The students at Circle City Prep aren’t big fans of squash – no matter which type their school chef makes. But they do like brussels sprouts.

Tracey Couillard, lead chef at the school, leans on her days working in Indianapolis restaurants to come up with ways to cook with vegetables and fruits that might be new to the students.

It’s all about “making sure we are intentional about what we are offering, and not just throwing spaghetti at a wall to make it stick,” said Couillard, who started her job a year ago.

The school’s kitchen is a , a nonprofit formerly known as the Patachou Foundation which aims to make sure all students have access to good food. The organization partners with schools to have cafeterias that serve fresh and scratch-made foods. At Circle City Prep, Couillard leads a kitchen team of six other people to prepare scratch-made food for breakfast and lunch for more than 430 students that include fresh vegetables and fruits as well as daily salads.

What students are eating is also getting attention at the statehouse where house lawmakers from public schools that participate in a “federally funded or assisted meal program.” The bill also requires schools to post a menu and ingredients online.

At Circle City Prep, Couillard said the fresh foods help students build healthy habits both inside and outside of school. And it’s led her to build relationships with students too.

“Sometimes kids will be in a sad spot and ask if I can have lunch with them, so then I sit with them and let them talk and let them share their feelings because there are a lot of big feelings between kindergarten and eighth grade,” she said.

Chalkbeat talked to Couillard about her daily routine, what makes her cafeteria special, and the biggest thing she’s learned on the job.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to become the lead chef at Circle City Prep?

I was in the Army National Guard for 20 years, and after I retired from the guard, I started working in restaurants around Indianapolis and did that for about 12 years.

This opportunity popped up at a time when I needed a change, and I honestly didn’t know if it was going to be for me. Working in restaurants with adults is very different than working in a school kitchen with kids from kindergarten to eighth grade as your primary customers

But the kids are the best part. I’ve got kids that come into my office when they are having a bad day, and they build Legos while I’m working on something. I’ve got a couple of kids who come in after school and do extra practice on their reading.

I get a lot of joy and feel like I’m actually doing something helpful and making a positive difference in kids’ days.

Tell me about the meals you make at the school.

It’s mostly all from scratch and we do a lot of our own sauces. We’re very mindful of sodium, fat, and sugar to make sure we are serving good healthy foods for the kids to eat. Students have fresh vegetables and fruit. Every day they have a different salad option.

I started a program at the beginning of the school year to introduce them to new fresh fruits and new fresh vegetables, just trying to broaden their horizons.

At first, they were apprehensive because it’s something new but now, the kids get really excited about it, they are really invested in it.

How has the food made an impact on students?

They eat more vegetables now when they are coming through lunch, and that’s just good fuel for their bodies and their minds. They’re more willing to try something new too. It’s shocking to me how many kids I see with salads compared to last year because it’s just different exposure.

When they ask their people at home to cook something we had at school and it doesn’t taste the same, they’ll ask if I can share a recipe with their parents on how we do it so it tastes like it does here, which is really cool.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My day starts between 6:30 and 7 a.m. I check out the breakfast stations and make sure they are set, and oftentimes I’ll be walking the halls while the kids are coming in, touching base with them and making sure they are getting their breakfast.

I sit in on late breakfast. There are kids that come in late almost every day so they are already a little behind the curve. I sit down with them, make sure they have a good breakfast and their mind is set to jump in and go to class. I’m trying to be a positive touchpoint for them when they are starting their day.

In between breakfast and lunch, we are prepping. And at lunch, I’m helping kids move through the line, making sure that they have all the items they need on their tray to have a good meal.

What do you want people to know about what it’s like to have a cafeteria that emphasizes fresh foods?

They have to look at the kids as they are an investment. We are able to run a fully staffed kitchen and feed breakfast and lunch to more than 430 kids a day, and we are operating a scratch-based kitchen in the black.

You can run a successful school kitchen without using all of the processed foods, it takes practice, and it takes a certain amount of skill that maybe you wouldn’t expect from a school cafeteria.

But it’s an investment in the future. You are building healthy food habits and eating habits and trying to develop healthy relationships for kids with food. I’m teaching kids that good food can taste good.

What do you want to do next?

I would love to have a hydroponic garden in the cafeteria space. I would love to have a little green space where we can grow veggies and fruits and things like that. Because we serve salads every day, so how cool would it be to have lettuce growing in our cafeteria? The kids could see this is what is actually nourishing our bodies and this is how it grows to develop more of that connection of where does the food come from and how does it get to our plate.

What have you learned doing this job?

You don’t understand how much of an impact you can have on somebody else’s day. And you don’t always see that impact with adults, but it’s really easy to see that with kids. You can see their whole day shift with just a “Hey, how are ya? You good?”

You give them two minutes and those little time investments make a difference. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned because it’s not hard to make somebody smile and share a little joy.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

In January, the Department of Education released a shocking number: it now costs nearly $9 to produce a school lunch in HawaiÊ»i. Lawmakers and advocates — after they recovered from the sticker shock — responded with a reasonable question: Why are school meals so expensive? 

Eight months later, the public still doesn’t have an answer. Despite pressure from lawmakers, the department has yet to publish detailed information about why it costs so much to feed students. 

The department doesn’t share — and may not even collect — campus-level data on how much individual schools are spending on meals. It has provided no breakdown of how much the state spends on items like milk or fresh produce that go into lunches.

But lawmakers say schools need to explain what’s driving up the costs, especially since the DOE is struggling to make ends meet with its lunch program and has requested an additional $40 million from the Legislature over the past two years on top of the state and federal funds it already receives for its meal program.

HawaiÊ»i law requires the education department to charge families half the cost of producing school meals, although current lunch prices fall far below that threshold. In January, the DOE proposed gradually  over the next four years, but state lawmakers stepped in with funds to avoid increasing costs for families.  

Under the DOE’s proposal, lunch for elementary and middle school students would cost $4.75 by 2028. High schoolers would pay $5 for meals. 

Breaking Down The Numbers 

The DOE serves more than 18 million meals every year to students across 258 campuses. This spring, lawmakers set aside roughly $50 million to fund the school meal program over the next two years. 

The department publishes  for its food services branch, but the online reports only track the total amount of money coming in and out of the meals program. Through of the 2024-25 school year, the program brought in $108 million in student payments and state and federal funds, but spent roughly $123 million on meals, salaries and other expenses.

In response to a Civil Beat public records request for school and state-level spending on lunches this spring, a representative from the superintendent’s office shared a one-page financial report breaking down the meal program’s spending and revenue in more detail. Roughly 40% of the 2023-24 budget went toward the salaries and benefits of workers, and the department spent roughly $81 million on food. 

But there was little information explaining what goes into a $9 school meal — for example, how much the department spent on specific ingredients or juice, or what cafeteria supplies cost the department more than $5.6 million in 2024. The department provides more detailed estimates of its purchase of local ingredients in its , but this spending makes up only 5% of the school meal budget.

In response to Civil Beat’s request, the DOE also said it didn’t have records of schools’ annual financial reports for campus meal programs. The department did not respond to requests for interviews about the availability of school meal data and the rising costs of lunches.

Jesse Cooke, vice president of investments and analytics at Ulupono Initiative, said he’s concerned about a lack of consistent tracking and reporting from schools. He said he hasn’t seen any data breaking down the costs of meal programs at individual schools on a regular basis, which makes it harder for the department and lawmakers to identify what’s driving up the costs of meals and understand how programs can operate more efficiently. 

“When you’re trying to make decisions, trying to make something more efficient, you need pretty quick numbers,” Cooke said. “They’re not looking at specific schools and their numbers.”

The education department has also come under fire from the federal government for its lack of data collection. When HawaiÊ»i sought an increase in  in 2015, officials denied the request because the department wasn’t able to provide enough details on the costs of its lunches, said Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at HawaiÊ»i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice. 

“Historically, the only thing they could provide is what they provided here,” Spoto said. “Here’s our cost, and here’s the total number of meals we provide.” 

Lawmakers passed  this spring asking the department to produce a detailed breakdown of its meal programs, including the cost of ingredients, beverages and supplies. The DOE currently has no process of reporting and publishing such costs, the resolutions stated.

“It is essential to ensure that proper reporting processes are in place to provide transparency as to the costs of producing school meals,” one resolution said. 

DOE leaders argued they publish enough information to justify rising lunch costs, but they’ve given lawmakers mixed messages on the data that’s readily available. 

In one hearing, Interim School Food Services Branch Administrator Sue Kirchstein said the DOE already collects and publishes data on the costs of ingredients and other factors going into school meals. But another official said the DOE doesn’t collect data with the level of detail lawmakers were requesting, and the department’s communications team was unable to provide the report Kirchstein mentioned during the hearing. 

Besides looking at rising inflation rates, the department hadn’t completed a detailed analysis of what’s increasing the costs of meals, former Deputy Superintendent Dean Uchida said in another hearing this spring, drawing strong criticism from lawmakers. 

“You should be looking at it, and maybe there’s a different way that you can do things,” Sen. Troy Hashimoto said during the hearing. “But you won’t know that unless you do the analysis.” 

The department has not said if it’s working on a cost analysis for the Legislature. Any report DOE submits to lawmakers won’t be published until late 2025 or early 2026 in the lead-up to the new legislative session. 

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In 2010, United States lawmakers passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which aimed to tackle both childhood obesity and hunger by making school meals more nutritious. Two years later, the Department of Agriculture updated its guidance for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, in accordance with the law. Whereas schools could previously serve fat-free, 1 percent, 2 percent, or whole milk and be eligible for federal reimbursement, now they could only recoup meal costs if they ditched 2 percent and whole milk, which were thought to be too high in saturated fat for kids.

Representative Glenn “G.T.” Thompson has been on a mission to change that. The Republican legislator representing Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district believes the 2010 law sparked across the board. “We have lost a generation of milk drinkers since whole milk was demonized and removed from schools,” he told a local agribusiness group in 2021.

Between 2019 and 2023, Thompson introduced the — a bill that would allow schools to serve whole milk again under the NSLP — three times without success.

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In January of this year, he reintroduced the bill — and inspired a group of animal welfare, environmental, and public health organizations to push for a vegan countermeasure. This month, a bipartisan group of legislators put forward the , or FISCAL, Act, which would expand the definition of milk under the NSLP to include plant-based options. Currently, schools participating in the NSLP can offer milk substitutions to students with a note from a parent or doctor — but the FISCAL Act is promoting a world where vegan milks are offered freely, alongside cow’s milk.

If students end up replacing their daily cow’s milk with a plant-based alternative, this has the potential . But you won’t hear supporters of the FISCAL Act talking up the climate benefits of plant-based milk in the halls of Congress. Instead, they’re focusing on the health benefits of soy, oat, and other vegan drinks for students who can’t digest or simply don’t want cow’s milk.

“Most of this nation’s children of color are lactose intolerant, and yet our school lunch program policy makes it difficult for these kids to access a nutritious fluid beverage that doesn’t make them sick,” said Senator Cory Booker, a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill. This focus on student health — and the absence of any environmental talking points — reflect the eternally tricky politics around milk in U.S. schools, which have become even more complicated in President Donald Trump’s second term.

Milk has compared to other animal proteins, like beef, pork, poultry, and cheese. But dairy production still comes with — mainly from the food grown to feed cows, as well as methane emitted via cow burps and manure. In 2020, researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that through their burps — meaning, all told, dairy cows are responsible for 2.7 percent of the U.S.’s total greenhouse gases.

