Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

“This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the monthly meeting.

This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

“It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of .

Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

“What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

National security

Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

The that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

“It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

“Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

“Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

Ohio legislation

Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the .

State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

When Espie Chapman began teaching introductory agriculture classes at Kailua Intermediate School three years ago, the plot of land near her classroom was mostly vacant except for a small orchard of fruit trees.

Chapman had no farming experience, but she was determined to create a space where her seventh and eighth grade students could grow fresh fruits and vegetables. She asked the teens what they wanted to plant and got to work purchasing wheelbarrows and seeds for her class.

The school’s garden now produces fruits and vegetables like bok choy, spinach and papaya that Chapman’s students transform into soups and salads to sample during class.

“We just try and look at what’s in our farm, and what kind of recipes can we do with that,” Chapman said. “If they’re going to try and eat it, we’ll make it happen.”

Chapman’s class teaches teens about nutrition and sustainability, but while students are cooking the kind of locally sourced and culturally relevant lunches that the Hawaii Department of Education aspires to provide in all schools, they can’t actually serve meals in the cafeteria.

DOE previously ran a pilot program to train schools on food safety and enable them to serve produce from their gardens, but the program has been on pause since the Covid-19 pandemic. Without it, Chapman would have to figure out how to meet strict federal and state protocols on her own to supply the school’s cafeteria with produce from the garden.

DOE did not respond to questions about the status of the Garden to Cafeteria program and whether schools will be able to participate in the future.

Approximately 85% of Hawaii schools have gardens, but only a few have serious agricultural programs where students earn certifications as food handlers or gain firsthand experience harvesting and selling produce and using sustainable growing methods.

Typically teachers use school gardens for lessons ranging from the life cycle of a plant to a poetry unit focused on nature. But some want to take their lessons a step further by using produce from the gardens in school meals, exposing more kids to fresh fruits and vegetables and giving students a sense of ownership over what they’re eating.

DOE has historically struggled to increase the use of local ingredients in school lunches, and advocates say gardens can encourage students to eat healthier.

“School gardens can galvanize a community,” said Natalie McKinney, chief program officer of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which promotes environmental education and runs a learning farm in Haleiwa.

‘A Hidden Gem’

Third grade teacher Rex Dubiel Shanahan planted a garden at Sunset Elementary when she first started teaching in 1987 and takes pride in showing students how to plant seeds or make kimchi using the carrots they grow.

“You can teach almost everything through the garden,” Dubiel Shanahan said.

Sunset Elementary participates in the Aina In Schools program, which is run by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and provides schools with activities that tie gardening to lessons in science and nutrition. But, Dubiel Shanahan said, she would like more schools to have access to resources on sustainability and healthy eating for students.

In recent years, DOE has offered more professional development opportunities for teachers interested in starting gardens. It has developed resources for schools to create peace gardens to support student mental health and is helping teachers incorporate more lessons about native plants into their classes, said Jennifer Ryan, the department’s school garden coordinator.

Even with more resources and professional development available, it can be daunting for teachers to maintain school gardens on their own, said Waikiki Elementary Principal Ryan Kusuda. Schools don’t have a dedicated source of funding to hire full-time garden coordinators, and many campuses rely on families and teachers when it comes to weeding, harvesting and other tasks.

Waikiki Elementary has the extra budget to pay for a sustainability teacher and a part-time farm manager dedicated to facilitating student learning and keeping up the garden, Kusuda said, adding it would be difficult to maintain the space solely through volunteers.

“It’s a hidden gem,” Kusuda said, adding that the school has roughly 80 fruit trees supplying tangerines and starfruit that students can sample during class.

In some cases, schools use gardens to help jump-start students’ careers.

In Leilehua High School’s career and technical education program, students in the natural resources pathway are responsible for 3.5 acres of land on which they grow lettuce, beets, radishes and more. CTE teacher Jackie Freitas requires her students to earn their certifications in food handling and gain experience selling produce to teachers and families every week.

“We are trying to help our community and provide them with fresh produce that they can afford and that they know is safe,” Freitas said.

Other schools have taught their students the importance of eating local by drawing on their gardens to supply produce to their cafeterias.

Last month, students at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science supplied 160 pounds of kalo from their garden to the cafeteria. Cooks at the Big Island charter school turned the taro into poi, which students enjoyed with their lunches of kalua pork and rice, said teacher Wendy Baker.

While the gardens don’t produce enough fruits and vegetables to supply 600 lunches every day, Baker added, occasionally incorporating food from the garden in school lunches helps students appreciate the time and effort that goes into their meals.

“When they help the garden, the garden helps them,” Baker said.

But including produce from the garden in school meals raises the stakes when it comes to requirements around food safety.

Schools already follow best practices around harvesting and preparing produce, such as requiring students to sanitize their hands and thoroughly wash their fruits and vegetables, said Debbie Millikan, a member of the Hawaii Farm to School Network and director of sustainability at Punahou School. But when it comes to growing food for school meals, campuses need to comply with additional state and federal guidelines like testing their water for E. coli every year and tracking the exact location where students harvest produce.

If students get sick from school meals, Millikan said, it’s important for schools to identify the source of the problem and know where their ingredients originate.

“Food safety and garden safety is absolutely critical, no matter whether you’re growing it at home or growing in a school garden,” Millikan said. “The record-keeping part is really critical because you’re serving a large group of students a large amount of food.”

In 2018, DOE started a Garden to Cafeteria pilot program to adopt federal regulations around food safety and apply them to schools. Participating campuses were required to document their compliance with water, soil and food safety requirements in order to incorporate fruits and vegetables from their gardens into meals.

