A research team based out of the University of Kentucky hopes to look at the impacts of free school meal availability on household economics, dietary quality and food security and students’ health outcomes. That research team – led by University of Kentucky associate professor and researcher Shouli Zhao – is being supported by an $800,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant.
School meal programs, according to a UK release, are the second biggest food initiative in the United States. Zhao said he believes that the program is worth analyzing because of the far reaching impacts it could have on the lives of millions of school children.
“If you think about the size of the school meal program, it is one of the most important social safety net programs,” Zhao said. “They support children and their households, especially in those relatively disadvantaged groups.”
The federal government enacted the USFM program in March 2020. The program provided children across the country with free breakfast and lunch from their school cafeteria, regardless of their family’s economic status until Congress returned the responsibility of feeding students to state governments and local school districts in 2023.
Currently, eight states have continued to fund their own UFSM programs, but Kentucky’s legislature has not taken that step.
Megan Adams is the Food Service Director for the Calloway County School District. In her role, she oversees the preparation and serving of daily meals for the district’s nearly 3,000 students in western Kentucky.
She said the importance of having a good meal at school goes beyond filling an empty stomach.
“[Breakfast is] very important [for] keeping those test scores up and keeping you alert and focused throughout the entire day. Same thing goes for lunch,” Adams said. “You definitely want to eat both of those meals to keep your body fueled – keep it going – keep your mind fueled and keep that going as well.”
Every student in the Calloway County school district is afforded the opportunity for a free meal through the USDA's Community Eligibility Provision. It’s a program that reimburses schools in low-income areas for each student taking a meal from their school’s cafeteria, though Adams said that if students don’t participate the school won't receive any funds for that meal.
However, the policies that designate which schools are or aren’t CEP eligible could change. The U.S. House Budget Committee recently released a proposal for budget reconciliation which includes a $12 billion cut to funding for school meals. Adams said she’s read the proposal and is concerned Calloway could be one of the school systems that loses access to that funding.
“The proposal includes raising the eligibility threshold for schools to participate in CEP from the current 25% to 60%. So essentially, this proposal would make more than 24,000 schools across the country – serving more than 12 million children – no longer eligible to participate in CEP,” Adams said.
According to food accessibility advocates, over 600 different schools in Kentucky and nearly 360,000 students could be impacted by the change.
“A lot goes on in the background that people don't think about or realize, but it's very important that we do maintain CEP. And, it's very important that we have these free and reduced meals for these students because they need it,” Adams said.
Zhao said he hopes the information learned through the study will go on to inform the future decisions of lawmakers when it comes to writing policy regarding school meals.
“We're trying to really comprehensively look at different dimensions on this timely project to hopefully provide some guidance at the national level,” Zhao said.
Zhao said his team hopes to share their findings by 2028.
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