Nondairy milks — fortified drinks like soy, almond, oat, and rice milk — , but all of these plant-based alternatives use less land and water than cow’s milk to produce, and result in fewer emissions.

Under the NSLP, schools cannot be reimbursed for the cost of meals unless they offer students milk. The Center for a Humane Economy, an animal welfare and environmental group backing the FISCAL Act, calls this America’s “.” In 2023, student Marielle Williamson for not allowing her to set up an informational table about plant-based milk unless she also promoted dairy. Subsidized school lunches have been described as “” for farmers’ products; this is all but acknowledged when legislators like Thompson blame school lunch for the decline of the dairy industry. Indeed, in a recent Senate agricultural committee hearing over the whole milk bill, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, said, “Not only do school meal programs reduce hunger and promote learning, they also support our local farmers and ranchers at a time when it’s probably the very worst time I’ve seen in decades” for farmers.

The animal welfare groups backing the FISCAL Act argue schools need more flexibility to meet the needs of students with lactose intolerance. Consumption of milk has fallen consistently since the 1970s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. That change is thought to be the result of shifting diets, as well as perhaps a reflection of America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity. It is estimated that , the protein found in milk and many other dairy products. These rates are higher in Black, Asian American, Hispanic, Native American, and Jewish communities.

“We’ve had so much marketing to tell us that the milk of a cow is, you know, nature’s perfect food, and it clearly is not,” said Wayne Pacelle, the head of Animal Wellness Action, an advocacy group that opposes animal cruelty and supports the FISCAL Act.

Pacelle acknowledged the climate impact of the dairy industry: “It’s just a truth that cows are big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.” But he noted that arguments related to the climate are unlikely to sway the debate over school lunch beverages. “The Republican Congress is not really so attuned to that,” he said.

As a result, his group and the others pushing for the FISCAL Act aren’t talking much about the environmental considerations of drinking cow’s milk. This aligns with under the second Trump administration, as producers and manufacturers figure out which talking points are most appealing to leaders like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has .

The Republicans pushing for whole milk in schools are talking up the health and economic benefits of whole milk, an argument that came into sharp relief during a Senate agricultural committee hearing in early April. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, who drank from a tall glass of milk before addressing the committee, referenced the term “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, when making his case. The movement, popularized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., taps into wellness, environmental, and food safety concerns in the general public and offers solutions based . Marshall, a co-sponsor of the whole milk bill in the Senate, said MAHA is “about whole foods, and I think we could categorize whole milk as part of” that framework.

While Republicans and Democrats alike may be sidestepping the dairy industry’s environmental impact and spending more time talking about student health, there is one environmental consideration that’s caught the attention of advocates of both whole milk and plant-based milk. That’s food waste, a . Forty-five percent of the because students don’t take them. When students do grab milk at breakfast, a fourth of those cartons still wind up unopened in the trash.

Krista Byler, a food service director for the Union City Area School District in northwestern Pennsylvania, spoke at the Senate agricultural committee hearing and said serving whole milk in her schools helped milk consumption go up, ultimately reducing the amount of milk wasted.

“I hated seeing such an exorbitant amount of milk wasted daily in our small district and was hearing stories of even bigger waste ratios in larger districts,” Byler said in her written testimony.

A similar case has been made by Pacelle and other supporters of the FISCAL Act, who argue students will be more likely to drink — and finish — their beverage at school if they have the option to go plant-based.

Recently, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids bill passed a House agriculture committee vote. If it passes a full House vote, it could then move on to the Senate. Meanwhile, the FISCAL Act is still in committee in both houses of Congress.

Pacelle said the best chance the FISCAL Act has of passing is if its provisions are included as an amendment to the whole milk bill — framing it not as a rival measure, but as a complementary effort to create more choice for students. “Moving it independently is unlikely because of the power of the dairy lobby,” said Pacelle, “and the G.T. Thompsons of the world.”

This article originally appeared in at . Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at .

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently that provided roughly $1 billion in funding for the purchase of food by schools and food banks. 

And the , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, may tighten its requirements, potentially pushing some 12 million kids out of the program.

These moves come at the same time the House Republican budget plan to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The program fed more than per month nationwide in 2023. In 2022, 40% were  

This recent shift reflects a stark reversal of earlier, nationwide efforts to keep families fed during the pandemic. Many districts, such as Baltimore, organized days after schools were shuttered in March 2020 with no identification or personal information required. Those initiatives led to the nation’s food insecurity rate dropping to a when it reached 10.2% in 2021, down from a 14.9% high a decade earlier, according to the USDA.

It has since crept back up to 13.5% and now, five years after schools utilized USDA waivers to deliver meals in , they are bracing for what could be massive cuts from the federal government.

Elizabeth A. Marchetta, executive director of food and nutrition services for Baltimore City Public Schools, said 31 campuses — serving 19,000 children — would lose out on free breakfast and lunch if the Community Eligibility Provision changes go through. They are among 393 schools and who would be shut out. 

“It would be devastating,” Marchetta said. “These are critical funds. If we are not being reimbursed for all of the meals we’re serving 
 the money has to come from somewhere else in the school district, so that is really not great.”

Nearly benefited from the Community Eligibility Provision in the 2023-24 school year. The program reimburses schools that provide universal free meals based on the percentage of their students who automatically qualify for free and reduced-price lunch because their families receive other types of assistance, like SNAP. 

In 2023, after the COVID-era policy ended where any student could receive a free school meal regardless of income, President Biden lowered the percentage of high-need students required for a school to qualify from , greatly expanding participation. 

House GOP Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington now seeks to . The budget proposal would also require all students applying for free and reduced-price meals to submit documentation verifying their family income.

, a barometer of food insecurity among students, is already on the rise. It will almost certainly increase if universal school meals disappear for students whose families make too much to qualify for free and reduced-price lunch but too little to afford to buy meals at school. At the same time, kids who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals could lose that benefit if the required paperwork becomes harder. 

In the fall of 2023, across 808 school districts, the median amount of school meal debt was $5,495. By the fall of 2024, that amount reached $6,900 across 766 districts, a 25% increase, according to the .

It was just $2,000 a decade earlier. A trio of Democratic senators is the , with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman saying in 2023, “‘School lunch debt’ is a term so absurd that it shouldn’t even exist. That’s why I’m proud to introduce this bill to cancel the nation’s student meal debt and stop humiliating kids and penalizing hunger.”

Research shows students benefit mightily from free meals: those who attend schools that adopted the Community Eligibility Provision saw compared to those who did not. Free in-school meals are also credited for boosting attendance among low-income children, improving classroom behavior and

Joel Berg, the CEO of , said further cuts will greatly harm the poorest students. 

“Over the last few years, things have gone from bad to worse,” he said. “We were all raised seeing Frank Capra movies, where, in the end everything works out. But that’s not how the real world works. In the real world, when the economy gets a cold, poor people get cancer.”

the number of Americans who didn’t have enough to eat over two one-week periods between August-September 2021 and August-September 2024. The states with the highest rates of food insecure children were Texas at 23.8%, Oklahoma at 23.2% and Nebraska at 22.6%. Georgia and Arkansas both came in at 22.4%. 

The USDA slashed the $660 million — it allowed states to purchase local foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, for distribution to schools and child care institutions — and $500 million from the , which supported food banks nationwide. 

Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations for the School Nutrition Association, said that as families struggle with the high cost of groceries, the government should be doing more — not less — to bolster school meals and other food aid programs. 

“We’re urging Congress not only to protect the federal Community Eligibility Provision, but to expand it,” Pratt-Heavner said. “Ideally, all students should have access to free school breakfast and lunch as part of their education.” 

SNAP benefits stood at $4.80 per person per day through 2020 before jumping to more than after they were adjusted for rising food and other costs. Even then, the higher amount was not enough to in most locations. 

Republicans in Congress seek to cut the program by over the next nine years, possibly by returning to the pre-pandemic allotment of $4.80 and/or expanding work-related requirements, said Salaam Bhatti, SNAP director at t. 

Another possibility, he said, is that SNAP costs could be pushed onto states — including those that can’t afford them. 

“This would be an unfunded mandate,” Bhatti said. “States would have to take away from their discretionary spending to offset the cost and if it is not a mandate, then states in rural America and in the South that don’t have the budgets just won’t do it.” 

Food-related funding decreases come as the child tax credit, created to help parents offset the cost of raising children, is also facing uncertainty, said Megan Curran, the director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

The American Rescue Plan increased the amount of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6, and $3,000 for those under age 18. Many taxpayers received monthly advance payments in the second half of 2021, instead of waiting until tax filing season to receive the full benefits. The move The expanded child tax credit was allowed to lapse post-pandemic and now even the $2,000 credit could revert back to just $1,000. 

All food-related and tax benefit cuts — plus the unknowns of Trump-era tariffs — will leave some Americans particularly vulnerable, Curran said. 

“It’s shaping up to be a very precarious time for families,” she said, “especially families with children.”

New York state’s 2.7 million students may soon have access to free school breakfast and lunch if a proposal by Governor Kathy Hochul makes it through this session’s budget negotiations.

Nearly children in New York were food insecure in 2022 — up significantly from — and research shows that students underperform when they are hungry, the governor said during her on Tuesday.

“It pains me as a mom to think of little kids’ stomachs growling while they’re in school while they’re supposed to be learning,” Hochul said. “In the wealthiest country in the world, this can no longer be tolerated.”

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Senator Michelle Hinchey and Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas have been pushing for a universal school meal program for the last three years, but the full proposal never made it through . The legislature did, however, provide funding to cover up to 90 percent of students, according to a representative from González-Rojas’s office

New York City, Albany, Rochester and Yonkers have their own universal free school meal programs. With President-elect Donald Trump for school meals, a state program could fill in the remaining gaps.

Hochul estimated that free breakfast and lunch could save families as much as $1,600 per child per year. For the 2025-26 school year, the program is expected to cost $340 million, according to the governor’s office.

Among her other education-focused policy proposals, Hochul is also pushing to make community college free for students who enter certain fields, including teaching and nursing. The governor has also indicated that, as part of her executive budget, she will propose legislation to curb the use of smartphones at school, a move she has been considering for months.

Conspicuously absent from Hochul’s speech was any mention of , which the state uses to distribute the majority of funding to schools. During last year’s State of the State, she noted that New York had set aside for the program, fully funding it for the first time since its implementation in 2007.

Last year, the state legislature also gave $2 million to the Rockefeller Institute to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the formula and suggest ways to improve it. The think tank released its final report in December, providing a list of recommendations that the governor and legislature can choose to implement — or not — during this year’s budget negotiations.

This was originally published on .

The former independent presidential candidate has a complicated past as a member of a famous Democratic political dynasty that includes his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and his father, U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, both assassinated in his youth. He struggled with addiction, and an arrest for heroin possession in the 1980s led him to volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council to fulfill community service hours, which jump-started his career in . 

Then, about two decades ago, Kennedy became interested in vaccine conspiracy theories, including the disproven link between vaccines and autism, which has become a focal point of much of his work since. He has peddled other , including that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that chemicals in water can lead to children becoming transgender and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. In 2021, he was named one of the of misinformation about COVID vaccines on social media. 

Doctors and advocates have expressed alarm about the impact he could have on the department, while some have applauded his more mainstream views, such as a focus on preventative care through healthy eating and exercise and a commitment to removing processed foods from .

