Block Grants: Potential Impact on the National School Lunch Program

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has been an important source of nutrition for public school children and has provided business opportunities to the food industry for more than 70 years. For the last few generations, NSLP has been taken for granted, but over the last decade, advocates of the program have had to defend its costs and policies, struggling to keep it viable and dealing with controversies ranging from nutrition standards to eligibility requirements.

At SmartSense, we keep up with ongoing issues concerning federal nutrition programs, since any change to their processes can affect many of the food service companies we support. For this reason, we want to bring to your attention the latest controversy. In a nutshell, Congress is proposing a school meal block grant program, which child advocates claim would cut present funding levels for school meal programs, compromise federal nutrition standards, and eliminate meal eligibility mandates. Under this proposal, children in need could lose access to free or reduced-price meals.

The NSLP: An Entitlement, Not a Gift

During the severe economic deprivations of the Great Depression and World War II, social workers discovered that more Americans than imagined were struggling to afford the costs of school meals for their children. In 1946, the federal government established the NSLP as a welfare entitlement: all participating schools would be eligible to receive a reimbursement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for all meals served. It was designed as a wellbeing guarantee for all children regardless of income, similar to social security for the elderly, another entitlement program born during the post-war period.

The statistics confirm how essential school meal programs are to support minimal childhood nutrition: 

• Nearly 100,000 schools serve lunch to 30 million students daily.
• More than 90,000 schools serve breakfast to 14.6 million students daily.
• Children from families with incomes at or below 130% of the poverty level are eligible for free school meals.
• Those with incomes between 130% and 185% of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals.

The Controversy: No Guarantees

School block grants are not simply a modification of the existing NSLP: they would entirely replace it, including programs serving breakfast and milk. This radical overhaul has raised objections from advocacy groups such as the School Nutrition Association (SNA). SNA officials claim that block grants don't provide sufficient funds, abandon the science-based standards enacted under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, and lead to fewer children receiving less food that is lower quality.

School nutrition professionals face a delicate balancing act to keep their programs in the black as well as serve the nutrition needs of students. With recent legislation demanding higher nutrition standards, it takes more time and money to meet them. Too many students are scheduled only 20 minutes for lunch in overcrowded cafeterias in attempts to cut costs. A recent SNA survey shows that eight in ten school districts have had to offset financial losses by reducing staff, cancelling equipment investments, and diminishing the meal program’s reserve fund, critical for investing in program improvements.

The Problems: Capped Funding and Abolished Standards

What most troubles the SNA is that under a grant block program, funding is capped and not based on meal reimbursement. Rather than receiving their own specified funds, school meal programs will be lumped in with all other social services, which means they may lose money to programs considered more urgent. Without reimbursement guarantees, money can run out before the year is up; even more alarming, the block grant may not be able to cover necessary nutrition services if disaster strikes, a recession hits, or a local factory closes. All of these are situations that historically cause an increase in the number of children who need free or reduced-price meals.

The second most troubling problem identified by the SNA is the elimination of federal standards overseeing all state-administered school meal programs. Because the costs of meal production vary widely in communities across the country, federal regulations ensure that children in need, regardless of location and cost, receive free or reduced-price meals if they qualify. At the same time, federal nutrition standards ensure that all children have access to healthy, fresh foods, whether they live in the deserts of Arizona or the frozen tundra of Alaska.

What’s the bottom line?

Block grants would abolish federal universal regulations and nutrition standards, leaving the fate of meal entitlement programs in the hands of each state, with no guarantees that they can serve students as intended, or even continue to exist. In terms of how they could influence the food industry, block grants could also void “Buy American” mandates and compromise USDA Foods assistance for school meal programs, which have supported America’s farmers for many years.

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