A dozen schools participated in the three-year pilot, but frequent turnover in DOE’s food services branch put the program on pause as schools reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Dennis Chase, program manager at the Hawaii Public Health Institute. Most schools, including past participants in the pilot, haven’t been able to serve food from their gardens since.

McKinney at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation said she’s hopeful DOE will revive the program. Schools are unlikely to grow at the scale they need to produce all their own food, she added, but it’s important to incorporate more local produce in school meals so students will be more receptive to trying new fruits and vegetables in the future.

Other Ways To Meet School Food Needs

Numerous schools on the mainland — and a few in Hawaii — have been able to tackle food safety issues to grow food for their lunch programs, proving that the challenge is not insurmountable.

San Diego launched a program 10 years ago to train teachers and garden coordinators on how to safely plant and harvest food for school lunches, said Janelle Manzano, the district’s farm-to-school program specialist. Before the pandemic, she added, 10 to 15 schools participated in the program, although the number dropped to five last year.

It’s been difficult for some campuses to revive their gardens after the pandemic, Manzano said, but she’s hopeful more schools will start growing their own produce in the coming year.

At Leilehua High School, Freitas was undeterred when DOE’s Garden to Cafeteria pilot ended. Last year, Freitas received a Good Agricultural Practices certification from the United States Department of Agriculture for the school’s hydroponic greenhouse. The greenhouse is subject to audits twice a year to make sure students are following safety requirements for harvesting produce and tracking their cleaning and sanitation schedules.

The certification means Leilehua’s greenhouse is held to the same standards as commercial farms and can supply produce to the cafeteria like any other vendor, Freitas said. While the garden’s safety procedures have not changed much, she added, students are now required to keep a more detailed record of when they clean their tools and harvest produce.

Freitas said her students are still working with cafeteria staff to determine how the produce can fit into the school’s meal plan, but she’s hoping the process will help them understand how they can contribute to food production in Hawaii and take pride in their work.

“It can be done,” Freitas said.

This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.

Nearly 800,000 kids are eating free meals in school after the Legislature expanded access — but the state will need to come up with more money if it wants to continue the program.

That’s according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which announced on Tuesday that 70% of Washington’s kids now have access to school meals at no cost to students or families.

But the state underestimated how many students would participate — leading Superintendent Chris Reykdal to to continue feeding this many kids.

The office’s request says that the gap in funding can also be attributed to adjustments in how much the federal government reimburses for its free meal program and an increase in students who meet the income requirements. About 50.1% of students are designated as low-income this year, up from 46.8% in the 2019-2020 school year.

“As we all battle rising inflation and our budgets getting tighter, these programs provide much needed financial relief to families statewide,” Reykdal said.

Hungry students are more likely to have attention and behavioral issues, face academic challenges and develop poor eating habits.

The Legislature has gradually increased Washington’s free school meal program over the past four years, an effort spearheaded by state Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane.

Under Riccelli’s , passed in 2023, if at least 40% of a school’s population was eligible for the federal free and reduced meal program, then the school had to provide the meals at no charge to any student who requests a breakfast, lunch or both. The new rules took effect in the 2023-2024 school year.

Beginning in the current school year, the program expanded to schools where at least 30% of the population is eligible for the federal meals program.

According to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the number of lunches served at Washington schools operating the new free meal program increased 32% from the previous year, and the number of breakfasts served increased 50%.

In the 2024-2025 school year, 1,523 schools are serving free meals to all students who requested one — up from 1,269 in the 2023-2024 school year.

Riccelli tried to pass a universal free school meals bill , but the state determined it would cost too much at about $115 million a year, Riccelli told the Standard in February.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

One of 15 US Department of Agriculture programs aimed at reducing food insecurity and improving nutrition for America’s vulnerable populations, the is the primary federal program that helps feed the nation’s youngest children in a variety of child care settings. The program improves child nutrition, supports families, reimburses child care providers and infuses federal dollars into local economies, among other benefits.

And yet, the first nationwide analysis of data on CACFP just published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine (AJPM) finds the program underused and unevenly accessed throughout the U.S. The study found that of all licensed child care centers in the U.S., just 36.5% participated in CACFP. In low-income areas, the number of child care settings using the program varied widely from state to state, ranging from 15.2% to 65.3%.

For the study, “,” researchers analyzed administrative data from the CACFP and child care licensing agencies in 47 states and the District of Columbia for 93,227 licensed child care centers. Alabama, Montana and North Carolina were not included due to incomplete data or non-response. In prior research, they found that many eligible child care providers were not taking advantage of the program; indeed, many had never heard of it.

Lead investigator Dr. Tatiana Andreyeva became aware of providers’ lack of participation as director of Economic Initiatives at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health. The focus of her research has been the role of economic incentives in food choices, as well as the effects of federal assistance programs on food insecurity, diet quality and access to healthy food in at-risk communities. In earlier research, she had become aware of the CACFP’s surprisingly low provider participation in Connecticut; in surveying providers, she found multiple barriers to participation, including a lack of awareness and piles of paperwork. Supported by a grant from , a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Andreyeva and coinvestigators Dr. Timothy E. Moore, Lucas da Cunha Godoy and Erica L. Kenney were able to expand this research nationally.

Statistics Matter

The USDA does not keep statistics on eligible child care settings’ participation in the CACFP. It tracks the number of meals served and daily attendance for the program but doesn’t have a system that tracks participation among eligible programs, though it routinely estimates participation for its larger programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“As an economist, I can’t understand how this young population is so underfunded, underappreciated,” Andreyeva says. “The CACFP is about nutrition, but if you look at child care and education generally, this age group sees very little public funding. It’s the age where you can get such a positive return on investment, as has been shown in multiple studies. Somehow our society is ready to spend on K-12, but not on children zero to 5. This is the age when you can get a profound return on investment, as has been shown in multiple studies.

