The NPR Politics Podcast - Americans Like It, Congress Ended It: Free School Lunch For All

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Now, states are beginning to take up the mantle in order to revive the initiatve supported by super-majorities of Americans. Teachers, parents and students told NPR that the program makes a big difference in their lives.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, politcs reporter Ximena Bustillo, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello, this is Frank. I'm at the rim of the Grand Canyon and it is dawn. I'm here with my adult children and some friends and we're about to celebrate my 60th birthday by hiking down to the Colorado River and back up again today. This podcast was recorded at 12 17 p.m on March 30th opening day 2023. Things may have changed since you hear this but we'll be planning our next hike. Enjoy the show. Happy birthday. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, National Political Correspondent. And today we're going to focus on school lunches. During the pandemic, all public school students got to eat at school for free

thanks to legislation that was passed by Congress during the pandemic. But ahead of this school year, lawmakers in D.C. chose not to renew that program. Ximena, you've been reporting on this. This is a really important issue that affects kids all over the country. Can you just explain how the program worked? Schools were going through a lot during the pandemic. And so Congress passed a couple waivers to allow the agriculture department to make giving meals and serving school lunch and breakfast a lot easier. Everything from not requiring that kids eat in, quote, congregate settings like cafeterias, which is a federal requirement. Nutrition requirements were waived because supply chains were shot and schools often couldn't get the necessary food.

And one of the things also was providing free breakfast and free lunch, so free meals for the students, regardless of if their family would normally qualify for that. And that's because usually students are either paying a full price, which can range from $2 to $6, depending on, honestly, your school, for lunch and for breakfast, or they pay a reduced price, or they get them for free. And it's all dependent on these federal income requirements that exist across the board for everyone. And those federal income requirements are pretty low generally, right? Yeah, they're pretty low. So for the upcoming school year, a family of four cannot make more

than $39,000 a year to qualify for free lunch. And it's a little higher. It's, I think, $56,000 a year to qualify for free lunch. And it's a little higher. It's, I think, $56,000 a year for reduced price. Anyone that makes more than that has to pay the full price. Okay. So then lawmakers renewed this one year after it was passed, but chose not to renew it for this upcoming school year. Why is that? Correct. They renewed some, but not others. And that was a little bit of political tension in the U.S. Senate. They were looking at what waivers to expand and extend for this first, quote, post-pandemic school year where at least students are, for the most part, going back to school five days a week in most states. And what it really came down to was some Republicans did not want to extend universal free meals. They saw it as that had to be a temporary benefit. It wasn't supposed to even last this long.

So this was the time to cut it. And to get the necessary votes on the Senate floor, Democrats had to concede. The politics of this, I mean, historically, Republicans have been against federal spending for low-income people. Democrats have been for it. But now you have the debt ceiling debate laid on top of this, where Republicans are saying they're going to come up with a plan to balance the budget in 10 years without cutting Social Security, Medicare, or the defense budget, which means they'd have to cut 85% of everything else. So I'm wondering what chance you think universal free school lunch has in the U.S. Congress.

Regardless of the debt discussion, getting universal free meals passed in the United States Congress was already a really steep battle for lawmakers. Whether or not they wanted it, didn't want it, the consensus just has not been there for decades. And that is because Republicans see it as very expensive. They see it as almost an unnecessary expense at the point where you want to give free meals to the students that really need it. Everyone else that can afford it should just pay. That's kind of the idea. Well, one thing that I'm going to be watching for is whether that consensus in the Republican Party, and that's a very traditional stance for them, changes because they are now representing many more low-income and poor voters than they used to. And there is a debate that's beginning in the Republican Party about the need to be what they call pro-life, not just pro-birth. What does it mean to invest in families, especially now that abortion is almost impossible to access

in many states? Well, that's a really good point, too, because then it's a question of what does it actually mean to be low income? And we are still seeing inflation, we're seeing high grocery prices, even if on paper families are making more, you know, a $56,000 a year salary might be livable in a lot of, you know, middle class areas, but do you have extra couple hundred dollars a month to pay for your kid to eat lunch every single day. A lot of families and a lot of parents told me that they make 44, they make 50, and they have other expenses that have gone up, particularly over the last couple years. And having that extra cost, particularly since they haven't budgeted for it the last three years or two years because it has been free, that is a change.

