• Many students who need it are not eligible 
• Students who do qualify may face shaming, bullying and even debt 

However, it’s still been a helpful program to make sure students have access to a healthy meal each school day, helping students concentrate and improve academically. 

School Meals Became Universal During the Pandemic 

During the pandemic, it became obvious that families were getting hit hard with food insecurity, or lack of access to healthy food. Helpful programs like Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) were created to fight this by covering the cost of lost school meals. Another incredible change was that school lunches temporarily became “universal”, meaning that any child could get a school meal. 

Communities have shared that this works better than the old tiered system of free, reduced-price, and paid lunches. By allowing all students to access meals without needing to apply, Healthy School Meals for All is a program that supports student well-being, reduces administrative costs, eliminates lunch debt, and removes shame and stigma from the lunchroom. 

We Want This to Continue Beyond the Pandemic 

If programs are working, let’s make sure they become permanent so we can continue improving school meals and making Colorado a great place for our students. 

Jessica Wright from Nourish Colorado says, “Every child deserves access to a meal while they are required to be in school. Eliminating the need to collect meal applications will free up time for our school meal programs to better meet the needs of their student population and it also provides their parents the opportunities to direct their limited time and resources towards supporting their child in other ways.” 

Healthy School Meals for All is an investment in children’s education — just like textbooks are a given part of school, food is part of the learning process as well.

Hunger Free Colorado and many across Colorado are supporting SB22-087, a bill that will continue healthy meals for all public school students. We ask that you support this, too! 

How can you take action? 

If you want to help make this happen, join our coalition today and receive email updates on the bill and ways to support! 

Join the coalition here: HSMA Coalition Sign Up or reach out directly to your legislators here: Get Healthy School Meals for All through the Senate! 

During the 2022 Legislative Session, Hunger Free Colorado will advocate for policies that strengthen an equitable food system and ensure all Coloradans can access the nutrition they need in their communities. While we will be supporting our partners as they work on legislation to address Coloradans’ basic needs and well-being through cash assistance, housing reform, and more, our main focus this session will be on three key anti-hunger policies:

1. Create a Path to Healthy School Meals for All Colorado Children

Children need nutritious food to focus in school, stay healthy and support their well-being. Currently, all schools are temporarily able to provide school meals to any child who needs them as part of COVID-19 federal aid. Colorado should make this temporary option permanent and help thousands of children access the food they need learn, grow and thrive every day at school. Investing in healthy school meals for all is an investment in strengthening communities, reducing administrative costs, eliminating lunch debt, removing shame and stigma from the lunchroom, freeing up resources for schools and staff and supporting student well-being. Want to join us to pass and fund a community-informed policy to create school meals for all children in Colorado public schools? Sign up to join our coalition!

2. Extend the Food Pantry Assistance Grant Program for five years

The Food Pantry Assistance Grant Program has provided a lifeline to food pantries, food banks, and Colorado producers throughout the pandemic. The grants go to direct emergency food providers like food pantries and food banks to allow them to purchase products from local producers. Furthermore, up to 20 percent of the grants can be used by pantries to invest in other needs including fridges and transportation. These funds help pantries provide foods that their communities most want and need but that can be hard for these operations to supply, like fresh produce, dairy, and proteins. Hunger Free Colorado is working with a coalition of food pantries, food banks, growers, and food systems navigators to extend and strengthen this program for another five years. The proposed legislation this session will extend the program for five years using federal and state funds and support local procurement through technical assistance and better aligning grant cycles with the growing season. This will help Colorado community-based organizations to continue their response to the historic hunger crisis caused by COVID-19, while also fostering relationships between food pantries and local agriculture for years to come, fueling health for Colorado families relying on pantries for nutrition, and supporting a more equitable food system. Join the Food Pantry Assistance Grant Legislation coalition and sign onto the bill fact sheet by filling out this form!

3. Sustainably Fund the SNAP Outreach Program in the state budget

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides grocery EBT benefits to low-income households and serves as the first line of defense against hunger for many families facing financial crisis. Colorado’s SNAP Outreach Program works with more than 50 community-based organizations to connect eligible households to food assistance, provide education and information on SNAP, and assist with enrollment. This is crucial, as about 40 percent of low-income Coloradans do not access the program due to barriers to enrollment that outreach can help mitigate. SNAP outreach also makes good financial sense. What the state invests in SNAP outreach services is matched dollar for dollar by the federal government. SNAP outreach also fuels economic recovery as families connected to SNAP receive federal money for food that they quickly spend in their local communities. By our estimates, in Federal Fiscal Year 2020 every state dollar invested in SNAP outreach brought $14 to Colorado families in the form of federal food benefits to help purchase groceries, with an economic stimulus impact of $21! We must fund SNAP outreach in the state budget at $1.5 million to continue the important support the program provides as COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact low-income families and communities of color. This increase of $500,000 will maintain current funding levels since the program has experienced a recent loss of private dollars. Complete this form to add your organization as a supporter of the SNAP Outreach funding request!

