Pilot program to address food access among poor children
Editor’s note
(about 3 hours later)
The Obama administration will announce on Wednesday plans to launch a pilot program aimed at increasing poor children’s access to food through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
This file was inadvertently published.
The initiative will be formally introduced at an event Wednesday morning, organized to raise awareness about the importance of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), along with other federally funded nutrition programs. The new pilot program will allow participating states to use Medicaid data to automatically certify students for free and reduced-price school lunches, a process the administration says will make it easier for low-income families to enroll their children in the NSLP. Currently, families have to submit an application — a laborious process for parents and a costly one for schools — even when they have already proven that they are income-eligible through participation in other government-assistance programs.
“We know that the program works, and we want to expand it,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Millions of low-income children whose families qualify for Medicaid are not enrolled in the free and reduced-price meals program, according to the Agriculture Department.
States will need to apply to participate in the new effort. The USDA plans to initially work with about five states in the 2017-2018 school year, before expanding to 20 the following year. The hope is to eventually expand the program nationally.
The USDA has already tested a smaller-scale version of the new program in seven places, including New York City, where the program has led to a 7 percent increase in enrollment.
“That’s just for free lunches,” Vilsack said. “The new expanded program is going to include reduced-price lunches, too, so we know that that 7 percent number is only going to go up.”
The move is part of an ongoing effort by the Obama administration to alleviate hunger and food insecurity — which affects nearly 1 of every 7 American households and, as a result, roughly 15 million children in the United States — and promote healthier eating habits.
“We have been focused on food and nutrition issues since the start,” said Cecilia Munoz, who is the assistant to the president and director of the Domestic Policy Council. “We believe that the evidence is incredibly compelling that if you want kids to succeed, you need to make sure that they eat sufficiently.”
In 2010, President Obama signed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which overhauled school lunch and breakfast programs by updating nutrition standards and increasing federal reimbursement rates for schools that comply with the new recommendations. First lady Michelle Obama, meanwhile, has arguably been the school nutrition movement’s most public proponent. She was an instrumental player in the implementation of new health standards in 2012, which mandate minimum fruit, vegetable and whole grain servings, as well as maximum sodium, sugar and fat contents. And she helped inspire more recent changes that took effect last school year, which banned schools from serving soda and sugary drinks.
As part of Wednesday’s announcement, the Obama administration also shared its plan to include a provision in the president’s 2017 budget, which would allocate $12 billion over 10 years to a program called the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (Summer EBT) that helps supplement food purchases during the summer, when children are no longer in school. As of today, fewer than 4 million of the nearly 22 million low-income children who are enrolled in the NSLP receive free and reduced-price meals when school is out of session. The Summer EBT is meant to bridge that gap and would serve as an add-on to other government assistance programs.
It is unclear whether the budget item, which will have to be approved by Congress, or the pilot program, which will be enacted by executive action, will meet any opposition. Many conservatives have criticized the federal assistance programs, such as SNAP, which they say are riddled with fraud and abuse, even despite official reports that suggest fraud rates are at historical lows. But Vilsack said he is confident the newly announced efforts will be met with bipartisan support.
