By Kristina Shelton
90th Assembly District
Wisconsin is known for its cheese, football, and beer.
Unfortunately, we’re also known for one other thing – our political divisiveness. But here’s something political we should all agree on – for working families to thrive, communities need sustainable investment to provide the resources needed to live, work, and play.
Our public schools play a crucial role in providing resources for kids and families to thrive.
That’s why when the COVID-19 pandemic hit back in March 2020, I was concerned. Really, concerned.
At the time, I was serving on the Green Bay School Board as a parent with two kids of my own. I had no shortage of questions.
How long would our schools be shut down? How would communities continue to provide to those in need? Academics were on my mind.
But, even more so, I was thinking about hungry kids and families. Even before COVID, Wisconsin had some of the highest food insecurity rates in the county.
COVID-19 forced the closure of schools and childcare providers nationwide, resulting in a dramatic shift in school meal models. When schools went to a virtual or hybrid model, children were no longer able to access the traditional National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast program.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) quickly began issuing child nutrition waivers through the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year (and extending it through 2021-2022), providing safe, healthy meals free of charge to all students regardless of financial need, and alleviating financial burden to families and school districts.
The new system didn’t require paperwork to show family income and ended the harmful stigmas of being labeled a “free” or “reduced” meal student.
The program also eliminated student meal debt, bolstered school nutrition budgets, and allowed school nutrition professionals to focus on producing healthy meals rather than becoming de facto bill collectors.
The statistics from the last year and a half tell a staggering story of local effort paired with widespread funding. Simply put – the expansion of the national school meal program has been transformative.
Enhanced funding through the expansion not only fed more kids, but invested in the foodservice industry, created jobs through local economic development, and supported farmers and growers.; aAnd, it supported working families when and where they needed it most.
One report found that, with the heroic work of school nutrition professionals, as the number of free meal sites, such as grab-and-go and drive thru pick-up sites, increased from March through May 2020, the number of meals served rose sharply to 564 million meals, about 457 times greater than the number served over the same months in the previous year.
The Green Bay School District reported a 15% increase from Sept 2019 to Sept 2021 in breakfast participation alone.
COVID highlighted the brutal realities of food insecurity and hunger.
The U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world, and every day, millions of kids are hungry. One in seven Wisconsin children faces hunger and more than 20% of Wisconsin children are food insecure.
From April to December 2020, an estimated 7.5% of white adults in Wisconsin with a child in the home reported children not eating enough in a week because they couldn’t afford enough food, as did 23.4% of Hispanic adults and 39.5% of Black adults with kids in the home.
Working families are struggling to make ends meet and often, are forced to cover other basics before putting food on the table and into the lunch bag.
As a society, we spend a lot of time and effort debating ways to better educate our kids. And yet we often fail to remember a simple truth – empty bellies are not an ingredient for academic success, wellbeing, or thriving communities.
The good news?
We have the tools and the resources to fix the problem. We can feed kids, support learning, improve student health, and invest in our farmers and in a sustainable food system to grow an economy that puts working families first.
Yep, you read that correctly – we can do it all.
The School Meals for All Wisconsin Act (AD-76), authored by my office with State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), sets a bold vision and committed future for Wisconsin’s school meals.
The bill maximizes federal reimbursements for meals served in both public and private schools, and provides breakfast and lunch, at no cost, to every student, ensuring that no child goes hungry during the school day.
It will infuse robust, sustainable funding that centers school meals and food service departments as not only educational programs, but as health and economic programs, too.
The bill eliminates lunch shaming and unpaid meal debts, and will help kids to consume more fruits and veggies, make better dietary choices, and will reduce childhood obesity.
After all, healthy kids are healthy learners.
It’s clear that Wisconsin needs to step up and commit to our shared values of taking care of one another. If care is centered on our basic needs, then fighting for school meals for every kid seems like a win-win.
Whether through federal legislation or state action, we need an “all hands in the kitchen” approach to ensuring that we don’t go backward and take food away from kids.
Now is the time for us to raise awareness and to ensure that all Wisconsin students are hunger-free and ready to learn.
For more information and to join our fight for School Meals for All Wisconsin, we invite you to visit our website schoolmealsforallwi.org.