When a student has that question on their minds, it can tend to overshadow any other thought, making it difficult for them to focus on the teacher and lesson in front of them. Since the earliest days of the COVD-19 pandemic, when schools across the country were allowed to offer free school meals to all students while they endured remote learning, the idea that all students should have free meals provided to them, regardless of pandemic conditions, has been picking up steam in Dallas and beyond.
“It’s a positive way to run a school cafeteria,” said Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and out-of-school time programs for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a national advocacy group. “Teachers don’t have to worry about kids coming back from lunch hungry or even starting the school day hungry and not ready to learn. There’s a ton of research about the positive impact that school breakfast and school lunch have on academic achievement and health, and a lot of research on the negative impact of food insecurity for kids.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one of every eight households with children struggled to buy enough food for their families in 2021, the most recent year that with such data. In 2022 the U.S. Congress did not renew the waivers that had made school meals free for all during the pandemic. Since then, school districts and state governments have been left on their own to figure out how to continue offering a service that many families had become reliant upon over the previous couple of years.
It may seem to be a simple equation — child with a full stomach equals greater contentment — but a school district's ability to ensure that at no cost to its students isn’t so simple. There’s the matter of funding to consider, along with the great deal of time, resources and paperwork often required of a district when applying for places in the National School Lunch Program and National School Breakfast Program’s Community Eligibility Program (CEP).
In North Texas, Dallas ISD has offered its students across all campuses and grades free breakfasts and lunches through CEP for the past several years, dating to well before the pandemic. For its 2023–24 school year, Irving ISD began offering free meals to all of its students through the CEP, after having offered free meals to its elementary and middle school students since 2019. Irving ISD spokesperson Jeanine Porter says the benefits for her district transcend simply making sure kids are fed. She says the positive impacts reach school staff, administrators and, especially, low-income parents.
“It’s a positive way to run a school cafeteria.” – Crystal FitzSimons, Food Research and Action Center
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“With CEP, parents save money and have less school-related paperwork to complete, and no worries about whether their child will have access to a nutritious school breakfast and lunch,” she said. “Additionally, streamlined meal periods that result from not having to handle meal payments allow for more time for students to eat.”
The streamlined process during lunch periods that Porter noted is not an insignificant aspect for the students. FRAC’s FitzSimons said that kids from low-income families who have qualified for school meal assistance sometimes feel embarrassment over the designation on campuses where it’s no longer set up to be free for everyone.
“There’s not supposed to be overt identification of kids who are enrolled in a free or reduced-price program,” she said. “But particularly, as kids get older, they often feel a stigma associated with participating. So, even kids who are eligible for free meals will sometimes opt out of the program, regardless of how much they need it.”
Schools that do not offer free breakfasts and lunches to all also present another dilemma, thanks to the eligibility requirements for the federal program. FitzSimons said that current threshold income levels keep some families in need from participating.
“There are kids who are not eligible for free or reduced price meals, but their families are struggling, even if they don’t quite qualify,” she said. “That means you have kids who need access to free meals who are not eligible, and you have kids that are eligible who do not want them because they’re afraid of being identified as being low-income, and then you have school districts spending a lot time trying to identify kids who are eligible for free or reduced price meals.”
Some state governments have relieved school districts and families of this burden. Seven states – California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont – have passed legislation to permanently provide free school meals to all students; Colorado did so through a ballot initiative. According to FRAC’s research, the issue is a bipartisan one. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been proponents of free school meals, and 63% of nationwide voters support making school meals free on a permanent basis. Texas is one of more than a dozen states not working on temporary or permanent free school meal programs.
FitzSimons knows that most school districts are not flush with cash, and budgets are often very tight, but she’s encouraged by the progress that has been made. The fact is, free meal programs in schools help more kids feel secure about where their next meals will come, resulting in a better shot at doing well in school. It's an absolute answer to a question many thousands of students have.
“I mean,” she added, “it’s not rocket science.”
