Instead of pushing ahead with legislation to make school meals free to all K-12 students in Vermont, top senators now say they will work to advance a measure to expand income-based eligibility for subsidized breakfast and lunch.
The change in direction comes as lawmakers face mounting pressure from local school officials over the cost of a universal mandate. But anti-hunger advocates say that instead of taking a step in the right direction, legislators are moving backward with their latest proposal.
The new plan to expand eligibility is “a terrible idea” and “antithetical” to the original goals of S.100, said Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont.
“We will actively oppose anything like this that comes to the floor with our network and everything that we have,” Horton said. “Because this is not a step towards universal meals. This is an enshrinement in state statute of the broken federal system that we oppose and that is harming our students.”
After delaying a vote on the bill last week, senators on Friday voted to “let lie” S.100, effectively rendering it dormant. The move often means that a bill is dead for the session, but Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, a strong backer of the measure, said that this was very much not the case and instead a parliamentary maneuver to give senators more time to find a way to address the proposal’s hefty price tag.
“We have not killed the bill. The bill is still alive. We are still working on it,” Balint said. “We fully anticipate to be able to call it back up and vote it out next week. That’s still the plan.”
As originally introduced, the measure would have required schools to pay the difference between federal aid and what a universal meal program would have cost — a plan most education officials considered a nonstarter. Lawmakers last week suggested tweaking the funding mechanism to pay for meal programs directly out of the state’s Education Fund, a move that would have changed nothing from the state’s perspective but decreased the tax consequences for local districts.
This latest iteration of the proposal retains that tweak but also fundamentally narrows the scope of the proposal. Instead of a universal meal program, lawmakers are now considering using the income thresholds set by Dr. Dynasaur, the state’s publicly funded health insurance program for low-income children, to decide which kids qualify for free meals.
Tying eligibility for subsidized meals to Dr. Dynasaur income standards would make an estimated 16,000 additional students able to eat for free, according to Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who chairs the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Instead of costing the state between $24 million and $40 million — the estimated price of the universal program, according to legislative analysts — the new plan would cost closer to $10 million to $14 million a year, according to Kitchel.
“When it comes time, do you want to spend that $20 million for better books or enrichment in your schools or buying meals for higher-income kids?” she said. “Those become very tough choices.”
But the Senate’s newest fix could create financial incentives for districts that already provide universal meals to stop doing so, Horton said, and be administratively burdensome to implement. What’s worse, she said, instead of targeting funds where they are most needed, the latest proposal would not address the problem.
Many students who do not eat at school already qualify, Horton said, but don’t participate because it sets them apart from their peers — something only a universal program would remedy.
“We have only good evidence to suggest that many students will continue to not eat meals that they need and are eligible for,” she said. “And many families will continue to not fill out these forms because the stigma of school meals will remain.”
