School Lunch Politics Explained, Part 3

In my past two posts, I've discussed competitive foods - all of the food sold in schools other than the federally reimbursible school lunch. Today I'd like to talk about the federally reimbursible school lunch. The National School Lunch Program began in 1946 after World War II. The soldiers drafted during WWII grew up in the Depression and many suffered from malnutrition. The National School Lunch Program therefore had several purposes. There was the obvious purpose of feeding hungry children, and then there was the purpose of buying up commodity surpluses to help American farmers, and the purpose of ensuring we'd never lack soldiers due to malnutrition again.

Today, we still use the program to feed hungry kids and to soak up surplus commodities. Schools make lunches according to nutrition standards set by the USDA and serve them to kids for either full price, a reduced price, or free (depending on the income level of each child's family). The government sets a "reimbursement rate" - an amount of money intended to cover the cost of a lunch - and reimburses the school for each kid who gets free or reduced cost lunch. In addition to reimbursing the schools with money, the USDA also gives schools "commodities" - surplus food purchased from American farmers to increase demand and hopefully raise the price of crops.

I'm a little bit unclear on the exact amount of the reimbursement rate currently, but I think it's around $2.55 or so (per kid per lunch) and I think that might include about $.20 of commodities. The total amount doesn't just cover food. It's also overhead (the cost of the school building, electricity, water, trash, etc), labor, equipment, and supplies. In fact, after all is said and done, only about $1.00 of that money goes to buy each kid's lunch. A school lunch coordinator recently testified before Congress that schools need an additional $.35 per kid per lunch added to the reimbursement rate just to cover costs. And that's without even asking for money to be able to buy higher quality food!

I've got two articles I'd like to share about school lunches. One is a blog post written by a teacher, telling how the kids often prefer to go hungry than eat the crappy food served in school. The other is about how schools actually allocate their money to buy a complete lunch with an entree, fruit, vegetable, bread, and/or dessert. The overall point I want you to take is that 1) the schools can barely make ends meet, even by buying the crappiest food out there and 2) money spent on crappy food is money wasted.

Right now, as Congress debates the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, we're asking for a few things. One is - as mentioned earlier - an extra $.35 per kid per lunch. The other request is to eliminate the "reduced cost" lunch category and to give those kids free lunch instead. Apparently, even though the reduced cost lunch is only a few cents (I think about $.40?), kids from poor families can't afford it in many cases, and that means they can't eat.

I watched the Senate hearing a few weeks ago and it sounded to me like the Senators felt that schools might NOT need any extra money based on the testimony they heard. But, for schools who went above and beyond to make the lunches healthy, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) was thinking that a financial incentive might be a good idea. My concern is that the schools can't afford to make lunches healthier, even if they know that a financial reward is at stake if they succeed. Another thought to consider is that the less the school lunch program gets from the government, the more they use "competitive foods" (like junk sold in vending machines) to earn the extra money they need - at the expense of the kids' nutrition. The bottom line is that healthy food costs money. Please take a few minutes to write your Congresscritters this week, and ask them to raise the reimbursement rate for school lunches. (I've written up a list of tips on writing a letter here.)

Photo credit: yxejamir on Flickr.