‘A win against hunger.’ All Fresno County students could be eligible for free school meals
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
All students in California could soon be eligible to receive free cafeteria meals, a move Fresno County advocates say is long overdue to curb food insecurity among the region’s impoverished communities.
In Fresno County, where nearly a quarter of all children live in food-insecure households, advocates say the School Meals for All initiative would reduce hunger by removing income eligibility requirements and providing all students with at least two free and healthy school meals a day.
“Everybody gets the same meal, regardless of if they could pay for it or not and certainly if someone can’t pay for it, they’re not going to be excluded,” said Genoveva Islas, Fresno Unified School Board member and executive director of the health advocacy organization Cultiva la Salud. “This is a step in the right direction and it’s definitely progress.”
Lawmakers included the initiative in the state budget they approved Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom has through next week to sign the budget bill, SB 129. If adopted, California would become the first state to create a permanent free school meal program. It would launch in the 2022-23 school year and be funded through taxpayer money and federal aid.
The program is part of a wider effort to “reduce child hunger, support essential school nutrition workers and bolster the state’s agricultural sector,” state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Berkeley Democrat who proposed the measure, said in a statement.
“In the wake of a 15-month pandemic that inflicted much pain and suffering on so many, California is building back boldly,” Skinner said. “This good news budget funds our schools and childcare at record-breaking levels... and it makes transformative investments toward ending homelessness and hunger, including California becoming the first state to provide universal school meals.”
The state Department of Education estimated that 3.5 million children — or about 60% of students in California — qualified for free or reduced school meals in the 2020-2021 school year.
In Fresno County, the need was even higher. More than 75% of the 205,480 students across Fresno County’s 33 school districts were eligible for free and reduced meals during the 2020-21 school year, according to the state education department.
To apply for the state’s meal program, which was funded with federal dollars, parents had to provide information about their income and disclose their immigration status. Those requirements were waived during the pandemic. With millions of workers unemployed, schools partnered with food banks to distribute free meals to anyone who needed them.
In an effort to expand and continue the program in the aftermath of the pandemic, more than 200 advocacy groups lobbied to include the measure in this year’s budget plan.
Islas said the measure is “a win against hunger and for education.” She noted that the Fresno Unified School District has provided free school meals to all children for years, with funding through federal provisions for low-income districts. But she said several smaller school districts across the county and throughout the Central Valley did not receive that assistance.
She said several other barriers also prevented food-insecure and potentially eligible households from applying for the program. Some struggling families made too much money to qualify for the program. Some were concerned that submitting certain documents could jeopardize their family’s immigration status, while others decided not to participate due to the “stigma” of receiving free lunch.
Islas is hopeful the new program will help students develop healthy eating habits in order to prevent chronic illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease later in life. She said a healthy diet can also help students reach important milestones that are early predictors of academic success, like achieving literacy in elementary school.
Healthy meals are especially important in heavily rural communities with large immigrant and Latino populations, she said, where there is a shortage of clean drinking water and full-service grocery stores.
“It is detrimental when kids do not have food in terms of their growth and development,” she said. “Even though these families may live next to the same fields where produce is grown, their little corner store or rural store doesn’t necessarily have all of these things. We have to make sure that the food that’s being provided in our rural school districts is healthy. There’s still more work to do here, but this is a tremendous success.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.