11/21/10

19. 4 million children in the United States currently receive free or reduced-price meals through the federal Child Nutrition Program in the public school system.  U.S. Department of Agriculture studies have documented that school districts’ cost of providing free lunches exceeds the federal reimbursement rate by over 30 cents per meal or approximately $54,000 annually to daily serve meals to about 1,000 students. There are numerous new requirements in the Child Nutrition Act that has cleared the U.S. Senate and has stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives. Unfunded mandates and underfunded rate provisions in the Act will add to future budgetary challenges in many Texas school districts and open-enrollment charter schools. Various stakeholder groups have expressed concerns about the Act including:
 

• Proposed increase in meal reimbursement rates are inadequate in relation to new requirements in the Act;
• Reimbursements for districts that meet the requirements for more vegetables, fruits, and balanced meals will not be available until fiscal year 2013;
• Requirement that local districts put more non-federal meal funds into the Child Nutrition Program budget;
• Objective to end the practice in certain districts to use federal meal subsidies to charge artificially low prices to students that pay full price meal rates;
• To pay for the Act the U.S. Senate made offsetting reductions in funding of $2.2 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps);
• Requirement for more onsite monitoring activities by State oversight agencies; and
• Restrictions on how districts apply program revenues to cover indirect costs.

1. Encouraging the direct certification of children who receive other public assistance as eligible for free meals under the school lunch and breakfast programs;
2. Establishing new mechanisms by which schools or local educational agencies (LEAs) with very high proportions of low-income children can receive federal reimbursement for free or reduced price meals under such programs without collecting individual paper applications from households;
3. Establishing a program awarding competitive grants to states and, through them, competitive subgrants to LEAs to establish or expand the school breakfast program at low-income schools;
4. Expanding the access of low-income rural areas to the summer food service program;
5. Requiring updates to meal patterns and nutrition standards for the school lunch and breakfast programs based on recommendations made by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS);
6. Requiring the establishment of science-based nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools outside the school lunch and breakfast programs;
7. Requiring LEAs participating in the school lunch and breakfast programs to establish local school wellness policies for their schools that include goals for nutrition promotion and education, physical activity and education, and other school-based activities that promote student wellness;
8. Requiring reimbursable meals and snacks provided under the CACFP to meet the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans and certain authoritative scientific recommendations;
9. Encouraging WIC program participants to breastfeed; and
10. Requiring WIC electronic benefit transfer (EBT) systems to be implemented nationwide by October 1, 2020.”