His beliefs and proposals are particularly relevant for kids, amid heated debates around school vaccination policies and a in the percentage of kindergarteners who have gotten state-required vaccinations.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would take control of an agency with one of largest federal budgets — — that employs about 90,000 people across 13 agencies, including , (the latter pays for a host of for eligible children), the and the

To better understand the pediatric and school-based health care implications of some of Kennedy’s proposals, Âé¶čŸ«Æ·â€™s Amanda Geduld spoke with Leana Wen, an emergency physician and contributing opinions columnist for . The parent of two school-aged kids is also a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, a non-resident senior fellow at the and Baltimore’s former health commissioner.

Geduld then spoke with medical legal expert Richard H. Hughes IV about how likely Kennedy’s confirmation is and what kind of power he would wield if confirmed. Hughes is a professor at George Washington University’s law school, where he teaches a course on vaccine law, and a partner at the firm . He formerly worked as the vice president of public policy at Moderna — one of the co-producers of the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines — guiding the company’s policy strategy during the pandemic.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

The medical perspective

Âé¶čŸ«Æ·: Kennedy has a long record of promoting and even before the pandemic had built a following through his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, . 

In the past few weeks, he’s backed off these assertions a bit, but I’m still wondering what impact his rhetoric around vaccines could have— especially around parents vaccinating their kids. Can you also speak to some of the science behind vaccinating kids in the first place and what impact that’s had on pediatric health care?

Leana Wen: I think it’s important for us to start with the facts and to talk about what happened before there were vaccines for a variety of diseases. In the decades past, prior to vaccines, we used to see children succumbing to diseases that we now do not see anymore. We used to see children becoming paralyzed from polio and their parents being too scared for them to interact with others and go to school. We used to see children with severe, lifelong problems — including with their brains and other organs — because of measles, mumps and other diseases that we now consider to be eliminated thanks to vaccines. 

And so I think part of why vaccine misinformation has caught on is that the current generation of Americans have not experienced how terrifying these diseases have been that vaccines prevent. And I would really hate for us to see these diseases return before people recognize how much vaccines are life saving. 

I think it’s also important for us to mention the facts. It’s a fact that in 1900, 30% of all deaths in America occurred in kids under 5. Now that number is 1.4%. Back in 1900, the three leading causes of death were all infectious diseases. Now they aren’t. Thanks to antibiotics, thanks to sanitation, also thanks to vaccines. 

There was done recently that was published in the journal The Lancet. The study found that vaccines against the 14 most common pathogens saved 154 million lives globally over the past five decades, and that these vaccines cut infant mortality by 40%. 

And so it’s really heartbreaking to hear anyone spread misinformation about vaccines, but certainly it would be extremely concerning from a public health standpoint, if the individual in charge of science and health in this country is the one spreading such falsehoods. This could have a huge impact on trust in vaccines. And unfortunately, that could reduce vaccine uptake and lead to the return of these diseases that we thought were eliminated.

Kennedy has proposed removing processed foods from and limiting the use of food dyes, saying that the U.S. obesity epidemic, as well as a rise in chronic diseases like diabetes, are the result of He recently called out the nutrition department, which he says is Can you talk a little bit about what impact the food that we see showing up in school lunches has on kids, and what we know about food dyes?

I want to focus on ultra-processed food. We know that ultra-processed foods are associated with a whole variety of health problems — certainly things like diabetes, obesity, other chronic diseases like that — but also with depression and early dementia and potentially behavioral developmental issues in children as well. 

Unfortunately, some studies show that as much as 70% of the diet that Americans consume come from ultra-processed foods — that the calories from these diets come from ultra-processed food. I think it would be great if we can start reducing or removing ultra-processed food from school lunches. There has been some research done on food dyes and other additives. Reducing these in school lunches would also be a positive step.

He’s also mentioned that the same way that a doctor can prescribe Ozempic to treat obesity, they should also be able to prescribe, say, and have that covered by health insurance policies. I’m wondering what that might look like for kids as well, and what role pediatricians might play.

I don’t think any pediatrician would disagree with the idea that we have to focus more on prevention — that promoting healthy lifestyle, increasing exercise, improving diet, these would all be excellent for the promotion of health and well-being in our children. 

To be clear, it’s not these ideas that Kennedy is promoting that the medical profession would have an issue with. It’s that mixed in with many of these good ideas, are our concerns about misinformation around vaccines and that traditionally have not been considered to be safe and effective. 

After Kennedy’s nomination, he wrote on on Jan. 20, “The Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” Can you talk a little bit about the role of fluoride in drinking water — specifically for kids.

This is an area where re-examination of the current policy would be a good idea, because this is a nuanced and complicated issue. On the one hand, we know that fluoridating the water supply has reduced cavities in children, but that effect was seen the most before widespread use of fluoride toothpaste.

We also know that fluoride in large quantities has toxic effects, including on bone development, on teeth discoloration and potentially on the developing brain if consumed by the pregnant woman. And so the question then is, what is the amount of fluid that would be optimal for promoting both dental health and reducing other effects? 


I think these are all reasonable questions to be asking — again, though, using science as the basis and not approaching this as an activist who already has a preconception in mind.

Are there any other policy ideas that Kennedy has put forward that you have thought of as either welcome news and an exciting change or particularly concerning?

None of what we’re talking about here is new. I think we can divide the proposals by Kennedy into three categories. One are things that are good ideas. For example, removing ultra-processed lunch or ultra processed food from school lunches. 

The second category are things that deserve a re-examination, and depending on what we find, may or may not be a good idea. That includes the fluoridation.

And then the third area would be things that have been proven to be wrong. For example, misinformation around vaccines.

And so again, I think to your point, none of these things that have been brought up in the category of good ideas is new, but that’s how I would think about this.

The legal perspective

Âé¶čŸ«Æ·: Speaking about Kennedy at a rally recently, Trump said, How accurate is that? Can he really go wild on health? What are some of the congressional stopgaps there, and how much power does Kennedy actually have to enact these proposed policies? 

Richard H. Hughes: I think we could break that down into sort of two parts: Is Trump going to make good on that promise? and How far will RFK go? 

I would say that President Trump is very intent on making good on that promise. He went through with the selection of RFK. If you look at the appointments across the board, the nominees he selected are very unconventional. He’s very intent on disruption. 

And if you look at the health appointees in particular, there is some consistency there, right? They all hold really unconventional views. They come from very unconventional backgrounds for these types of roles. There are some questions about the adequacy of some of their experience and qualifications for these roles. There is also some consistency across the nominees that this sort of unconventional, non-mainstream views on COVID and the COVID response, as well as this focus around infections versus chronic disease. A lot of them have said we think we should be focused on chronic disease. A lot of them have espoused misinformation about vaccines. 

In terms of the legal authority, Congress has given a lot of really sweeping power to the secretary. When Congress gives the authority to the executive branch to do something, and it does it really clearly, the executive branch has a lot of leeway 
 

So I’ll just give you an example. A lot of the questions I’m getting are about vaccine recommendations and vaccine requirements. There is the (ACIP). That is a committee that is created by the secretary
 

There are all of these requirements for programs or payers to provide coverage of the vaccines that are recommended by the committee. And so there are really interesting questions about, well, if he stopped convening the committee, if he eliminated the committee, what impact would that have?

There’s a potential trickle down effect, because a lot of states actually either look to that committee to determine what their [vaccine] policy should be, or they just refer to the committee and require, say, you know, for school entry, they require vaccination in accordance with the schedule that’s determined by the ACIP. 

That’s sort of a very specific area 
 

At the FDA, there’s a lot of room for someone to come in, introduce subjective views on science, and say, “Well, what do we mean by safety? What do we mean by efficacy? Your traditional randomized, controlled trial, that doesn’t tell me what I need to know
” [That] might be the view of somebody at the agency in this administration, and they might try to introduce alternative evidence, and they would have some latitude to do that.

Just turning a little bit more to vaccines, it sounds like whoever is running this agency and convening this committee has a lot of power to potentially help determine what vaccines are going to be covered by health insurance. Is that correct?

That’s right. Congress requires payers to cover vaccines that are recommended by that committee. If those recommendations are rescinded by the secretary, which the secretary has the authority to do, that really throws a lot into question there. 

Now I’m having a really healthy, friendly debate with one of my mentors over the legal challenges that one could bring to challenge that sort of decision. There are some potential checks on this in the courts, but it’s all going to be really circumstantial.

Thinking specifically about schools, you mentioned that folks look to this committee to help determine what vaccines are required for students. Can you explain a little bit about how that works? How might RFK’s policies impact that?

If you’re interested — it’s open access — I just wrote in this month’s issue of Health Affairs on the relationship between ACIP recommendations and state school requirements 
 

But, this is the authority of the states, and it’s really interesting in a Republican administration to think about the federalism debate 
 and you’re going to see this tension play out in this administration over the role of the states and the federal government. 

And it’s going to play out in the arena of public health and around vaccine policy 
 The federal government can come in and play a really important role when you have a threat that, say, goes across state lines. But states have to be able to enact these measures to protect themselves, to protect their people. 

The Jacobson v. Massachusetts case recognized that states can require immunization. [In] 1922, [in] the case Zucht v. King — lesser known but very important case when we talk about school requirements — the Supreme Court came back and said that a school district was able to exclude a young girl from school when she wasn’t vaccinated, even though there was no active outbreak. 

And so that’s a really, really important case, because if you think about why we require kids to get vaccinated to go to school, it’s a decision that the state makes to impose these requirements so that we don’t have disease outbreaks. It’s the suppression of endemic disease. You take those requirements away, you weaken those requirements, you’re going to see outbreaks potentially. And we’ve seen that with measles outbreaks, where we weaken those policies. 

So it sounds to me less like RFK can put out a mandate that schools federally cannot require vaccines, but more that there could be a trickle-down effect of some of what he does at the federal level, and that might impact then state policies. Is that correct?

Well, yes, but this is something I’m thinking a lot about right now because there is this statute that some of us have looked at over time — — which is the old isolation and quarantine statute that allows, essentially, the CDC to come in and and impose certain measures when necessary to control communicable disease. 

And every semester, I ask students, “Would this actually allow the federal government to impose a vaccine mandate?” And we debate that endlessly, whether that language actually would allow it or not. 

And right now, I think that poses the question: there is preemption language in that statute, so could it potentially be used to set a policy that would undermine state requirements or weaken state requirements? And it’s just a really interesting academic question. I don’t know that realistically that’s something that RFK or the CDC would pursue, but I think we’re living in an era where everything’s on the table.

Well, all of that said, how likely is Kennedy to actually get confirmed? And could there be, from a policy or a legal standpoint, any roadblocks put up in his way?

Yeah, so I do think he’ll get confirmed. I think that what you have seen is President Trump came forward and put together a slate of nominees very rapidly. And all of the ways that you could say that President Trump is inconsistent, he has been very consistent with his health nominees — a lot of similarly held views, a lot of unconventional backgrounds. 

I think just if you look at the pool of appointments as a whole, there’s a lot to take aim at, whether it was Matt Gaetz, his AG nominee () or the selection of the defense secretary nominee (), there’s a lot to provide sort of political fog. And I think that in all of that noise you lose sight of the fact that RFK does not have really the ideal qualifications for the role [and] holds some views that are anti-science. 