“So that’s what motivated me. With this grant, I could study provider child care participation nationwide — and nobody else has done it.”

The researchers collected data from state agencies that oversee licensing and CACFP and merged it with data that helped them identify CACFP-eligible child care centers and learn which of the eligible centers were participating. In other words, a mountain of data.

According to the , most U.S. children regularly are cared for by people other than their parents. Because all CACFP-subsidized meals and snacks must align with the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the children this program serves tend to eat more balanced, nutritious diets than they receive at home. A new study published in the concluded that compared with meals provided from home, children in low-income families who receive underwritten meals in child care settings experience greater food security, better health outcomes and are less likely to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency room. In a nation where most young children don’t meet dietary recommendations, child care centers and family daycare homes that participate in this food assistance program can play a unique role in improving the diets of millions of children.

Given those benefits, why wouldn’t these providers rush to sign up for this proven nutrition assistance?

Barriers To Participation

Andreyeva’s research highlights a variety of causes, with one key barrier as simple as no one knowing about it. More than half of non-CACFP centers in one state didn’t even know the program existed.

“Do a survey. Ask any parent, even low-income parents, nobody has ever heard about it,” she says. “A lot of child care providers don’t know about it. What we show in our studies is that participation varies by state, but it seems that for the federal government, CACFP is just not a priority.”

Even providers who are aware of the program often are challenged to take all the steps required to be a part of it. Most providers are already struggling to keep their heads above water and one more to-do list for one more program, even one with obvious benefits, can seem impossible.

“They’re already understaffed and overwhelmed, especially after the disaster of the last couple of years. They’re struggling financially and they just don’t have the staff to sort through it.

“I have a Ph.D. and we looked at the application with a nutritionist and we couldn’t figure out how to complete it,” she says. “For child care centers to track income eligibility — it’s a big pain and all the paperwork is just very complicated. No wonder they don’t want to do it.”

One of the complicating factors, she says, is that there have been a few instances of fraud with the CACFP, as recently as during the pandemic, in which millions of dollars were stolen from the government. What had already been a complicated process has become doubly so because of the number of T’s to cross and I’s to dot. The programs are administered through grants-in-aid to the states, which then manage the state program by designated agencies such as their departments of education, health, family and/or social services.

“Participants are usually small businesses, and there are so many of them, oversight can be really challenging for the state. Some states are so concerned with fraud prevention, and seeing that not a penny gets stolen, the feds and states have added so many layers of checks that it can be difficult for a provider to participate. So, a few bad apples have ruined it for others.”

Prior research by this team and others found that other barriers to participation include the complications of serving meals in child care centers, including the availability of food service companies able to provide CACFP-compliant meals at affordable rates; limited equipment and kitchen facilities and staff; local health and state regulations; a lack of parent interest in center-provided meals; and provider concerns about insufficient reimbursement.

“Many participating providers will say that CACFP, through meal reimbursements, pays for food costs, but doesn’t fully cover expenses, especially in more expensive areas with higher food costs,” Andreyeva says.

It Can Be Done

The high levels of CACFP participation in some states after accounting for income differences suggest that some have done an excellent job of getting providers to join the program. Andreyeva has another paper under review in which the researchers interviewed state agencies to see what they were doing — or not doing — to increase participation, so they can share best practices with state agencies, providers and policymakers.

The AJPM analysis has pinpointed multiple potential remedies that could boost participation in the CACFP. Among the researchers’ recommendations, the USDA, state agencies and advocates must:

• Understand why providers decide to participate or not in the CACFP, so solutions can be targeted to these issues.
• Simplify the application process and compliance requirements.
• Provide child care providers with small grants to cover the costs of applying for the program and/or remaining in compliance, such as updating kitchen facilities and equipment or helping them find service vendors.
• Increase the number of sponsoring agencies such as United Way, Catholic Charities and other nonprofits (required for family daycare homes to apply for CACFP), which could ease administrative challenges, particularly for smaller centers.

Policymakers could play a vital role in expanding access to CACFP, including providing adequate funding to administer the program effectively, modernizing data collection to assess and track participation, and conducting extensive outreach to raise awareness of the program.

Andreyeva points to the significant financial implications of failing to utilize this readymade, proven nutrition program. Previous research estimated that underutilization of CACFP in Connecticut left 20,300 children from low-income households without the program’s subsidized meals and cost the state $30.7 million in foregone federal funds. Multiply this figure by the number of qualifying child care centers and daycare homes nationwide that don’t apply, and it adds up to a huge amount of money left on the table.

How much better it would be for our nation’s youngest children if nutritious food were on the table instead.

Heather Cook slices bright cherry tomatoes then places the halves into a glass bowl in her kitchen in Barboursville.

On a Friday in July, she’s preparing what she calls an “easy caprese” salad. Next, it’s time to add cheese.

Though she’s alone in her kitchen, kids and adults around West Virginia are watching her step-by-step cooking demonstration via Facebook live. The virtual cooking class, offered through programming, aims to teach kids and families how to grow and cook their own food in an effort to boost nutrition and affordability.

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Cook, 35, said into her iPhone, held by a tripod, “Most of us love cheese, right? You can use cheese sticks.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced WVU Extension to offer its Family Nutrition Program classes exclusively online in 2020, health educators started reaching kids and families they’d previously never seen in person in the 40 counties they serve. In turn, they created a full-time online instructor position this year in an effort to combat the state’s childhood nutrition insecurity.

