500,000 Underprivileged Students Could Lose Out On Free Lunch Thanks To The Trump Administration
The Trump administration has recently unveiled its plan to tighten the reins on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal program that helps people through food stamps). The changes they’re looking to make would remove 3.1 million people from food stamps, Eater reports. What the Department of Agriculture didn’t include in its proposal for this overhaul is that in addition to that 3.1 million people, 500,000 children would lose their access to free school meals.
As we all know, finances are complicated and vary from family to family. A family might make an income on paper that looks to the government like they do not need assistance putting food on the table, but income or savings never tell the whole story. A family can have health expenses, debt, high housing, childcare costs, and other circumstances that chip away at those numbers fast. According to the Associated Press, under former President Barack Obama’s administration, states were encouraged to get around the income limits set by the government by producing materials that informed food stamp applicants of other social services. This helped these states earn federal welfare grants, enabling them to route federal food aid to families that might not have otherwise qualified under the strict income standards. Basically, until this proposal from the Trump administration came along, the lines were a little blurrier and so it was a little easier for families to get the help they need.
Currently, the children of the families receiving food stamps automatically qualify for free breakfast and lunch at school. These children losing their meals under Trump’s changes came to light in a letter written by Representative Bobby Scott, D-Va., chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor, NBC News found. The USDA, who administers SNAP, told Scott’s staff in a phone call that 93% of the children who receive these benefits, over 465,000 total, would qualify for “reduced-price meals:” schools will be able to charge up to $0.30 for breakfast and $0.40 for lunch. However, according to anti-poverty advocates, families would need to apply individually even for that assistance, which could lead to some qualified kids falling through the cracks in the system—plus some families still might not be able to afford the reduced-price meals.
As Eater points out, this comes at a time when school lunch shaming has spiked. A Rhode Island school said kids who owed money for their lunches would not receive any more hot meals; an Alabama school stamped students’ arms with the marker, “I need lunch money;” a cafeteria employee was fired from a New Hampshire school for serving children that had meal debt; a Pennsylvania school told parents that if their lunch bills weren’t paid, their kids could end up in foster care. In response, Representative Ilhan Omar, D-Mn., and Senator Tina Smith, D-Mn., introduced a bill that would stop schools from shaming students who can’t pay for their meals. Between this bill and Representative Scott’s drawing attention to the consequences of the Trump administration’s SNAP changes, we’re hoping that children’s access to meals remains protected.
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