And you look to the Senate and ask, “Well, is someone going to stand up and push back and say, ‘We’re not going to confirm this nominee because they lack the qualifications?’” 
 No one has come out and sort of put a stake in the ground and said, “We’re not going to confirm nominees who don’t meet these qualifications,” or “If they hold these views, there’s no way that they’re going to get a hearing.” 

We just haven’t seen that. And so I do think they’ll get confirmed. I think President Trump expects loyalty from his party. 

“They’re now graduated and in college
they came back [for] summer break. I had a couple of slices of coffee cake for them, and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh!’… because, you know it’s a famous thing,” said Heinz, a staff member at Marina Del Rey Middle School.

Stories like Heinz’s are not unique. LAUSD’s coffee cake is one of the most popular items on the district’s menu. Every year LA Unified serves up 800,000 slices of the coffee cake a year across 700 cafeterias, according to an LAIST .

The coffee cake recipe dates back to 1954 and has undergone several changes due to federal USDA regulations. Evelen Guirguis, who has been with the district for 30 years and is now the cafeteria manager at Marina del Rey Middle School, said shortening, an ingredient “high in calories and offers no nutritional benefits,” has since been cut out.

Baking more now that you are staying home? Remember the legendary LAUSD Old Fashioned Coffee Cake? Here is the original recipe from 1954. Photo credit: Danielle Chiriguaya.

— Los Angeles Unified (@LASchools)

“Before, the (ingredients) came from the government. Now we buy everything ourselves.” said Guirguis. “We have our own vendor now
[which] means we get the best [products] and everything is fresh,”

The current coffee cake recipe is expected to be updated again in the fall — because of a new set of federal regulations — cutting down on sugar. 

Meanwhile the iconic cake remains in high demand. 

“Even though the fat content has declined, it’s still a very moist cake
a big part of nutrition is what you enjoy,” said Manish Singh, director of LAUSD food services.

The district even the recipe during the pandemic, encouraging people to make it while they were home. 

Singh said earlier this month the district ordered 3,500 pieces of coffee cake as part of a staff appreciation day and “it was all gone in no time,”  he said.  “We did a similar thing last year. The first time, they ordered 1,000 pieces and were worried there would be leftovers. It was gone in 20 minutes.”

The cake is so popular, it has even inspired businesses like Runaway Sweet Treats in Los Angeles to offer on its menu items using the original recipe. It’s also a big crowd pleaser on back-to-school night, with parents waiting in long lines to get a slice.  

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho is also a big fan, requesting it for monthly principals’ meetings.

When a student reporter with several boxes of coffee cake returned to the University of Southern California campus, a security guard recognized the packaging and asked for a  piece.

The recipe is not the only thing that has changed. With the decrease in cafeteria-produced food, some schools have contracted the production process to a third-party vendor. The cake is still made from scratch in 25-30 school kitchens, Singh said. 

“Where we have the capacity, and where the staff is able to make it from scratch, we still encourage them to make it from scratch,” Singh said. 

Guirguis is one of the many passionate individuals behind the creation of the legendary cake. Once a week, she and her staff bake nearly 600 coffee cakes before breakfast at 7:45 AM for the students at Marina del Rey Middle School and seven other LAUSD campuses.

From start to finish, it only takes her 30 minutes to bake two trays of fresh coffee cake. Baking the cake, she said, is her favorite part of her job.

When asked why the coffee cake is so popular, Guirguis said, “It’s because we make it with love.”

Learn how to make the legendary treat below:

Los Angeles Unified School District’s coffee cake is one of the most popular items on the district’s menu. Learn more about the 70 year old tradition, and see the full recipe, at The74million.org

Earlier this spring, Noma Projects took its efforts across the Atlantic, embarking on a weeklong tour of New York City through a series of pop-up events, ranging from book signings to cooking at the Union Square Greenmarket. Among those tour events: a school lunch takeover, closed to the public, in which DREAM Charter School students in grades K-8 were offered sandwiches and yogurt parfaits made using Noma Projects’ Pumpkin Seed Praline.

The DREAM Charter event on April 19 was facilitated by , , formerly Noma’s head chef, that places professional chefs in public foodsystems like schools, senior organizations and prisons.

Through three back-to-back lunch services last month, the Noma Projects team experienced first-hand the challenges — and joys — of ensuring students are provided a nutritious, delicious lunch every day. Watch how this unprecedented service went for a team from the world’s best restaurant as they faced their toughest critics — schoolchildren.

School meals are critical to child health. Research has shown that than meals from other sources, such as meals brought from home.

A recent study that one of us conducted found the quality of school meals has steadily improved, especially since the 2010 strengthened nutrition standards for school meals. In fact, by 2017, another study found that school meals provided the of any major U.S. food source.

Many American families became familiar with universal free school meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. To ease the financial and logistical burdens of the pandemic on families and schools, the that allowed schools nationwide to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. However, these by the 2022-23 school year.

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Since that time, there has been a substantial increase in schools participating in the , a federal policy that allows schools in high poverty areas to provide free breakfast and lunch to all attending students. The policy became available as an option for low-income schools nationwide in 2014 and was part of the . By the 2022-23 school year, had adopted the Community Eligibility Provision, an increase of more than 20% over the prior year.

We are study the health effects of nutrition-related policies, particularly those that alleviate poverty. Our newly published research found that the Community Eligibility Provision was associated with a net .

Improving the health of American children

President Harry Truman in 1946, with the stated goal of protecting the health and well-being of American children. The program established permanent federal funding for school lunches, and participating schools were required to provide free or reduced-price lunches to children from qualifying households. Eligibility is based on federal poverty levels, both of which are .

In 1966, the piloted the , which provides free, reduced-price and full-price breakfasts to students. This program was later made permanent through an amendment in 1975.

The was piloted in several states beginning in 2011 and became an option for eligible schools nationwide beginning in 2014. It operates through the national school lunch and school breakfast programs and expands on these programs.

The policy allows all students in a school to receive free breakfast and lunch, rather than determine eligibility by individual households. Entire schools or school districts are eligible for free lunches if at least 40% of their students are directly certified to receive free meals, meaning their household participated in a means-based safety net program, such as the , or the child is identified as runaway, homeless, in foster care or enrolled in Head Start. Some states also .

The Community Eligibility Provision increases school meal participation by associated with receiving free meals, eliminating the need to complete and process applications and extending access to students in households with incomes above the eligibility threshold for free meals. As of 2023, the eligibility threshold for free meals is 130% of the federal poverty level, which amounts to US$39,000 for a family of four.

Universal free meals and obesity

We analyzed whether providing universal free meals at school through the Community Eligibility Provision was associated with lower childhood obesity before the COVID-19 pandemic.

To do this, we measured from 2013 to 2019 among 3,531 low-income California schools. We used over 3.5 million body mass index measurements of students in fifth, seventh and ninth grade that were taken annually and aggregated at the school level. To ensure rigorous results, we between schools that adopted the policy and eligible schools that did not. We also followed the same schools over time, comparing obesity prevalence before and after the policy.

We found that schools participating in the Community Eligibility Provision had a in obesity prevalence compared with eligible schools that did not participate in the provision. Although our findings are modest, even small improvements in obesity levels are notable because effective strategies to reduce obesity at a population level . Additionally, because obesity racially and ethnically marginalized and low-income children, this policy could contribute to reducing health disparities.

The Community Eligibility Provision likely reduces obesity prevalence by substituting up to half of a child’s weekly diet with healthier options and simultaneously for low-to-middle-income families. Families receiving free breakfast and lunch save approximately $4.70 per day per child, or $850 per year. For low-income families, particularly those with multiple school-age children, this could result in meaningful savings that families can use for other health-promoting goods or services.

Expanding access to school meals

Childhood obesity the past several decades. Obesity often to a range of .

Growing research is showing the benefits of universal free school meals for the health and well-being of children. Along with our study of California schools, other researchers have found an association between universal free school meals and reduced obesity in , and , as well as among and school districts in .

Studies have also linked the Community Eligibility Provision to and .

While our research observed a reduction in the prevalence of obesity among schools participating in the Community Eligibility Provision relative to schools that did not, obesity increased over time in both groups, with a greater increase among nonparticipating schools.

Universal free meals policies may slow the rise in childhood obesity rates, but they alone will not be sufficient to reverse these trends. Alongside universal free meals, identifying to reduce obesity among children is necessary to address this public health issue.

As of 2023, universal free school meals policies. States such as California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico have pledged to cover the difference between school meal expenditures and federal reimbursements. As more states adopt their own universal free meals policies, understanding their effects on child health and well-being, as well as barriers and supports to successfully implementing these programs, will be critical.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

“I’m Max. Muscle Max,” he says. “How did I get so totally in shape? Lots of exercise, and protein from meats, beans and milk.”

Muscle Max is from “,” created by a team at Auburn University, part of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, as an obesity prevention effort aimed at grade schoolers. Muscle Max is one of six anime-styled characters — like Body Doctor, who is a Black girl samurai and avid eater of fruit, and Shining Rainbow, who likes veggies for their vibrant color — who also visited some Rhode Island schools as part of a research study led by Kate Balestracci at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

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Balestracci is the program manager of , the nutrition education component of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Balestracci also leads Children, Youth, and Families at Risk (), another USDA initiative, at URI.

recaps the quantitative results from Balestracci’s USDA-funded study, which brought one-hour weekly classes — usually swapped in for an existing health class — to six different schools in Rhode Island over three years. As is typical for research studies, the schools are not identified directly, but they are cited as being from lower-income school districts.

There were 242 third graders in the control group, who received no special programming. The 217 third graders in the intervention group received the “Body Quest” curriculum — something created as part of Alabama’s own SNAP-Ed program, Live Well Alabama. The curriculum involves printed materials and in-class activities and discussions, with the centerpiece being an iPad app loaded with games to encourage healthy eating.

When asked about the timeline of the new research in a recent phone interview, Balestracci laughed and noted it wasn’t that new. The articles took a while to complete, she said, and the actual classroom sessions took place between 2015 and 2018. came out first in 2019 and included interviews with the third graders.

“The thing is, with kids, hard data like pre-, post-quantitative data, [it’s] pretty hard to get accurate information,” Balestracci said. “They just are arbitrary, or they don’t really know. But when it comes to qualitative, they speak their mind very well. So that actually I think is a little more valuable sometimes.”

Data collection for the quantitative study centered on student surveys with questions like: “How many times did you drink a sugary drink yesterday?” or “How many times did you eat a salty snack yesterday between your meals?” The results show that the intervention students sipped fewer sugary drinks, didn’t consume as many salty snacks and ate more fruit. Intake of vegetables and sweet snacks, however, barely changed.

“Sweet snacks are often desserts, which kids are maybe less likely to swap out for a fruit,” Balestracci said. “But salty snacks, like Takis or chips — sometimes kids are OK with decreasing that and having a healthier choice for snack.”

But what about snacking outside of school?

Balestracci’s study may have been conducted some years ago, but the research is still relevant. At a March 7 meeting of the Rhode Island House Committee on Finance, the night’s hottest topic of discussion was inarguably Rep. Justine Caldwell’s bill to provide free school meals for all public school students regardless of income. In Balestracci’s studies, both intervention and control schools had just under 90% eligibility for free or reduced lunch.

came from Geoffrey Greene, Balestracci’s colleague at URI and a co-author on the new study. Lunchboxes from home may be packed with love — but Greene noted in his testimony that his research shows they are generally less healthier than those served at school.