“A lot of parents work and can’t make it, or we’ve also seen a lot of parents who don’t have transportation,” said Cook, who stepped into the new virtual instructor position after nearly 10 years with WVU Extension. “Doing the virtual classes, it opened up a good opportunity for them to participate.

One in seven children in West Virginia don’t have access to enough food as food bank employees say hunger is worsening in the state.

Cook, who grew up in Southern West Virginia, said she knew firsthand how difficult it can be for families to access affordable produce due to the declining number of grocery stores in the mostly rural state and state’s poverty rate.

“I see a lot of people who are struggling to feed their families,” she said.

Nutrition insecurity expanding in West Virginia

In the last few years, West Virginia’s food banks have reported increased hunger numbers due to pandemic-spurred job loss, pandemic-related benefits ending and rising food prices.

Kristin McCartney is a public health specialist and the director of the SNAP education programs with WVU Extension.

“Even though we think of a select group of people being food insecure, it’s really expanded,” she said, adding that their internal surveys of families show that more families who don’t qualify for emergency food assistance are struggling to have enough food for their families.

Food bank employees have anticipated more food needs this year as the state will this fall for some adults receiving SNAP benefits. In West Virginia, nearly of households receiving SNAP benefits have children, and anti-hunger advocates said thousands of SNAP recipients could lose their benefits due to the work requirement.

The WVU Extension Family Nutrition Program work is supported by SNAP funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service.

While the program still offers in-person nutrition education, its virtual programming has enabled employees to reach all 55 counties and offer programs to a wider range of ages. The program has a , which features healthy recipes, food safety tips, food preservation instruction, shopping tips and more. It has more than 69,000 views.

In her virtual cooking classes, Cook tries to select recipes that kids can do with minimal adult help or with ingredients that they have on hand. She regularly helps kids find ingredient substitutions.

“The classes are geared toward younger kids making healthy snacks, like a snack mix or a smoothie where you put all the materials in a Ziploc bag and use a straw or a spoon,” she explained.

Along with classes like Cook’s, WVU Extension this summer is offering in-person nutrition classes and a kids’ market program where nearly 4,000 families are eligible for $30 to $60 to spend on fresh produce at local grocery stores.

There’s also a “Grow This” program that offers free seeds and gardening instruction to residents. Last year, 73,000 people participated in the program, according to WVU Extension.

One of Cook’s virtual classes focuses on helping kids and families learn how to garden. Families who signed up for the course received compostable “grow bags” — a shopping bag that is suited for growing — along with seeds for microgreens, kale, mini bell peppers and purple carrots. The grow bag idea came out of employees’ realization that some participating families didn’t have yard space for a garden.

During an online Zoom meeting, Cook taught participants how to shred notebook paper to create a compost layer and how to properly water their plants.

“I love this program because we are trying to go back to how our grandparents did things and trying to be able to provide for yourself,” Cook said after the class. “I love that we are able to teach them to grow their own food and how to make healthy choices.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .

With that jaunty jingle sung by a chorus of children’s voices, Assistant Cook Jasmine Bumps kicks off her hands-on video cooking lessons for families and children. Today’s episode of “Edu-Cooking” costars two preschool chefs in colorful aprons and matching toques who dutifully plop fruit into frozen yogurt batter and taste fresh-from-the-microwave applesauce they’ve just helped Bumps make.

“Honey is from bees!” exclaims one of the little chefs, who then proceeds to tell Bumps everything he knows about bees as she tries good-naturedly to stir in the honey and keep the show rolling with the recipe.

The preschooler’s oversharing of bee knowledge is both adorable and is the point of the “Edu-Cooking” videos and the various programs of the Educare Learning Network — which includes the Central Maine school — that raise children and families’ awareness of nutrition.

“One of the architectural features of all our schools is that they have kitchens — and many of them have cooks on site,” says Cynthia Jackson, the Educare Learning Network’s executive director and senior vice president at national nonprofit Start Early. “Some of the schools have meals prepared offsite but having an industrial-sized kitchen in each of our Educare schools allows staff to cook some meals and offer cooking classes for the kids and their parents.

“We start with good food—healthy meals and snacks,” Jackson says, “but we also want to build an understanding of nutritious food — where it comes from, how to grow it, and how to prepare it.” Jackson cites a new study from that found when schools fully align their school meal nutrition standards with the , they see improvement in students’ health, well-being and overall academic performance.

The national Educare Learning Network provides high-quality early education via 25 independent birth to 5 schools in under-resourced communities across the U.S. Educare schools can be found in urban, suburban, rural and tribal communities across 15 states, the District of Columbia, and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska Reservation.

A unifying theme in all the schools is the emphasis on healthy eating—though individual schools tailor their approach to that theme according to what works for their community. For some, Jackson says, that means a school garden; for others, it may mean a container garden in the school with pots full of plants placed wherever the sun is best. Some schools grow their veggies at community gardens adjacent to the schools and others have partnerships with organizations in their communities that provide them with nutritional produce.

initiated a three-year pilot nutrition-education program In August 2022 using the pre-K (WISE) curriculum. Developed by the University of Arkansas with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the WISE curriculum provides teachers with the tools and training to promote healthy eating behaviors in pre-K kids. In collaboration with Louisiana Technical University, Educare New Orleans uses the WISE curriculum to increase the number and variety of fruit and vegetable servings children eat. It engages families via social media as well as family meetings with small cooking sessions to help families learn to do more with fruits and vegetables. Kids who might have said they hated fruits and veggies learn to make and ask their parents for a variety of foods — even kale chips.

In addition to its “Edu-Cooking” videos, Educare Central Maine, with nearly a third of its families reporting food insecurity, runs a food pantry set up as a market where families can go shopping for food items. The “Edu-Cooking” lessons play off what’s available from the pantry, such as “What do I do with all this extra bread?” Jasmine’s answer? “Here’s how to make croutons and breadcrumbs! Nothing goes to waste!”