******

You can help us pass these crucial policies! Sign up for our email advocacy list for legislative updates and to learn when there are opportunities to weigh in on these and other policies that impact Coloradans facing hunger.

Lunch shaming is a longstanding problem for kids and schools across the country, and it’s high time we stamped it out.  
 
Several schools have gained national media attention when they refused to serve students with depleted lunch account funds — a practice widely known as lunch shaming. While there have been several attempts to ban lunch shaming in Colorado, it remains a complicated issue as student lunch debt rises. 

Cold Lunches

Students that come to school hungry because of insufficient food at home struggle to reach their full potential in the classroom. Access to a nutritious lunch (and breakfast) is a fundamental need for children. This is especially important as national lunch programs cover students from families who struggle to afford food, which amounts to over 6.5 million households in the U.S. The federal government pays the $3.30 cost (of the lunch) for those who earn below 130 percent of the poverty line and a reduced price for those below 185 percent.  
 
Students who fail to pay their lunch debt reportedly receive separate meals which include sandwiches or jelly, as opposed to those who have lunch balances and received a hot meal. Some are forced to wear wristbands or stamps to warn their parents to pick up their lunch tabs. 

Long-term Consequences

The way these reminders are implemented negatively impacts kids’ mental and social well-being, as well as academic performance. In an interview with The Penny Hoarder, Florida child psychologist James Pratt explains that lunch shaming can have long-term consequences and affect the future behavior of a child. Pratt notes that it gets worse as you get to middle and high school students who are often the victims of these practices.  
 
Rebecca Rialon Berry, NYU Langone Health child psychologist, notes that a cold sandwich is the definition of powerlessness, as kids “judge each other by how they look or what they have.” This exacerbates the stigma, embarrassment and shame of coming from a food-insecure household.
In their media release for the key legislation that banned lunch shaming in their districts, California Governor Gavin Newsom notes that children who experience lunch shaming have a higher chance of getting bullied by their peers. So while unintended, these practices result in actions beyond a nudge for parents to pay their lunch balance.

Rebecca Rialon Berry, NYU Langone Health child psychologist, notes that a cold sandwich is the definition of powerlessness, as kids “judge each other by how they look or what they have.” This exacerbates the stigma, embarrassment and shame of coming from a food-insecure household. In their media release for the key legislation that banned lunch shaming in their districts, California Governor Gavin Newsom notes that children who experience  lunch shaming have a higher chance of getting bullied by their peers. So while unintended, these practices result in actions beyond a nudge for parents to pay their lunch balance. 

We Can Do More

Several national politicians and local institutions have moved to completely stamp out lunch shaming, including Rep. Omar Ilhan and Sen. Bernie Sanders. However, a University of Cambridge doctoral candidate, Nikhil Goyal notes that bans on these practices are barely enough to resolve the problem. Goyal proposes that lunch should be free for all students and treated as a government investment in children’s health and well-being. 
 
This year, the Expand Child Nutrition School Lunch Protection Act was passed, which qualifies more lower-income families to eat lunch without an out-of-pocket cost. Private efforts like fundraising and debt canceling donations are also popping up to wipe out school lunch debts. 

Chalkbeat Colorado reports that after banning the lunch shaming practices, lunch debt in Denver public schools soared from $13,000 in 2017 to $356,000. But nearly one-third of these students were eligible for free and reduced lunch, highlighting the importance of getting eligible families to sign up for the program. 
 
Going further, the Colorado Children’s Campaign has launched the Time to Eat initiative. Time to Eat intends to address the issue of children not getting adequate time to eat at lunch. In Colorado alone, at least 63 percent of kids reported receiving only 10 to 20 minutes of lunchtime. This leads to more plate waste, adverse impacts on nutrition, and encourages overeating to a certain degree. While research continues, the campaign is expected to help policymakers and communities address the issues in school cafeterias. 

Specially written for Hunger Free Colorado 
By:  Reese Jones