“In Rhode Island, we have to rely on the Healthy Schools Coalition that has quite stringent food policy guidelines for the state and for the school that participate in school meals,” Balestracci said.

But she said snacking outside of school is much less governable: “No corner store is gonna stop a child from buying something,” Balestracci added.

Ideally, corner stores would stock more fresh fruits alongside Pringles and Sour Patch Kids — but Balestracci acknowledged the challenges of supply chain issues and the demand it would create on small businesses.

One of the study’s limitations, the article noted, was that it only accounted for weekday eating habits — and weekends tend to be filled with vice. Students’ eating habits could definitely differ on the weekend, said Balestracci: “That could be a whole different ballgame. It’s everyone’s different ballgame.”

The URI researchers used a retooled version of the “Body Quest” curriculum, since the original didn’t devote much coverage to sugary drinks or .

“While eating fruits and vegetables is great, it doesn’t necessarily replace the other things that they’re having,” Balestracci said.

Information on “Body Quest” was still available on the SNAP-ed national website as of late February, but by March 13 the page . Requests for comment from both Alabama Cooperative Extension System and the national SNAP-Ed office went unreturned. The “Body Quest” handbook and classroom materials are still . The iPad app, which was last updated in 2022, is on Apple’s .

Still present in Balestracci’s remade curriculum was Trans Fat Cat — the ostensible villain of  “Body Quest,” who is not really sinister but rather injudicious in his dietary habits.

Alas, change is possible, even with picky eaters.

“I just have one thing to say, is that when I was little, I didn’t wanna eat yogurt. I didn’t like yogurt,” one student in the 2019 qualitative study said. “Now, I’m eating the whole cup of yogurt.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

This year 35 states will participate in a that will help low-income parents buy groceries for their children when free school meals are unavailable during the summer months.

But Texas, which , according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has opted not to join this national effort. If it had, qualifying families would have received $120 per child through a pre-loaded card for the three summer months. The USDA calculated that Texas is passing on a total of $450 million in federal tax dollars that would have gone to eligible families here.

The reason for the pass is simple, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. When the USDA notified HHSC officials of their new Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT program on Dec. 29, that gave the nation’s second largest state only six months to get it up and running and that’s not enough time, said Tiffany Young, a spokesperson for the state agency.

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Although the summer program would involve two other agencies as well – the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Department of Agriculture – HHSC would have to bear the brunt of the work because they would have to coordinate and direct the distribution of the preloaded cards to qualifying families.

Already on their plate is the cumbersome of Medicaid coverage. Since last April, the agency has removed more than 2 million Texans from the program since the federal government lifted continuous coverage rules during the pandemic, forcing those who still qualify for coverage to reapply. From HHSC’s perspective, launching an entirely new program wouldn’t be possible at this time.

Additionally, the USDA would only cover 50% of the administrative expenses for Summer EBT. It would be up to the state to cover the residual cost.

Young wrote that the HHSC, TDA and TEA have been in “active discussions” about each agencies’ responsibilities in accordance with Summer EBT.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture first piloted the summer program with Pandemic EBT, or P-EBT, during the 2019-2020 school year in all 50 states. P-EBT was created in response to children from low-income families who qualified for free and reduced-price school meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal officials estimate 21 million children in 35 states, five U.S. territories and four tribes participating in the program would receive the extra money during the summer months.

Texas is one of 15 states that will not participate. Among the 15 is Alabama — opting out with similar rationale to Texas — attributing their reasoning to an insufficient amount of time to appropriate the funds necessary for the program.

, school lunch may be the only full meal they get each day. According to Feeding Texas, a nonprofit organization that supplies food banks across the state, one in five children are affected by food insecurity — defined as an insufficient amount or unreliable sources of food to sustain oneself.

The Texas Department of Agriculture administers the free and reduced meal program for students during the school year. Agriculture Commissioner said he understands the disappointment some families have about Texas’ decision not to participate this year. He said his agency would have assisted if the decision was made to participate.

“The problem we’re facing — and we face this at the TDA in our school meals program and our summer feeding programs — everything is so much more expensive,” Miller said. “An extra 40 dollars could have gone a long way to offset that.”

Every Texan petitioned alongside statewide and regional organizations for the program last November, to Cecile Young, executive commissioner of HHSC.

“Summer EBT is something that we have been advocating for for years, because we know how hard it is in a state as spread out as Texas to access enough food, to be able to afford enough food for their kids when school is closed,” Rachel Cooper told The Texas Tribune.

Though not as comprehensive as Summer EBT, food insecure children still have options for food assistance during the summer. Miller told the Tribune that “kids aren’t going to get fed any less” on account of the TDA’s expansion of their . Children 18 and under are eligible to receive a free meal at their meal sites across the state.

Parents can also find out if their child’s school district is one of many that provide free meals during the summer. National organizations, such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club, provide summer meal assistance at select locations.

Though it remains possible to secure a balanced meal without Summer EBT, Cooper believes it is still possible and necessary for Texas to join the program in 2025.

“Our kids need it,” Cooper said. “They deserve it, and we just need to do our part.”

Disclosure: Every Texan and Feeding Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Fueled by Kids, a nonprofit founded and run by teenagers in Bedford, New Hampshire, fills the 67 hour gap between when students receive school lunch on Friday afternoons and again when they receive school breakfast on Monday morning, alleviating the food anxiety that many of these children experience as a result of not knowing when or where they might be having their next meal.

Each week, Fueled by Kids members gather for their club meeting at Bedford High School, then pick up food that they preordered from local grocers. They partner with other high schools to pack bags of groceries — all ready-to-eat or simple enough to be prepared by the students themselves — that then get distributed to more than 20 schools serving over 1,000 students. The recipients are all anonymous to Fueled by Kids organizers, identified by school counselors and principals as students who may face food insecurity over the weekend. All of Fueled by Kids’ funds raised go directly back to purchasing food for distribution.

At Marblehead Community Charter Public School, a food pantry was founded in the wake of the pandemic to support both the school’s families and the broader community. The pantry, which has a separate entrance on the side of the school, is frequented by many, all of whom express overwhelming gratitude, and many of whom feel shame that they need to request assistance. An on-site garden also supports the school’s food programs and provides educational opportunities for MCCPS students to learn about where their food comes from.

Hot, scratch-made breakfasts and lunches are available to every student, every day. The meals are so healthful and delicious that the teachers and staff often opt to eat what’s on the menu. After this universal program launched at MCCPS, the number of students accessing breakfast nearly tripled, and nearly twice as many students participated in school lunch. Lines for lunch became so long that they had to create an additional lunch period to accommodate all of their students. The impact on MCCPS students has been profound — all students now have access to nutritious, homemade meals without the burden of stigma and they are better prepared to start the day physically and mentally.

At Ilima Intermediate School, teacher Sarah Milianta-Laffin often sees students standing around the trash cans after lunch, asking their peers if they can eat the leftovers off their lunch tray.

Milianta-Laffin purchases around $500 worth of snacks at the start of each school year to keep in her classroom, anticipating that some students will need a granola bar to get through class if their families can’t afford school meals. 

“Meals should be things that we just give automatically, and we know we see better results,” Milianta-Laffin said. “Attention span is better when kids are not hungry. Anxiety is lower, because you’re not worried about where your next meal is coming from.”

Recent changes to  could allow a major expansion in the number of Hawaii schools that offer free meals to all students. But it’s unclear how many of schools will take advantage of the Community Eligibility Provision program, which provides schools in high-poverty areas with federal funds meant to subsidize the cost of offering free breakfast and lunch to all families. 

Before recent changes to the program, schools where 40% or more of students were low-income or had high-needs could qualify for the CEP. That includes students who are homeless, in foster care or enrolled in federal initiatives such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Under recent changes to the program, the qualifying threshold has dropped to 25% of a school’s student body. According to a , which uses data from the 2022-23 school year, 83 new schools in Hawaii could enroll in the CEP.

Nicole Woo, director of research and economic policy at , said hungry students can’t learn. Even if families qualify for reduced-price lunch, they may still struggle to cover the remaining costs of school meals and could benefit from the CEP expansion, she added. 

“The benefits are clear,” Woo said. “We certainly hope the Department of Education and charter schools will take advantage of this new rule to get free meals to more kids.”  

But, Woo acknowledged, making this change might be easier said than done. 

A Financial Roadblock

Currently, 106 schools in Hawaii offer free meals to all students under CEP. 

Even with CEP’s expanded eligibility, Hawaii families may not see free lunch offered at their schools right away, said Daniela Spoto, director of . 

According to the FRAC database, 17 eligible Hawaii schools chose not to adopt CEP in the 2022-23 school year. 

The Department of Education is still analyzing how recent changes to the CEP rule will impact Hawaii schools, said deputy superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun. 

One question the department faces is whether all Hawaii schools can now qualify for CEP. The federal government allows entire districts to participate in CEP, as long as their schools have an average of 25% or more of low-income students. 

Hawaii has a single statewide school district, but the DOE is still trying to determine whether the state can group together all schools and whether the district would meet the 25% threshold, Oyadomari-Chun said. Even if this is a possibility, the decision could be an expensive one for the department, Oyadomari-Chun added. 

CEP schools receive federal reimbursements to help to cover the cost of offering free breakfast and lunch to all students. But schools with fewer low-income students receive less federal support helping to cover the costs of those meals.  

The responsibility falls to the school district to cover the remaining costs of offering free meals at CEP schools, Oyadomari-Chun said. The department is still determining what these costs might be for next year, she added. 

Last year, the department estimated that, even with federal reimbursements, it would cost roughly $64 million a year to provide free meals to all students, although the final number could vary based on students’ participation in school meal programs and the costs of labor and food. 

“We really want to feed our kids,” Oyadomari-Chun said. “We really would love for the whole state to be part of CEP, but it does have a cost to the state that we have to analyze.” 

Hawaii isn’t the only state weighing the costs and benefits of expanding schools’ participation in the CEP. 

Some states, like Oregon and Washington, have already set aside funding to cover the costs of providing free lunch under the CEP, said Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and out-of-school time programs at FRAC. When more state and federal funds are available to cover the costs of meals, schools and districts are more likely to take advantage of the CEP, she added. 

“There’s definitely a variation in the take-up rate based on the amount of federal reimbursement the school would receive for their meal,” FitzSimons said. 

Schools under the DOE would not have to use their own budgets to cover the costs of providing free lunches under the CEP, Oyadomari-Chun said. Instead, she added, the department would request necessary funding from the Legislature in the spring. 

But charter schools, while also eligible for the CEP, have to use their own budgets to cover whatever costs the federal government won’t reimburse for school lunches. While the number of DOE-operated schools in Hawaii participating in the CEP grew from seven to 92 between the 2015-16 and 2023-24 school years, the number of public charter schools dropped from 18 to 14.

For Ka ‘Umeke Ka’eo, a charter school in Hilo, enrolling in the CEP initially seemed like a straightforward decision, said director of operations Louisa Lee. The school knew many of its families could benefit from a free lunch, and Lee hoped the federal reimbursement rate would offset the cost of participating in the program. 

But participating in CEP cost the school approximately $120,000 to $150,000 a year, she said. The school considered withdrawing from the program but has continued its participation because families needed free lunch more than ever due to hardships from the Covid-19 pandemic, she said.

“I would say that our CEP plans are year to year,” Lee said. “It’s year to year for as long as we possibly can, or until we find another option.” 