“Edu-Cooking” and the Educare Market both stemmed from the pandemic and the school’s efforts to provide food and necessary supports to its families. According to Erica Palmer, Educare Central Maine’s education manager, when the pandemic began, many families passed on the food offered because they wanted to make sure it went to “those who are truly in need,” even though they were struggling.

“So, we shifted and began to market the resources we had in a different way,” Palmer says. “We put the Educare Market out front and available to all, so our kids would encourage their caregivers to stop by every day and bring things home.

“Our ‘Edu-Cooking’ videos were a fun way to encourage families to use the food we supplied in our market in new and creative ways.”

A dozen Educare schools have gardening programs that introduces the natural world to children and helps them answer the question, “Where does this come from?” Jackson says most of the gardening programs are developed to include foods that fit within the cultural context of the communities they serve.

“They’re growing things that are familiar to the parents in their own communities, as well as things they have maybe never tried before,” she says. “The parents are involved in cooking and nutrition classes, then can take fruit and vegetables from the school garden and cook them at home. They’ve really taken to it—and at some of our schools, our parents are the lead gardeners and they take great pride in that.

“The value of the gardens is that you’re teaching self-directed play and the value of sharing when they’re in the garden. The kids plant seeds and tend the plants and then harvest the food they’ve grown. It is such an exciting process for them.”

Educare’s Ongoing Learning and Sharing

All Educare schools are designed to be demonstration sites that not only deliver high-quality early learning, but also constantly assess and evaluate what works for the children, parents and staff.

“We’re always looking to get better,” Jackson says. “We use data to tell us which child needs intervention or additional individualization to improve their social emotional or cognitive development. We also want to know what parents might need to live their hopes and dreams. Do they want to go back to school? Get a better job? Better housing? We want to help them find the resources to do that.”

Each of the schools is created through a public-private partnership, funded with public dollars such as Head Start, Early Head Start or education dollars from local school districts. The philanthropic partners, starting with an anchor funder, may have ties to the community or to the region. The core foundation of every Educare school is a collaboration—between funders, program providers, school districts, parents and other local community partners—not only to develop and launch the school, but to sustain it over the long run.

“Communities call us and want to be a part of this network,” Jackson says. “Our intention isn’t necessarily to have an Educare school on every corner. Our goal is for our schools to be learning labs where we share what we’re learning with others to improve early childhood in all the organizations that are serving children of this age. Ultimately, the bottom line with the Educare Learning Network is that we want to see the funding streams in America changed so that every child from birth to kindergarten can have high-quality early learning.”

Ensuring that all children have access to nutritious food is a fundamental part of that mission, Jackson says.

“It should be at the top of everyone’s list,” she says. “Poverty in America is hidden from those who don’t want to see it. So, if you’re not in an under-resourced community that doesn’t even have a grocery store, if you’ve always had access to plenty of good food, you’d look at this emphasis on providing nutrition and say, ‘What’s going on here? What are we talking about? All families in America have breakfast, lunch and dinner, don’t they?’

“Well, no they don’t. So, part of what we will do is continue to weigh in, to write letters to our legislators about the importance of funding food security and nutrition in the early childhood education space.”

And in the meantime, Educare will continue to start at the very beginning: good food and nutrition education from the get-go.

Fortunately, Etter says, there’s a delicious alternative to this situation and it pretty much defines win-win-win: Farm to Early Care and Education.

Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE) programs have been around for more than a decade and can be found in all types of early childhood settings, from preschools and family child care homes to Head Start/Early Head Start programs and in K-12 school districts. The programs provide nutrient-dense, minimally processed, local foods, and help small children develop food literacy through school gardens, cooking, field trips and a plethora of other activities aimed at helping them understand where their food comes from. Adapting the community-based models found in the (NFSN), Farm to ECE programs teach young kids about food and nutrition, and, by working with local farmers and food producers, boost the local farm economy, build community and help improve public health outcomes. By investing in local producers who are women, Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC), Farm to ECE programs provide a powerful pathway to advance racial and social equity.

“Farm to ECE is such a natural fit for kids in this age group,” Etter says. “The approach is all about hands-on exploration and learning, and kids love that. They love cooking. They love dressing up as farmers or bakers and acting out stories like “The Little Red Hen.” They love exploring dirt and learning about animals.

“The focus of Farm to ECE is promoting access to local, nutrient dense foods for children in child care settings, with a specific eye toward connecting woman-owned farmer or BIPOC-owned farms or producers. The other piece is educating them about where their food comes from,” she says. “Even if a program doesn’t have the space or resources to have a big, outdoor garden, this model can help them do smaller-scale container gardens and let the children watch the magical process of plants growing.”

The idea of Farm to ECE has developed over the past decade from a few scattered providers growing gardens at their preschools, to a movement with thriving programs across the country. Some states now integrate Farm to ECE into their statewide early childhood plans. The aim of these programs is to develop the next generation of responsible food consumers and to support sustainable, equitable and just local food systems. Though the benefits of these programs seem intuitive (little kids, local food, community involvement: What’s not to love?), until now, the actual impacts had not been quantified or evaluated extensively.

It’s one thing to believe that a program is wonderful, but funders and policymakers often want more quantitative evidence. Good metrics drive good strategy.

For the past six years, the Policy Equity Group, a national consultancy devoted to the well-being of children, has provided technical assistance to nine states that are implementing Farm to ECE programs, supported by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Late this summer, the group, in partnership with the National Farm to School Network (NFSN), released the , a powerful resource for families, providers, funders, policymakers and others interested in seeing this sensible model take root in local communities. The resource was two years in the making, headed by former NFSN Program Director Lacy Stephens and Etter, with a team of 13 contributors.