You know, the idea of having this bill is a lot for parents to kind of handle and tackle. So that adds a little bit more to that conversation as well. Can you dig in a little bit more, Jimena, on how the expansion over the last couple of years did play out on the local level? What was the reaction of teachers, administrators, students you talked to? So one thing to kind of keep in mind is after Congress got rid of the federal program that allowed free meals, five states, including California, Nevada, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, all created some sort of temporary expansion. California and Maine actually made theirs a permanent program, but the rest of them did some sort of pilot program or temporary funding. And teachers and school administrators in these areas say that it has made a really big difference. You know,

everything from honestly needing less staff in the cafeteria because you don't need someone to manage a cashier register or not needing to incur thousands in lunch debt and not needing to worry about whether or not a student is going to eat. And from the educational standpoint, you know, teachers have told me that they report needing to spend less money on snacks to give their kids, not having as many behavioral problems in class. Sometimes even test scores have gone up. So, you know, there are a lot of factors here, but just making sure that students have all of the necessary things that they need, particularly in the public education system, has been a benefit for teachers. I had one teacher, Joshua Solomon, he teaches science

at a high school in Vermont, and he walked me through all the other resources that students get, but they might not get a free lunch. Every student at our school gets a Chromebook and we have school textbooks and other things like that. So this isn't the only thing that schools are providing to every student separate from their economic background. That is a sentiment that I heard a lot throughout my travels in Vermont, and a lot of teachers are really feeling this way. Okay, well, I want to dig more into some of the state-level programs around free lunches that are happening, but first we have to take a quick break. And we are back. And Mara, I'm always curious when lawmakers make a decision at the national level,

how that squares with how people actually feel. And with this one on such a kind of viscerally emotional issue as feeding kids, how does the average American feel about free lunch? Well, the polling that we have is mostly from progressive institutions, but we do have a 2021 poll by Data for Progress that showed 74% of Americans support universal free lunch meals permanent nationwide. That's a big whopping majority. And another poll from the Urban Institute, also it's a nonpartisan think tank, but it is focused on social issues, found 76% adults who have kids enrolled in public school believe in permanent, free, universal lunch programs, and so do 67% of adults who don't have kids in public schools. So this is something that's very popular, but it's like a lot of other issues that have broad, bipartisan support among voters. That's very different from how elected officials who represent gerrymandered

districts. That doesn't mean that all of a sudden Congress is going to pass things just because they have majority public support. Yeah, but I am kind of struck, do you have any thoughts on that? Like the fact that it doesn't seem like a thing that politicians are focused on, despite there being some numbers that indicate a huge majority of Americans would support these things. And that is true across party lines. So you're not seeing Republicans going to the bat on the issue of feeding kids. You're not necessarily always seeing Democrats do this either. You know, there are some governors that are Democratic affiliating, like those in Wisconsin and Michigan, who have included this in their proposed budget and are waiting for their state legislatures to do something about it. In other states like Connecticut and

New York, those Democratic governors did not include this funding into their state budget, but their legislatures have passed measures and now they're trying to reconcile both of those. So, you know, it's an issue that has certain party divisions. I think by and large, the sentiment around increasing costs or benefits is, well, you want the people that can afford it to pay for it, and people don't want to just pay for someone else's kid to do it. But that itself gets very complex, particularly because income levels are very varied in districts. These federal guidelines are very standard. So the group of people that are left out is very large. Yeah, and also we haven't seen a real movement around this.

I mean, there are issues, and then there are issues that are more important than others. Just because a majority of people think permanent universal free school lunch is a good thing doesn't mean that they're advocating for it or even that they're going to base their votes on it. But if it became an actual campaign, in other words, everyone gets a Chromebook, why not a lunch? You know, something like that. And you need some very deep-pocketed person, billionaire, to put money into making this into a salient issue. And that just hasn't happened. Well, and this is not the topic of the day right now. This National School Lunch Program has been around for decades, has operated the same for decades. And it was big and a big deal and a big topic during the

pandemic because kids could physically not get their food. And now they're back to getting their food. But we are seeing these bills and these state movements taking more traction now after pandemic restrictions have loosened than maybe they would have before if the pandemic had not happened. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. And thank you so much, Ximena, for bringing us this recording. Thank you for having me. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ximena Bustillo, and I cover politics.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.