According to research, adequate nutrition is essential for a child's well-being and development. However, an estimated 1.54 million U.S. students cannot afford the meals offered at school. Studies show that students from low-income households who rely on free school meals for breakfast and lunch have a significantly healthier diet than those who…

Abstract Households with children eligible for Free School Meals are at risk of food insecurity. This paper reports on a rapid-response study that investigated the impact of the school food voucher scheme during the COVID-19 crisis on young people, families and schools. It pays close attention to the reliance of the state on the goodwill of…

Background: The National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs help to reduce food insecurity and improve nutrition. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) enables high-poverty schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to all students. This study examines associations between CEP and participation among students eligible for free or…

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 allows school districts to provide free meals to all students if over 40 percent of them are directly certified as free-meal eligible. While emerging evidence documents positive effects on student behavior and academics, critics worry that CEP has unintended…

The Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program was launched as an effort to address the loss of access to free and reduced-price school meals due to widespread school closures at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools reopened in a shifting mix of fully virtual, hybrid, and in-person formats and families lacked consistent access…

The National School Lunch Program's (NSLP) original goal was to help students in need, but policy changes in the past decade have made students from middle-income and upper-income families eligible for federally funded school meals. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an expansion of the NSLP enacted in 2010, effectively created a federal…

Every day in New Mexico, student achievement and nutrition are in states of emergency. With families losing jobs and wages, more and more children are going to school malnourished, some having eaten nothing at all. School districts struggle to educate and support their students with fewer available resources. Slashed budgets mean frustrated…

"Kids Count in Colorado!" is an annual publication of the Colorado Children's Campaign, which provides the best available state- and county-level data to measure and track the education, health and general well-being of the state's children. "Kids Count in Colorado!" informs policy debates and community discussions, serving as…

This manual delineates procedures for the mandatory verification of 3 percent of the applications for national school food programs. Two methods of selection are described: random and "error prone profiling." The latter involves selecting for verification those applicants whose recorded monthly income is closest to the eligibility cutoff…

This hearing examined the impact of the Administration's 1987 budget proposal on child nutrition programs, which were cut significantly. A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture testified that the proposed budget was designed to preserve benefits for those truly in need, to provide for the national defense, to maintain taxes at the current…

This report presents the testimony of numerous expert witnesses who appeared at three hearings on the following topics: (1) Hunger and Related Nutritional Issues; (2) U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Assistance Programs; and (3) Domestic Hunger and Related Nutritional Issues. The following major issues were discussed: (1) the number of…