“As Farm to ECE is still growing as a movement and the evidence base is still developing, NFSN and the Policy Equity Group saw a need to identify and refine priority areas both in research and programing,” says Sophia Riemer, Farm to ECE associate at NFSN and one of the project’s contributors. “We developed the resource as a toolkit to help guide and advance the movement and to spotlight priorities, such as a focus on equity, and to identify gaps within existing research and strategy.”

The outcomes and indicators that underpin the toolkit were stakeholder-driven from the beginning, says Etter, based on conversations with those in the Farm to ECE trenches.

“Three years ago, at our last in-person convening before the pandemic, we had all our partners together in a room and we did a Mad Libs-like activity,” Etter says. “We asked them to complete the sentence: When we implement Farm to ECE programs, we expect that [who?]  will experience [what changes?]. We asked them to fill in the blanks, and they put up hundreds of sticky notes showing who they thought their work benefits and in what ways. All those sticky notes became the birth of this framework.

“We wanted to give them a tool where they could say, ‘I think this work is helping shape children’s food preferences at an early age and is increasing market opportunities for local food purveyors,’ and then find the tools and measures they need to prove it.”

To this end, the authors of the shared metrics resource, set about identifying existing metrics — such as surveys for families or child care providers, classroom observation tools, etc. — and compiled them into one easy-to-use toolkit.

The Farm to ECE Shared Metrics resource is organized according to outcomes for the intended beneficiaries of the program including children; families; ECE providers; farmers and food producers; and communities/systems.

The document then organizes each of these areas into priority outcomes — the desired “ends” — and the evidence-based indicators and measures that show whether those outcomes have been achieved.

The authors say the toolkit is useful to all stakeholders in the ECE landscape: program administrators and partner organizations seeking to design, implement and expand Farm to ECE programs; researchers and program evaluators wanting to shape their research; evaluators building evidence for funding and suggesting ways programs can refine their offerings; grant program administrators and funders to align funding priorities and reporting requirements. The resource is truly a one-stop shop for taking the guesswork out of how to thoughtfully evaluate whether and how Farm to ECE programs are working so programs are set up to succeed.

For those who want to start a Farm to ECE program from scratch, NFSN has created a library of “getting started” that provide a roadmap of best practices and lessons learned — including . Farm to ECE with babies! The shared metrics’ accompanying “User Guide and Framing Resource” also can serve as an instruction manual for potential users.

The resource is not intended to be used in its entirety by any stakeholder or community, but to serve as a menu of options depending on the program, policy goals or community interests. Etter stresses that the resource is intended to be a “living document” that will continue to be updated with new information and new resources as the work of evaluating Farm to ECE continues to evolve. It is both inspirational and aspirational, she says, and the hope is that gaps identified in evaluating the programs will help drive development of new approaches to assessing the movement’s impact and outcomes.

Because Farm to ECE comprises many different stakeholders, from children and families to child care providers and local farmers, foundations, and funders to policymakers, codifying its many values is a complicated project. Giving form and substance to those values through this well-thought-out shared metrics toolkit represents a giant step toward developing a vibrant, equitable, community-based food system that begins with the nation’s youngest children and their families.

“Working toward shared priorities and language can help unify the Farm to ECE field toward common goals, which can help us build the argument for continued and greater funding and support,” Riemer says. “Ultimately, this will lead to higher quality, more equitable, and more expansive Farm to ECE programming throughout the country.”

According to the (CDC), nearly 13% of preschool children in the U.S. and 21% of 6- to 11-year-olds are classified as overweight or obese. Note: The CDC defines children’s weight status differently from adult Body Mass Index (BMI) categories. Because children’s body composition varies as they age and varies between boys and girls, the BMI levels in children and teens are expressed relative to other children of the same age and sex.  place underweight as less than the 5^th percentile of children of the same age and sex; healthy weight from the 5^th to less than the 85^th percentile; overweight as 85^th to less than the 95^th percentile; and obese as 95^th percentile or greater.

The (NIH) describes childhood obesity as the most challenging public health issue in the 21^st century, and is associated with increased morbidity and premature death. Children who are obese in childhood tend to stay obese into adulthood and face increased risk for diabetes, asthma, cardiac problems and issues such as low self-esteem and anxiety. The NIH paper, “” by James A. Levine, states that obesity-associated chronic disease accounts for 70% of U.S. health costs. The paper further states that halting the U.S. obesity epidemic and lessening its health costs “may require that the U.S. addresses poverty itself.”

Multiple environmental factors influence childhood obesity, but living in a low-income family and in environments and communities that don’t support healthful diets or physical exercise are two of the most substantial risk factors, according to the . Though the CDC recommends children eat healthy food and stay physically active, many children — especially those living in very low-income homes — don’t have ready access to either nutritious food or a place to play freely. According to the NIH, roughly 6% of the people in the U.S. live in a food desert, defined as a geographic area that lacks sufficient access to grocery stores. Economic and racial disparities persist across the U.S., with about 30% more non-white residents facing limited access to retail food outlets than their white counterparts.

Dahlin says early childhood programs can provide an important pathway to launch children on healthier trajectories. Program standards for most early childhood programs require that the children receive some information on nutrition and physical education, though how this information translates into daily interactions can vary from one program to another. Information alone won’t make much of a dent in the complex issue of childhood obesity; Dahlin says a web of approaches is required.

“You can’t just tell families, ‘Eat healthier things,’ if you aren’t addressing the systemic components that affect their health,” she says. “How accessible is food? Can families get there? Is it affordable? Do the children have access to play areas where they can run around, play and be children?”