Policy Possibilities 

The push for free meals in Hawaii schools isn’t new. , three bills in the Legislature called for the state to make food more accessible to students, from providing universal free meals to establishing a subsidy for students who do not qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. However, none of these bills passed into law. 

Rep. Mahina Poepoe introduced one of the bills, which would have offered free breakfast and lunch for all students beginning in the 2023-24 school year. Poepoe said she hoped to fill a need the federal government temporarily addressed during the height of the pandemic, when schools offered free lunch to all families.

By offering free meals to all students, schools can help to reduce the stigma around free or reduced-price meals, Poepoe said. She hopes the recent expansion of CEP-eligible schools can help reduce the cost of establishing a universal free school meal program. 

“I’m very hopeful that the rule change will make legislation more palatable in the upcoming session by further reducing the cost,” Poepoe said.  

Oyadomari-Chun said the department would be interested in seeing similar legislation introduced this year, but would need to consider the financial implications of the proposal. 

Sarah Fukuzono, an educational assistant at Kanoelani Elementary School, said providing free meals to all families would ensure that her students are ready to learn and have access to nutritional foods. She recalled how, last year, she would bring eggs to one of her students in the morning, knowing that he would come to school cranky and without breakfast.

“If the student is hungry, I’m not going to get any work out of them,” Fukuzono said. “But if we have a general baseline of, these kids have eaten breakfast, these kids have eaten a nutritious lunch, then we can move on to things like learning.” 

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

Civil Beat’s community health coverage is supported by , Swayne Family Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation and .

This story was originally published in .

TOPEKA — School lunch debt has snowballed in the year following the end of pandemic-era free meal programs. An advocacy group warns the debt accumulation could hurt and humiliate Kansas children in a .

“When Kansas kids are hungry, they can’t learn,” said Haley Kottler, director of a Kansas Appleseed campaign against child hunger. “Ensuring kids have what they need to thrive is imperative to our students’ success– in and out of the classroom.”

To create the report, Appleseed staff contacted the state’s 286 public school districts, receiving responses from about 20%. To fill in the gap, staff reviewed policies available on public school district websites, among other data sourcing.

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The report follows the end of the free federal school meals program, which paid for breakfast and lunch for students at all income levels. The program was in place from March 2020 through June 2022, allowing Kansas’ 480,000 public school children access to free meals.

Since the program ended, families in the state have experienced a six-fold increase in school meal debt. Student lunch debt reached $23.5 million in 2023, according to Appleseed. For comparison, the state reported $4.5 million in school lunch debt in 2019. Increasing inflation and economic instability during and after the COVID-19 pandemic could play a factor in the increased debt.

Approximately 41% of Kansas students were signed up for free meals through the National School Lunch Program during the 2022-2023 school year, and another 7% received reduced school meals, but families must remain under a certain income threshold to be eligible for these reduced-price programs.

For example, a family of four has to make under $39,000 a year to qualify for free meals, and under $55,500 to qualify for reduced-priced meals, the report notes.

When the debt from school meals accumulates, only about 22% on average is paid off by parents, according to . Despite low rates of payment, more than 40% of Kansans school districts use debt collection agencies, turning unpaid meal debt over to collection agencies, small claims courts, or the Kansas debt offset program— a measure that can have a long-lasting negative effect on a family.

Students themselves are singled out in the cafeteria when their families cannot afford to pay. Less than 5% of school districts in the state have documented policies allowing students with meal debt to continue receiving the same meal as fellow students.

Approximately 60% of school districts have documented policies allowing children an alternate meal, though the contents of the meal vary greatly across districts. Most districts offer either a cheese or peanut butter sandwich to these students, but others offer just a granola bar and milk, or canned fruit and crackers.

School districts that have higher rates of meal debt typically end up paying it through the district’s own funds, the report notes.

With this additional expense, many of the state’s school districts have been left in a “precarious financial position.”

“On average, it currently costs more to produce a school meal than school districts are charging or being reimbursed for,” the report reads. “This is likely an even larger challenge now that increased federal reimbursements for school meals have expired.”

The organization’s recommendations include ending debt collection practices, having the state subsidize portions of the lunch program and changing unpaid meal fee policies that humiliate students in the cafeteria.

“I look forward to working with school districts and community partners to ensure that every child in every district has consistent access to school meals, said Martha Terhaar, a Kansas Appleseed advocate campaigning against child hunger. “Together, we can build policies that guarantee every student is fed.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on and .

As New Jersey students returned to classrooms this week, the number of them eligible for free or reduced school breakfast and lunch jumped — and hunger insecurity advocates are eyeing ways to make those meals free for all children.

“We are hopeful — since New Jersey has done so much and really led the way in addressing hunger and food insecurity — that in this next legislative session, they can get a school-meals-for-all bill passed,” said Lisa Pitz of Hunger Free New Jersey.

About 26,000 new students  program this school year thanks to a bill Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law last September. That’s in addition to the more than who received free or reduced breakfast and lunch between 2019 and 2020, the most recently available data.

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The law, known as the Working Class Families’ Anti-Hunger Act, expanded eligibility to families who earn 200% of the federal poverty level. That translates to households with three children earning $46,060 maximum, or for those with two children, $36,620.

It also requires all school districts to provide a free school breakfast and lunch program and to publicize its availability to their communities.

While experts applauded the new law, signed soon after pandemic-era  providing free lunches expired, nutrition experts and food hunger advocates want to see more action from state lawmakers.

“There’s definitely interest at the state level in going for a universal meals program for the state. It’s just a matter of getting everyone on board and finding the will to do it,” said Sal Valenza, public policy chair for the New Jersey School Nutrition Association.

The Assembly passed a bill () in June that would further expand eligibility for free and reduced school meals for the 2024-25 school year. The bill would also require the creation of a task force that would study school food security issues and recommend state- and federal-level action.

A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex), a prime sponsor of the legislation, said he believes every child should have access to meals at school, and the bill advanced in June will “put New Jersey on the path to accomplish that goal.”

The bill still needs to advance in the state Senate, where it has yet to be heard in committee. It is expected to cost the state about $57 million.

that would phase in free school lunches for all students by 2028 advanced out of an Assembly committee in June but did not win full approval before the Legislature went on its summer recess. Under that bill, which is estimated to cost the state more than $500 million after it’s phased in, New Jersey would join a handful of other states to provide free school meals for all students.  Massachusetts officials made school lunches available to all public school students regardless of income level.

But New Jersey would be an outlier by using the phase-in approach, noted Pitz.

“Really, the time to act on this is now,” she said. “We don’t ask our kids to pay for their textbooks or when they take the bus. School meals should just be part of their school day so that all kids can learn and grow to their full potential.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com. Follow New Jersey Monitor on and .

The hottest new restaurant in California might be your local elementary school.

Thanks to a surge of nearly $15 billion in state and federal funding, school districts are ditching the old standbys — frozen pizza and chicken nuggets — in favor of organic salads, free-range grilled chicken, vegan chana masala, chilaquiles and other treats. Districts are building new kitchens, hiring executive chefs, contracting directly with local organic farmers, and training their staffs to cook the finest cuisine. One  in San Luis Obispo County even bought a stone mill to grind its own wheat for bread and pasta.

The move to healthier, fresher school meals comes on the heels of California’s first-in-the-nation program providing free breakfast, lunch and snacks to nearly 6 million students in public schools, regardless of whether they qualify under federal income guidelines. The expansion of the meal program, combined with investments in school kitchens and training, have made public schools the , serving nearly 1 billion meals a year — more than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Subway combined.

“We now have the money and the green light to go all out. There’s no more excuses,” said Juan Cordon, food services director at Vacaville Unified, where students now enjoy offerings such as regeneratively raised pork sandwiches, Strauss Family Creamery organic yogurt and ​​chipotle chilaquiles. “Everything is turbo charged. It’s like, let’s do it fast, let’s do it now, let’s do it right.”

A plethora of research shows the benefits of healthy school meals. A 2020 study in the journal  looked at 502 school meal programs and found that students who ate meals at school had better attendance, higher academic achievement and improved health overall.  

The school meal expansion sprung from a handful of government investments during the pandemic, when the economy upended and schools closed, leaving thousands of low-income students and their families without steady access to food. The federal government expanded access to school meals for the first 27 months of the pandemic, and when that program expired, California stepped in with permanent funding for all students to receive free meals at school.

The state also created a program called , which has given $750 million to schools to upgrade their kitchens, hire and train staff and make other improvements so they could serve high-quality meals made from scratch for all students. About 90% of districts have received a grant. Another state program, called , has doled out nearly $100 million for schools to partner with local farms, plant school gardens and other projects to bolster locally sourced food in school lunchrooms. 

The switch to fresh, made-from-scratch meals has been popular with students. 

Alysa Oliver, a sophomore at Aptos High in Pajaro Unified, said that school lunches used to be so bad she’d sometimes just eat an apple, suffering through the afternoon on an empty stomach. 

“The food used to come in little plastic packages that you’d warm up, and it had this condensed, sweaty feeling,” Oliver said. “Now we have this high-quality food that’s better for you, and it tastes better.”

Enjoying a healthy meal enables her to pay closer attention in class, she said, and ultimately enjoy school more. Her favorite choices are Caesar salad, chicken wraps, berries and bananas.

Pajaro Valley Unified, in Santa Cruz County, is among the districts that’s on the forefront of the revolution in school meals. In addition to offering a daily selection of healthy entrees, the district has a partnership Esperanza Community Farms and Pajaro Valley High School  in which students harvest produce themselves, bring it back to school and prepare it for their classmates. Local farmers visit classrooms to talk about agriculture, and students learn about career pathways in the farming industry. The program has been so popular that the district is expanding to another high school this year.

The challenges of ‘farm to school’

Although more schools statewide are embracing the farm-to-school model, there have been hiccups. Staffing is a major one. School food service workers typically earn less than $20 an hour, less than a fast food worker, which means districts often struggle to fill vacancies. A recent check of , the state’s largest education job board, showed 851 openings for food service workers in California.

Another hassle for schools is paperwork. Even though the meals are free and available to all students, families still need to apply because schools need to track how many students qualify under the federal free-and-reduced-price lunch program. The federal government uses the numbers to reimburse schools for those children’s meals, and the state uses the numbers to determine funding formulas based on low-income student enrollment. 

“The school lunch program is as complicated as the U.S. tax code. It is wild,” said Jennifer McNeil, a co-founder of LunchAssist, a firm that helps school districts navigate the bureaucracy. “There are a lot of requirements and mandates that affect what goes on that lunch tray.” 

Another challenge is logistics. School kitchens typically don’t have the staff, time or room to clean and chop 500 butternut squashes, for example, so they need to send produce to a processing plant, which may be 50 miles away. Transporting the produce long distances can be expensive and inefficient, especially if it needs to be distributed to a dozen different school sites.

“I might need 30 cases of strawberries from Farmer X, and 20 cases of cucumbers from Farmer Y, and those farmers might have no way of getting their goods to different schools. It’s not easy,” said Jean Aitken, food services director at Pajaro Valley Unified. “We’re working on it, but right now we’re not set up to handle all the details.”

A need for more food hubs

Yousef Buzayan, farm-to-market senior manager at the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, an advocacy group based in Davis, said California needs more middlemen — known as food hubs — to purchase, process and distribute produce to schools. Currently, each district is forging its own arrangements, which is not practical in many parts of the state.

