended.

The Food Research & Action Center concludes that “Schools that offer breakfast free to all students in the classroom report decreases in discipline, psychological problems, visits to school nurses and tardiness; increases in student attentiveness and attendance; and generally improved learning environments.”

In these troubled times, it’s nice to see West Virginia shine. If we keep up the progress we’ve made in this important area, we can shine even brighter in the future.

- See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/gazette-op-ed-commentaries/20160922/rick-wilson-why-its-a-good-idea-to-feed-kids-gazette#sthash.UrL1YPBJ.dpuf

Hunger games in Congress

The following op-ed of mine appeared in today's Gazette-Mail. If you feel so inclined, please contact your representative and ask that they not mess with feeding kids in school.

We have a tendency in West Virginia to top the lists of bad things and bring up the rear of the lists of good things. One fortunate exception to that pattern is the area of child nutrition, in which we’ve made huge strides in recent years.

Some readers may remember the 2013 Feed to Achieve Act, which passed the Legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill was “to eventually provide free nutritious meals for all pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade school children in West Virginia.”

We’ve come a long way toward that goal since then. For the last two years, West Virginia has led the nation in school breakfast participation.

Rising to the top of that list was a huge turnaround. As MetroNews reported in February, a few years ago, only about 28 percent of students were fed school breakfasts. Now that number has increased to over 82 percent. This is a big deal since kids who are “hangry” — hungry and angry — can’t learn very well.

Part of the reason for that success was Feed to Achieve’s mandate that schools offer innovate ways of serving breakfast. But a federal policy enacted in 2010 also helped.

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows school boards to provide free meals for all students in schools with a high percentage of children in poverty. The idea is to improve nutrition, remove stigma for getting free or reduced lunches, reduce paperwork, and to improve education and reduce discipline problems.

CEP has so far been adopted by 46 of 55 counties. Of these, 19 provide free meals to all students in the county at this time, with at least one new county to step up next year. As of January 2016, 429 out of 686 schools were participating — a rate of around 62 percent that impacted nearly 146,000 students.

It’s a big deal.

The bad news is that proposed legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives could undo much of that progress. The bill in question is HB 5003, misnamed as the “Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016.” Its lead sponsor is Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita.

According to the national Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “If this bill becomes law, 7,022 schools now using community eligibility to simplify their meal programs and improve access for low-income students could have to reinstate applications and return to monitoring eligibility in the lunch line within two years. These schools serve nearly 3.4 million students. Another 11,647 schools that qualify for community eligibility but have not yet adopted it could lose eligibility.”

The bill would also increase and complicate school meal application verification requirements in ways likely to cause students to lose access to free or reduced meals.

Advocates for better child health and nutrition have also expressed concerns about the bill’s weakening of nutrition standards and its impact on participants in child care and summer feeding programs as well as the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program.

I’m hoping that our congressional delegation will stand up for West Virginia’s children and oppose these measures. We’ve come too far to turn back now.

Good news, bad news, repeat

To start on a positive note, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion in particular is shaping up to be a success story in WV. Aside from the fact that around 170,000 West Virginians are covered by Medicaid expansion and another 33,000 have gained coverage via the exchange, now hospitals are reporting huge savings. The Charleston Gazette recently reported that 25 hospitals have reported a $265 million drop in uncompensated care.

On a negative note, changes to food stamp aka SNAP benefits could result in thousands of West Virginians losing them.

On a positive note, my beloved Cabell County Schools is expanding free meals for students. On the other hand, Cabell is also ground zero for substance abuse, with over 900 overdoses reported last year.

Half empty or half full?

Something that works

OK, in the grand scheme of things, improving child nutrition in public schools may not sound like a big deal. But you know what? By more than one measure, it's working. This year, in spite of the whole WV-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket thing, huge strides have been made in feeding kids. And it's something to build on in the future.

More it's not all bad

I'm trying to keep reminding myself of the positive things happening in WV right now--and there really are some. The latest example of good news is the vote by the Cabell County school board to offer free meals to all students starting next year and expanding the program to Huntington High immediately.

The county (my home turf) is already considered a national leader in child nutrition and opted for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) at the earliest opportunity. CEP allows for free meals to all students in schools where the poverty rate is at or above 40 percent.

The numbers are pretty huge. Cabell has 28 schools with an enrollment over 12,000. Huntington High alone has around 1,600 students.

This means that 20 of WV's 55 counties now offer free meals to all students. The majority of other counties (despite a diminishing number of holdouts) offer CEP to qualifying schools.

A little good news

These days, I'll take any step towards social justice as a major win. And we had one last night, when the Wood County WV school board voted 3-2 to provide free school breakfasts to all students in the county effective immediately and free lunches to all students in 14 schools with high poverty rates.

This is a big deal for several reasons:

1. Good nutrition can improve educational results and reduce discipline problems;

2. Eliminating the application process for free and reduced lunches eliminates stigma associated with poverty;

3. Providing free meals eases the burden on families struggling to make ends meet; and

4. Eliminating the application process can actually save schools money and let school nutrition staff concentrate on feeding kids rather than paperwork and bill collecting.

This victory was a long time coming. The board voted down the measure in 2012 and 2013 and many community advocates worked hard to make this happen.

A bright spot

Last week I mentioned some welcome good news (a rare thing these days) about progress in child nutrition in West Virginia. Here's a little more about that.

In the wake of the passage of the 2013 Feed to Achieve Act, the 2010 federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, and some great  leadership from the WV Office of Child Nutrition, WV leads the nation in school breakfast participation.

This really is a big deal since many kids in WV lack basic food security and since a healthy breakfast improves learning, health and behavior. WV has also been an early leader in adopting the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in most counties. CEP allows school boards to provide free meals to all kids in schools where 40 percent or more of kids are directly certified to be low income.

What is particularly dramatic about WV's performance is the fact that breakfast participation has shot up from 29 percent in 2009 to 51 percent in 2014. This is largely due to the fact that more and more counties have adopted new breakfast delivery systems, like grab and go and breakfast in the classroom.

The ultimate goal of child nutrition advocates is to make free, nutritious meals available to all children as just another basic part of the school day. And we're moving in that direction.

Extending the season

This seems to be school food week at Goat Rope. For some time, I've been blogging about and otherwise working on expanding free meals for kids in high-poverty schools through the federal Community Eligibility Provision.That program goes national this year, which means that wherever you are in the US, Gentle Reader, you can start bugging your school board to do the right thing.

Think about it: the way we deal with school meals through a free, reduced and paid system is out of line with how we do everything else. We don't charge some kids to ride the school bus or get classroom instruction or to play sports. Why should meals be any different? Hungry kids can't learn and there is a growing realization that good nutrition needs to be seen as just a part of the school day.

The US Department of Agriculture announced today that it was extending the deadline for school boards to apply for the program. Previously, the deadline was June 30; now it's August 31st. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that over 28,000 US schools are eligible for the program. The USDA says that around 8 million kids go to those schools.

That means there are thousands of good little fights that can make a real difference for kids and families--plenty to go around. Let's win some.