“Food deserts are in low-economic status neighborhoods without grocery stores or even transportation. Sometimes families are working multiple jobs, so their work schedules make it extremely difficult to get to any type of store with fresh fruits and vegetables. They might have one child in child care and another in school, and they have to take a bus to get each of them. These people are incredibly busy and just trying to access food is challenging and time intensive.”

To solve these challenges, it may not be necessary to reinvent the wheel.

Enter Head Start. Authorized in 1965, Head Start is the longest running publicly funded early learning program in the U.S. It not only provides child care, but it also connects low-income families with the services they need to support their child’s development. Guided by the that was introduced in 2011, Head Start has fostered positive parent-child relationships, community connections and viewed parents as leaders and advocates.

“Head Start provides food when children are attending, and they connect families to resources to support food security outside program hours,” Dahlin says. “That’s essential for learning. Look at — if a child is hungry, they aren’t learning. The program also connects children with primary care providers, dental care and immunizations — all these things that promote good health.”

Head Start collects BMI () information on children in the program within 45 days of entry and uses the information to monitor the well-being of children whose BMI percentiles are in the underweight, overweight or obese range. The NIH considers BMI an economical method to assess body fat indirectly, though the measure has come under scrutiny in recent years because it was developed in the 1800s as part of a quest to determine an average weight for “the average (white, European) man.” The tool is often inaccurate in determining health in women and people of color and has been the source of medical discrimination and weight stigma.

“There has been a lot of understandable push back on using BMI as the metric for health, but we felt that BMI, collected by the programs, could serve as a useful proxy for understanding the effects of Head Start’s contribution to children’s nutrition and physical activity,” Dahlin says. “In the program, children develop food vocabulary and a knowledge base to understand the impact of nutrition and different foods on health. They learn where food comes from. They have consistent access to food, which is a really important takeaway. So, moving away from that one-size-fits-all BMI metric, it’s important that future research take more of a look at what it would mean for children to develop healthy behaviors and to look at that behavior change over time.”

For their study, Dahlin and Reich looked at administrative data from a large urban Head Start program in the Southwest that comprised 26 Head Start centers. Their sample was restricted to 1,120 children with at least two reports of BMI at the 85^th percentile or higher, at points at least 90 days apart. All the children identified as Latine (the researchers prefer the term Latine), their parents spoke Spanish as their primary language and nearly all families reported incomes that fell under the federal poverty level.

What the researchers found was that children in the sample saw a reduction in their BMI over the program year and children with a BMI in the severely obese range experienced a greater, statistically significant, reduction than children who entered the program as overweight or obese. Entry to Head Start at 3 years old predicted a greater reduction in BMI for each month the child was in the program than for children who started later. Having a sibling in the program and receiving a child care subsidy also predicted lower BMI per month.

As is often the case with research, the study created questions that beg more research.

“I think as we transition away from BMI as the measure, we want to consider other ways to measure these health outcomes,” Dahlin says. “We need a lot more qualitative work to understand folks’ experiences and how they interact with food. What are their experiences with some of these food security programs? How do we foster behaviors like positive relationships with food and what systems do we need to set up to make sure folks have access to and an ability to get affordable, healthy food regardless of where they live or how much money they make?

“The bottom line is that the Head Start program is an existing, comprehensive program that is already well set up and well-suited to make a difference in our country’s child health and overweight and obesity issues.”

The issue at hand is a bit technical, although the effects are anything but. The USDA waivers cover both the national school meals program (a sample headline about what’s coming there, including for school-based pre-K: “”) and what’s known as the Child and Adult Care Food Program, or CACFP. CACFP is used to reimburse child care programs for their food expenses so that they can offer nutritious meals to participants.

While child care centers are reimbursed via a similar “free or reduced price” manner as public schools, 1990s welfare reform split the rates for family child care into two tiers. Providers who live in poor areas or serve poor kids got the higher rate, “tier 1,” whereas those who do not get “tier 2” (this change also came with a massive paperwork headache, as providers not categorically tier 1 must have parents mail in an application with income verification). The cutoff is at 185% of the federal poverty level, or $42,600 for a family of three. A pandemic waiver put all family providers on the higher tier 1. Absent Congressional action, the system reverts back on July 1st.

The reimbursement rate difference is tremendous, with tier 2 as much as two-thirds lower than tier 1 (for instance, $1.40 per breakfast vs. $0.51). Those differences add up per-kid, per-day. Particularly in an inflationary economy still rocked by pandemic supply chain problems, this poses a significant burden on already cash-strapped providers and the families they serve. Like most types of child care, family providers operate on exceptionally thin margins, and a few hundred dollars a month can make the difference between going into the red or not.

“I do three meals and a snack, and get reimbursed for two of those meals. Right now, I’m reimbursed about $6 a day,” Corrine Hendrickson, who runs a family child care in New Glarus, Wisconsin, said in an interview. “With tier 2, it’ll be around $2. So I’m going to have to raise my rates $15 per child per week — and most of my families have two kids. They’re looking at $30 more a week just to cover food.” Her budgetary demands are further increased because the waiver expirations mean she’ll have to start paying for more meals for her own school-aged children.

The options beyond raising fees on parents are even bleaker. Hendrickson said several other providers she has been in contact with are considering “dropping the amount of food that we feed the kids,” or compromising on the quality and nutritiousness in favor of price. She added that “for a lot of those kids, these are the only real meals that they get
it’s not just inconveniencing the parents, but those children probably aren’t going to be eating, and that affects everything else.”