Food hubs could also arrange field trips, visits from farmers and other aspects of agricultural education, as well as help farmers get fair prices and a predictable, steady market for their produce. A few, such as the Yolo Food Hub, are already offering these services, but the state could use more, he said.

“Potentially, this could have a huge impact not just on students, but on farms in California generally, especially small farms,” Buzayan said. “But right now we need to think of a new business model focused just on schools.”

Getting students to love quinoa

Another thing LunchAssist helps with is the age-old challenge faced by parents everywhere: How do you get a 7-year-old to try new foods? All the innovative new programs will be for naught if kids toss their lunches in the trash, McNeil noted.

A few suggestions she offers to schools: Set up taste tests so students can vote for their favorites; educate students about nutrition, where food comes from and how it’s made; pair something new with an old favorite; and add Tajin seasoning, which can make anything taste good, she said.

Some districts are paying close attention to what students eat at home, and creating menus that reflect families’ diverse culinary traditions. The idea is to give students food they already enjoy while exposing them to new cuisines. Chefs at several districts vouched for the power of peer pressure: Kids are more likely to try something new if they see their friends eating it.

At Mt. Diablo Unified in Contra Costa County, the district hired an executive chef, Josh Gjersand, who’d previously worked at fine dining restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay. He chose to work in schools, he said, because of the regular hours, rewards of serving children and the funding available to be creative and ambitious.

One of his first tasks was to survey students about what they want to eat. They asked for halal meat, Latin American and Asian specialties and vegan options. So he came up with a menu featuring entrees like chana masala with chickpeas, organic rice, wheatberries and chutney; birria with locally processed, grass-fed beef; and fish filet tacos with slaw.

“The students like to be part of the conversation. By asking them what they like, where they’re from, it shows we’re paying attention and listening to them,” he said. “It’s amazing, the feedback we’ve been getting. It’s the best feeling.”

Humboldt County has a unique approach to serving “culturally relevant” school foods. Nearly 10% of students there are Native American, so the County Office of Education is offering meals — and curriculum — based on local native foods such as fish, berries and acorns. 

“I started here 27 years ago and it’s exciting to see these changes, the positive impact on students and staff,” said Linda Prescott, the County Office of Education nutrition program director. “And we’re definitely seeing the economic impact on farmers. I think it’s making a difference in Humboldt.”

The fine art of cooking was central to a training last week at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, one of the top cooking schools in the country. About three dozen school cafeteria workers from two districts in San Luis Obispo County gathered for a two-day training — paid for with state grants — on how to roast a sirloin, make grilled salmon with orange-thyme butter, braise greens and make other delicacies.

Renee Williams, who’s been in food service for 14 years at San Luis Coastal Unified, said she was a little daunted by the whole scene: the special CIA aprons, the fancy gas stoves, the huge glinting knives. 

“I’m not really a cook. Before, we just defrosted stuff,” Williams said. “This is all new and a little scary. But I want to learn.”

‘A circular economy’

First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who’s long advocated for improved school meals, checked in on the new chefs as they learned to julienne carrots and make the perfect roast potatoes.    

She views the state’s investment in school nutrition as transformative for students, small farms and local economies. In five to 10 years she hopes to see food hubs well established throughout the state, and all schools participating.  

“(My vision is that) we reach every public school kid in California, and have influenced the regenerative agricultural movement in California in such a way that most farms are practicing climate-smart agriculture,” Siebel Newsom said. “The small- and medium-scale farmers will benefit because they’ll have guaranteed buyers, and local economies will blossom. It’s a circular economy.”

The next steps, she said, are tackling food waste by establishing composting systems, and teaching students how to plant and cook their own food. 

“Talk about awesome summer school,” she said. “We all have to eat. It’s such a gift to know how to cook, and take something seasonal from the garden or the stream and turn it into something that you can then share with other people, break bread, have a conversation and connect and come together as a community.” 

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Republicans have called on the administration to and are the administration for its interpretation that Title IX covers sexual orientation and gender identity. But Democrats say transgender students need the overhaul to combat discrimination and harassment in school. Excluding trans students from using bathrooms and playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity denies their civil rights, they say. 

The U.S. Department of Education is still reviewing “a historic number of comments” from the public on the proposed regulations, according to a department spokesperson, and is now likely to miss its for release.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights received almost 240,000 comments on the primary rule, and more than 156,000 on the athletics rule. The department plans to release both portions at the same time, but the draft rule still faces review from the Office of Management and Budget, a required step that typically lasts 120 days.

While department officials declined to say if they’d miss the deadline, one expert is skeptical.

W. Scott Lewis, a partner with TNG, a consulting firm that works on Title IX issues, said it’s possible the rule won’t come out until spring. That timing, he said, “would be better for school districts and colleges” because it would allow them to make changes in the spring for the 2024-25 school year. 

The initial draft was released in July 2022, followed by the in April.

“We might miss it; we might not,” a department spokesperson told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· Friday. “The Department is working overtime to ensure that each [comment] is thoroughly read and carefully considered.”

Higher Ed Dive the delay Thursday. Opponents of the rewrite seized upon the news as a sign their pushback has been effective.

The administration is “responding to growing criticisms from many sectors of society,” Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, an advocacy organization, said in a .

But advocates for the revision say they are tired of waiting.

Anya Marino, director of LGBTQI Equality at the National Women’s Law Center, said trans and nonbinary students are facing “staggering rates” of abuse and harassment. A showed that almost 70% of LGBTQ students feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Four in 10 LGBTQ students said they avoided bathrooms, locker rooms and gym class because of concerns for their safety.

“These very real harms have been exacerbated by the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation and policies introduced at the state and local level, nationwide,” she said. “The Department’s rule is needed now.”

Biden took office with plans to roll back former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s similarly divisive rewrite of Title IX and, for the first time, extend protections to LGBTQ students. The DeVos rule, which also went through a formal notice and comment period, narrows the definition of sexual misconduct and sets limits on investigating incidents that occurred off campus. The rule also acknowledges the due process rights of students who said they have been unfairly accused of sexual misconduct. 

The Biden proposal would require schools to investigate “hostile environments” even if they occur outside of school. 

But the plan to broaden the rule to prohibit discrimination and harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation has sparked the most outrage from conservatives, who argue the administration would undo Title IX’s accomplishments for women over the past 50 years.

Recognizing the sharp divide over trans students’ participation in girls’ sports, officials handled that part of the rule separately and ultimately issued a draft that in general would allow elementary-age students to play sports consistent with their gender identity, but gives districts the discretion to exclude older trans students from competing with cisgender girls in certain sports. 

now bar trans students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

The proposal left the argument far from settled. Most advocates for LGBTQ issues say there are no circumstances in which trans students should be excluded.

In a counter move, the GOP-dominated House in April that would make the inclusion of trans students on teams consistent with their gender identity a Title IX violation. The Senate, still in the hands of Democrats, isn’t expected to take action on the bill.

This would be the second time release of the final rule has been pushed back. The department originally . Despite the procedural delays, the administration is still acting under Biden’s 2021 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. 

“We continue to enforce Title IX consistent with existing law that protects students on the basis of sex, including LGBTQI+ students,” the spokesperson said.

That interpretation led to a  from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stating that the order covers school meal programs and that any program receiving Food and Nutrition Service funds “must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation” and update signs to say nondiscrimination policies include LGBTQ students.

Twenty-two states over the issue, and Republicans in Congress, including Sen. Rob Marshall of Kansas, accused the administration of holding “children’s lunch hostage in pursuit of your woke agenda.” 

The department spokesperson did not offer a new timetable for releasing the final rule, saying, “We are utilizing every resource at our disposal to complete this rulemaking process as soon as is practicable.”

This is not an imaginary scenario — these lessons and activities are happening at real schools around the world. And the lessons their students are learning, both formal and informal, as they follow their own curiosity, are invaluable as they grow as stewards of our future. We can see it in how two schools, in particular, approach climate change.

set out to build the most sustainable school on the planet. Indonesia is an archipelago with 180 million people living in coastal regions. It faces the imminent threat of rising sea levels and is no stranger to weather-related disasters. Green School Bali is a much-needed inspiration for environmental education far beyond its borders. Students at this international school actively learn about sustainable agriculture, renewable energy systems and ecological conservation, applying fundamental literacies such as critical thinking and writing. They demonstrate what it means to be .

A continent away in Hungary, addresses similar concerns in a different way by focusing on alternatives to dangerous, unsustainable agricultural practices. The school opened a vegan cafeteria that supplies delicious, locally-sourced food for school lunches and the public. Students have a voice in the menus, are involved in the food planning and learn valuable lessons about supply, demand and food sources. By providing families and community members with tasty vegan food, the school encourages the community to lower its meat intake, thus decreasing the need for unsustainable farming practices. 

I saw this all first hand last year, during a 12-month transformational journey exploring innovative educational practices in 34 countries on six continents. I approached this exploration as a life-long educator and co-founder of , a diverse-by-design high school in the heart of Memphis, Tennessee. Here, students use in all of their classes to make education more meaningful, often in collaboration with nonprofits and researchers.

For my tour, I wanted to see what commonalities exist among innovative schools worldwide. I also wanted to see how world events like political shifts, war, youth movements, human migration and climate change affect teaching and learning.

As an educator committed to preparing students for an uncertain future in a swiftly evolving world, my main focus was learning how schools across the globe approach similar goals: namely, how they’re helping students become generous collaborators and original thinkers — all while mastering foundational knowledge and fundamental literacies. These guide teaching and learning at Crosstown High and in other innovative, student-centered . 

For more ideas on rethinking the high school experience, read The XQ Xtra — a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Student-Led Innovation Creates Sustainable Schools 

Around the world, schools embody the same learner outcomes we use at Crosstown and other XQ schools to prepare students for these immense challenges. 

“Change starts with an idea, an intention or a problem to be solved,” said Green School Bali Principal Sal Gordon. School educators tasked their students with researching the greatest environmental impacts on their local school community. Through an extensive study of numerous factors, students identified automobile traffic on campus as a leading contributor. With the help of engineers, chemists and automotive experts, students developed a process to convert school buses from diesel to cooking oil for fuel, which they collected from local restaurants. 

Each week, students in the “Grease Police” procure the oil from a 15-mile radius of the school for refinement and use as fuel, providing a greener alternative to school transportation. Through this kind of project-based learning and hands-on experiences, they gain a profound understanding of the interconnectedness between their actions and the environment. 

The school’s entire facility encourages this type of learning. Each open-air classroom is constructed of bamboo and thatch, with tables and chairs made locally from sustainable products. Students also manage their own lush gardens at each grade level that provide food for school lunches. They eat fish grown in the student-managed aquaponic system and eggs harvested from the fifth-grade chicken coop. 

In Hungary, REAL School Budapest Founder Barna Barath intentionally designed the vegan cafeteria to serve as a living example of the school’s purpose. In a traditional school system, a common purpose is to prepare students for postsecondary opportunities that provide individual prosperity. At REAL, the purpose is to live a purposeful and fulfilling life for collective prosperity. Students and parents invest in that vision for the betterment of the community. REAL’s educators are creating a community space and showing what it means to be learners for life and generous collaborators.

