BILL: Should We Promote Free School Lunches? - Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023 - H.R.3204
Tell your reps to support or oppose this bill
The Bill
H.R.3204 - Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023
Bill Details
- Sponsored by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on May 11, 2023
- Committees: House - Education and the Workforce; Agriculture; Science, Space, and Technology
- House: Not yet voted
- Senate: Not yet voted
- President: Not yet signed
Bill Overview
- Amends the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 and the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to make breakfasts and lunches free for all children.
- Revives one of the coronavirus pandemic era's most popular social experiments: universal free school meals.
- Five states – California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico – have already passed laws to provide free universal school meals.
- Provides incentives for local food procurement, which will bolster and promote small family farms and local, healthy ingredients.
What's in the Bill?
Ends hunger in schools
- Ends child hunger by offering free breakfast, lunch, and dinner plus a snack to all students from preschool to high school, regardless of income.
- Restores the COVID-era program that saw 30 million children a day nationwide getting free meals.
Reduces stigma
- Hopes to remove the public shame of being a reduced-price or free lunch student in an environment where other children can afford meals. Reduces the stigma for families who cannot pay for their children's lunch accounts.
Improves educational outcomes
- Studies show that access to free breakfast improves students' attendance rates and academic performance in school.
- Free school meals are not only linked to better health but also to fewer incidents of behavioral problems and lower suspension rates.
What Supporters Are Saying
"The fact that we here in the United States are having a debate on the value of providing crucial meals to our children in times where we are expecting them to exercise their brain and to receive information through their educational lessons is an embarrassment. Myself and others would consider it morally bankrupt."
- Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Martin Heinrich (N.M.) and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) are vocal supporters of the bill.
- Sen. Sanders said:
"It is an international embarrassment that today, in the richest country in the history of the world, we are seeing record numbers of children and youth struggling with hunger on a daily basis. What we've seen during this pandemic is that a universal approach to school meals works. We cannot go backwards. It is time for Congress to pass this legislation to ensure no student goes hungry again."
What Opponents Are Saying
- The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) released a proposed budget for 2024, which would cut funding for universal free lunches.
- Republican lawmakers also argue that the program is rampant with fraud.
Tell your reps to support or oppose this bill
—Emma Kansiz
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Let's feed all the kids.
I believe we should have free lunch's in schools across the county. To a lot of kids , that may be their on,y hot meal of the day. When I was in grade school , they used to have free breakfasts for kids who needed them. I would like there to be a account of where the money goes. That way, they're will be a website or / and a log of how much is given . I don't think anyone would have a problem with that? That way, no one can say the money was taken by anyone.
Is it any surprise that the "prolife" group are against feeding children? Our state already has such a bill. Why doesn't the rest of the country want to feed our greatest asset, our children? Especially since we can afford it?
Pennsylvania now provides free breakfast and lunch to all public school students statewide to ensure all students come to class with full stomachs.
However, we have no control over whether these kids are fed after they leave school.
Once again, the richest country in the world should not have children worrying about being fed.
I support breakfast and lunch but do we really need to have dinner in this bill as well?
Parents/guardians need to take some responsibillity for their childern.
As long as the meals are healthy and not created in some corporate lab, I'm good with it. The wealthiest send their spoiled brats to private schools anyway. I don't see a problem with this. At least they are receiving one decent meal a day.
NO child should ever have to go hungry.
PERIOD...
Please support universal free lunch for students. Then, make sure those lunches are healthy!!!
Studies show children with insufficient nutrition have learning and behavioral problems. Test scores improve 40% for students participating in school lunch programs. Breakfast programs should also be considered as unfed children are irritable and unfocused. However there needs to be limits on the amount of sugar in children's meals.
"Children with insufficient diets are reported to have more problems with health, academic learning, and psychosocial behavior. Malnutrition can result in long-term neural issues in the brain, which can impact a child's emotional responses, reactions to stress, learning disabilities, and other medical complications."
"On average, student test scores are 0.03 to 0.04 standard deviations higher (about 4 percentile points). Not only that, the test score increases are about 40 percent larger for students who qualify for reduced-price or free school lunches"
"...healthy eating habits, such as a higher frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption, a lower frequency of sweets and soft drink consumption, more frequent breakfast consumption, and more frequent family meals (breakfast and dinner), are associated with high perceived school performance among adolescents, regardless of the main confounding factors."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8852839/
https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/how-diet-and-nutrition-impact-a-childs-learning-ability
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-quality-of-school-lunch-affects-students-academic-performance/
Representatives,
We most strongly urge you to support H.R.3204 - Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3204?
What's in the Bill?
Ends hunger in schools
Ends child hunger by offering free breakfast, lunch, and dinner plus a snack to all students from preschool to high school, regardless of income.
Restores the COVID-era program that saw 30 million children a day nationwide getting free meals.
Reduces stigma
Hopes to remove the public shame of being a reduced-price or free lunch student in an environment where other children can afford meals. Reduces the stigma for families who cannot pay for their children's lunch accounts
Improves educational outcomes
Studies show that access to free breakfast improves students' attendance rates and academic performance in school.
Free school meals are not only linked to better health but also to fewer incidents of behavioral problems and lower suspension rates.
This bill should include careful monitoring if only to convince Republicans who seem to see abuses in the shadows for social programs but want deregulation and unlimited corporate welfare.
We need and should have bipartisan support.