Hendrickson also hopes there will be more permanent changes to CACFP (something ), including going back to a single reimbursement rate. The tiering system is arguably a relic of an older era more focused on penny-pinching and limiting public assistance than supporting providers and families. Indeed, a 2002 government report that “tiering substantially reduced the financial incentive for Tier 2 providers to participate in the CACFP…the number of participating CACFP homes in 1999 was about 14 percent less than it would have been in the absence of tiering.” This, of course, was before the in family child care providers and rise of present economic conditions.

Permanent changes, however, will have to wait for the Farm Bill later this year; the Support Children Not Red Tape Act simply extends the current waivers by one year. The Act is currently supported by all Senate Democrats and two Republicans but lacks a filibuster-proof majority due to opposition from the rest of the Senate Republican caucus. The choice those Republicans make in the coming weeks will reverberate not just through the nation’s public schools, but will determine whether the precarious child care sector — and all the parents and children who rely on it — takes yet another hit.

Food is powerful. Food can trigger memories. It can bring families close together and it can help us connect to other cultures. That, in a nutshell (or a filo puff), is the story of Krieger’s decades-long crusade to help America learn to love healthy food. “Food can open doors to relationships and to understanding people better,” says the registered dietitian and nutritionist, best-selling cookbook author and host of public television’s . “It is a very natural portal to community.”

When Krieger talks nutrition, she often encounters deeply rooted food anxieties, some of which she has experienced firsthand, but her resolute faith in vegetables—coupled with a refreshing lack of judgment—helps families to discover healthy meals together.

Here are her five tips for parents and caregivers looking to achieve or restore food sanity:

1. Erase the idea of a children’s menu. Krieger understands that different people have different taste preferences. “We’re born with likes and dislikes,” she acknowledges, “but a lot of it has to do with exposure.” Parents often reflect on their own histories with food and jump to conclusions about what their children will enjoy. One conclusion to avoid is labeling certain dishes as appropriate or inappropriate for the little ones.

“If I could,” she says, “I would take an eraser and erase the children’s option off every restaurant menu. We really have invented this ‘kid food’ thing. Historically, and if you look at different cultures around the world, kids are eating what the rest of the family is eating.” She adds that the children’s dishes might be slightly less seasoned or a softer texture, depending on their age. (Also, for the record, she has nothing against chicken fingers.)

2. Don’t give up on picky eaters. The home version of the children’s menu is the nightly plate of plain noodles with butter. How do you introduce variety? Krieger recommends remembering what it’s like to be two years old: “When you’re that age,” she says, “You don’t really have much control over your life. Imagine if someone could pick you up and move you. But they cannot force you to swallow something, so that is one thing that you can control.”

Don’t fall into the trap of begging or tricking children into eating a dish they’re refusing; that just fuels the power struggle. Krieger’s daughter, now a college student, has always disliked chicken, and when she used to refuse any of the many chicken dishes Krieger cooked, she was allowed to eat whatever else was on the table or, at most, Krieger would open up a can of chickpeas to accommodate her. Her daughter still doesn’t like chicken, but along the way she has developed an appetite for diverse flavors.

“Try looking at taste as something that is dynamic, not set in stone,” Krieger advises. “They might not like mushrooms or asparagus the first time, but then they might like it the fifth time. There’s research that shows it takes up to 12 exposures.”

3. Visit the farmer’s market. The produce section of the grocery store can be full of wonders, but there’s something magical about the local farmer’s market, where the growers are often right there displaying the products of their labor. Krieger goes weekly. “I have a conversation with my farmer and find out what’s there, what’s coming up, what he’s growing now.”

Her favorite farmer’s market remained open—with precautions—throughout the pandemic, and she calls it “one of my tethers of happiness.” And here’s where Krieger reveals a truth that might be unsurprising but nonetheless caught me off guard: “I often think of myself as a vegetable marketer,” she says. “It might appear like I’m talking about a fabulous, easy-to-make recipe, but secretly I’m doing it as a way to get people to eat vegetables.”

4. Entertain—without wearing yourself out. Krieger’s demeanor on TV is upbeat and confident, but she confesses that, like many driven people, it’s “sort of that duck thing, that the duck is just gliding along the water, but underneath they’re paddling like crazy. So there’s definitely a part of me that feels not always calm and not always soothed but actually sort of harried and sometimes insecure about everything.”

She’s learning to balance her ambitions and her need to unwind. When it comes to having company over, she tries to go easy on herself. “If you’re feeling stressed, like you’re having to do a million last-minute items, then you’re not going to be able to really engage with guests in the way that you’re hoping to.” Her suggestion: laying out the fixings for a home “taco night” or grain bowl, which can be sorted ahead of time. It’s festive and fun and healthy and has the added advantage of letting people assemble their own dishes according to dietary preferences or food allergies.

5. Organize a food festival in your community. Asked about how she chose to study nutrition in college and graduate school, Krieger initially makes it sound simple: “I always just loved eating.” But when she adds, “And in my family, food was love, and I was very well loved,” she acknowledges early struggles to with overeating, undereating and disordered eating. “I found a place where I could love food in a healthy way.”

By the time she had a family of her own, she wanted to share what she’d learned—not just on TV but in her neighborhood. She started a wellness committee in her daughter’s public school, recruiting some other parents to join her. “One of our initiatives was a tasting experience for the kids in the lunchroom. We roasted cauliflower and served it before the school lunch.” More than bestselling cookbooks or hosting a popular series, she seems especially proud that, years later, one of the participants approached her on the street to thank her for the cauliflower.

Krieger’s approachability onscreen and off spills over into her vibrant online presence. On and , she solicits cooking suggestions and perspectives, which she then incorporates into her show and books. “I’m always learning from people,” she says. “I try to approach every single day and every moment as a learner.”