Connect Student-Directed Learning to Academic Standards

Educators at schools anywhere can prepare students for an uncertain future, specifically where that uncertainty relates to environmental change. A key takeaway from the two schools in Indonesia and Hungary is letting students take the lead in their learning. In each case, students investigated problems and found solutions, resulting in deep learning. There are many examples of schools doing similar work in the U.S. At Crosstown High, science teacher Nikki Wallace lets students take the lead by connecting them with local researchers through powerful community partnerships. 

We need to think big. Assigning simple projects around collecting plastic bottles or bags isn’t enough to move the needle on the environment and won’t truly engage kids. Even though Indonesia has specific concerns about rising sea levels, schools anywhere can — and should — engage students in learning about and studying the effects of droughts, heatwaves, floods and storms that result in crop failure and food scarcity. Here are a few steps to get started:

• Get students to think audaciously about solving local problems. What’s the big issue facing their neighborhood, town, county or state? How can they learn about it? Who can help them uncover solutions? For example: What is the condition of the local water source? What in the community is impacting local water? Who in the community can share expertise around this issue? 
• As they problem-solve, consider all connections to academic standards. How do research and problem-solving by students connect to the learning standards in your state? This is the crucial jumping-off point for connecting “academic” knowledge to “real world” solutions. At Crosstown High, we’ve done an in-depth study of human migration involving people who immigrated to Memphis. This project closely relates to the standards covered in our history, geography, sociology and psychology courses. 
• Get outside the box. Keep asking, “Why?” and push your students to think bigger and broader before zeroing in on the small tasks. At Crosstown, our students conducted an in-depth project on how life could exist on Mars. This encompassed everything from food sources, water, breathable air, transportation and architecture. They used persuasive writing and research — touching practically every subject area.

Unlock Students’ Passion and Curiosity

Helping students find the urgency and passion in learning, and the joy of finding a solution, are key components to solving increasingly urgent local and global issues. But they’re also the ingredients we need to make learning, in general, more engaging and relevant to high school students. Our high schools can and should do a better job cultivating students’ natural passions and curiosities, helping them discover how their unique gifts, talents and interests help them meet the challenges of an uncertain future. Understanding their place in that future builds the confidence needed to be a change-maker.

Luckily, students are naturally forward-focused. They constantly think about what life will be like when they grow up. We can improve the high school experience by activating their natural curiosity and augmenting it with essential skills such as critical thinking, creative problem solving, information gathering and collaboration.

All of these skills are necessary for college, career and the real world. By combining passion, urgency, curiosity and essential knowledge and skills, our students can grow into the superheroes our planet needs to lead urgent and necessary change on the local, national and global stages. Schools around the world are setting examples, and we can, too. 

Want more ideas for making your high school more student-centered? The XQ Xtra is a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

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While there were many negatives associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the few positives was the expansion of free school meals for all children across the country. But as of the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, the free lunches were over.

Students were able to eat breakfast and lunch at school for free for two and a half years during the pandemic, regardless of what their household income looked like. At the beginning of this school year, . Those who qualify for for this school year, however, thanks to legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly last summer.

The State Board of Education and the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), among others, are asking for recurring funding in this year’s budget to eliminate the co-pay for students who only qualify for reduced-price meals.

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When a child doesn’t have the money for a meal, they may charge it to their accounts — which may have no money in it, thus accruing debt — or depending on the policies of the district or charter school, they might even be denied a meal.

DPI compiles data on school meal debt that it receives via survey, and that debt is going up quick — it’s now up to over $3 million.

Lynn Harvey, the senior director in the Office of School Nutrition at DPI, spoke on the issue at a recent

“One of the most telling statistics that I bring you today to show you the impact of this economic distress is the most recent result of the survey on school meal debt, unpaid school meal debt,” . “You may recall that in November, we recorded that level of unpaid school meal debt at $1.3 million. Well at the end of December, that figure escalated to a little over $3.1 million.”

It is a relatively new phenomenon for DPI to be keeping this data, making it hard to ascertain the significance of the school meal debt. DPI hasn’t historically keep , though beginning this year, it is submitting information on the issue quarterly to the General Assembly.

The following spreadsheet displays the results of the most recent survey, which shows debt accrued since the beginning of this school year through December. DPI will be sending out another survey in a few days to find out debt accrued through the beginning of March.

In the spreadsheet below, you can see school meal debt for each of the 79 districts that responded to the survey. By clicking a tab at the bottom, you can also see school meal debt by charter school for the charter schools that participated in the survey.

We also created a second column that shows per capita school meal debt and sorts it from highest to lowest. The per capita data was calculated by taking the total lunch debt of a district or charter school and dividing it by the most recent student enrollment data.

Here is the .

We’ve broken out the data into a few different charts to show local education agencies (LEAs) with highest and lowest meal debt or meal debt per capita.

The LEAs (districts and charters) reporting the highest school lunch debt are below.

And here are the five LEAs (districts and charters) that had no lunch debt.

When it comes to per capita lunch debt, we split out the LEAs into the two groups for comparison — district and charter.

The districts with the highest per capita lunch debt are below.

And here are the districts with the lowest.

Here are the charters with the highest per capita lunch debt.

And here are the ones with the lowest.

“Let’s not forget that we continue to be that state that vacillates between the eighth, ninth, and tenth largest for child food insecurity,” Harvey said at the conference last month, adding later that she was most concerned about “households whose children do not qualify for free- or reduced-priced meals, yet their incomes are just too low to afford the cost of school meals.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mililani High School had one chef’s knife in its kitchen before joining the Aina Pono Farm to School program in 2018.

The 2,000 daily meals made for the school complex were mainly made with food from cans hailing from the continental U.S.

“Some of it looked a lot like dog food,” assistant principal Andrea Moore said in an interview. “And that’s just shameful, to tell you the truth.”

Upon joining the Aina Pono initiative, the school upgraded its kitchen, trained its staff and started cooking from scratch, feeding its own students as well as Mililani Uka Elementary and Mililani Waena Elementary.

It still does, using as many local ingredients as possible. 

Mililani High School is the DOE’s second largest food production site, but despite its apparent success, the department is focused on centralizing food operations, arguing that the current model is ineffective when it comes to getting local food into schools.

The DOE is under a time crunch to spend 30% of its annual food budget on local produce by 2030, though the farm to school initiative has been in development for years.  

The department sees several hurdles: It needs a consistent supply of local food, which it says farmers cannot meet. It needs to assure food safety, which many farmers cannot do. It needs food service staff, which it predicts will be down by 30% in the next five years. 

But evidence of these concerns is lacking, , and a detailed plan to implement the central kitchen model has yet to be shared by the DOE. 

The $35 million centralized kitchen on Oahu is being built in Wahiawa. There would be one on each island and potentially two on the Big Island, costing a minimum of $15 million each.

The DOE’s assistant superintendent for Office of Facilities and Operations, Randall Tanaka, says all the other details are in development. 

“I don’t have a plan. What I have is a road map: This is where we are, this is where we need to be,” Tanaka said in an interview. “And I’m going to fill in the blanks as I continue to research and get things in there.”

In recent testimony,  that Oahu’s centralized kitchen would be operational in two and a half years.

The DOE’s track record in managing its school food program is driving much of the current concern, , and it has struggled to track school food spending effectively, which it is now trying to address.

Delegating Kitchen Tasks

Rep. Amy Perruso has introduced a suite of bills aimed at addressing the longstanding issues within the DOE’s food system, including , which would empower school complex area superintendents to take more ownership of their schools’ meal programs and local food purchases. 

Just under 200 Hawaii schools have kitchens, though some need to be renovated or retrofitted to allow for cooking from scratch, which advocates of farm to school food programs generally prefer.

The package of bills aim to build on the Aina Pono Farm to School program, which Mililani High School was part of, by renovating existing infrastructure, among other things. 

“We have the data, we know it works. We know what the next steps need to be,” Perruso said. “That’s renovating our school production kitchens that already exist – 193 of them.”

The DOE requested the $35 million for the proposed Wahiawa facility last year but former Gov. David Ige did not release the funds, which Perruso says was wise because it is an unproven concept.

Many of the 40-odd organizations already part of the  agree.

Tanaka says it will cost billions to do the work Perruso and advocates are seeking.  

“Best case scenario, we’re going to spend $10 million for each kitchen to repair, which is like $2.5 billion versus a centralized kitchen (on Oahu), which will run us from $35 to $45 million,” Tanaka said.

But in 2020 an assessment found it would cost a little under $800,000 to bring  

Tanaka says his $10 million-per kitchen figure is an “estimate based on needed equipment and electrical upgrades.”

, which was a key supporter of the Aina Pono program, has raised concerns about how the DOE manages its cafeterias and the information about the food they use.

“We encourage Hawaii DOE leadership to develop a clear strategic plan to meet its farm to school goals, including exactly how its proposed centralized kitchen strategy will avoid putting local agriculture producers at a disadvantage,” said .

Getting Local

Tanaka has regularly raised concerns that Hawaii’s farmers cannot produce enough to fulfill DOE’s $45 million annual shopping list, saying that Hawaii’s farmers are unable to provide the consistency of products that DOE requires for cyclical menu planning.

While that may be the case, the DOE only needs 30% of its food to be local. Last year, 6.2% of its food was local — 1.9% on local fruits and vegetables and the rest on ground beef.

Hawaii’s vegetable crops were worth $73 million in 2022, according to the .

Some producers have expressed frustrations trying to work with DOE, which many say could be addressed by decentralizing school meals.

Food hubs have been identified as a potential conduit for small farms’ produce, to provide more assurance to both producers and DOE’s kitchens.

One such hub is , which signed on in 2018, first as a “harvest of the month” special, and later as a regular on school menus until its contract was nixed in 2020.

The cooperative supplied almost 100,000 pounds of pre-prepared frozen breadfruit, papaya, sweet potatoes and bananas worth a total of $380,000.

The cooperative has expanded exponentially since losing its contract with DOE.

Cooperative general manager Dana Shapiro says the power of achieving a contract with DOE means farms can expand and invest in their operations, as they did.

Shapiro keeps reaching out to the DOE because she wants children to learn about the state’s staple crops and the value of them, to create a more sustainable future food system.

“It’s so frustrating,” Shapiro says. “We don’t need the DOE. We’ve moved on. The reality is that we have a much more robust and diversified customer base without them.”

Tanaka says he wants to reengage the food hubs.

The farm to school coordinator role would have been responsible for such relationships, though the role has not been filled since 2020.

School Meals Become Political

Tanaka says it’s not just up to DOE to help farmers become profitable — they need a bigger market akin to New Zealand’s export dependent agricultural industry.

“For some reason (Tanaka) gets into ideas and arguments of why farmers should export their food,” said Saleh Azizi, Hawaii Food Hub Hui coordinator.

“That’s really a strange thing for him to get into when the only reason they’re being approached by local food (producers) is so that they might buy a little bit more local food,” Azizi said.

But Tanaka says the pushback is purely political.

“If I say left or if a senator says left, the other person’s going to say right,” Tanaka said.

Perruso agrees the process is politicized, but that the centralization idea is vague and an “idea of a few people in positions of power.”

Meanwhile, Mililani High School continues to follow their training that came with the Aina Pono program by purchasing as much produce as they can locally, through DOE-approved local suppliers. 

If the centralized model goes forward as it is currently being floated by DOE, assistant principal Moore says Mililani could go out on its own.

Moore says following that model would mean the work the school has been doing since 2018 has been for nothing and the quality of food would go down.

“We do have the ability to go autonomous. We’re a big enough school with a big enough budget,” Moore says.

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

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