Get ready to lose your lunch

It’s the one-two punch that could deprive impoverished children their free school lunch.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, we hope you’ll take a moment and add your name to this letter.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a precious safety net for millions of the nation’s hungriest children. But the embattled Trump administration continues to blithely proceed with their proposal to shred that net, leaving children and families with few means even fewer options.

Earlier this month, we shared an important column  that explained the life-altering impact SNAP can have in the lives of those without enough to eat and how proposed cuts to the program had to be halted.

This week, we wanted to note how cuts to SNAP could snatch free school lunches from the mouths of more than a million children across the country.
Kids who participate in SNAP, for example, are automatically free-lunch eligible. But, due to the proposed changes to SNAP, over 900,000 children could lose their eligibility if they don’t participate in other programs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That was the one—here’s the follow-up left-hook.

The free and reduced price school breakfast and lunch program has been hailed as one of the most impactful federal programs because of its proven benefits to student physical and mental health, as well as academic outcomes.  This is especially true where federal rules permit school districts to offer free school meals to every student if more than 62.5% of the student body is low income as determined by their enrollment in public benefit programs like SNAP.   This important federal trigger for universal, free school meals enrollment is known as the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) and it’s meant a world of difference in boosting the share of students who receive a healthy, free breakfast and lunch every day at school.

In the Philadelphia School District alone, 133,000 students get free meals every school day due to this important federal provision.  Here’s the rub, the federal SNAP cuts put universal school meals programs in our schools at risk.  In any school building where the share of students enrolled in SNAP or other public support programs drops below the trigger (62.5%), the universal free meal program must be terminated and schools must limit free meals only to students who can demonstrate they are very low income.

The Urban Institute has calculated that 7.7% of students at current CEP schools (over a million children) attend schools that could lose full reimbursement. Around 142,000 students are at schools that could lose their CEP eligibility entirely, affecting even more students who don’t participate in SNAP.

As we begin the holiday season, there’s much to be grateful for, including vital programs like SNAP that support so many children who have so little. We can also be thankful for our collective ability to be powerful advocates to protect programs that nourish our children.

PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT AND SIGN YOUR NAME TO PROTECT SNAP!