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Allison Leavitt is president of Maine School Nutrition Association and the School Nutrition Director for Lisbon Schools.
When Maine’s 171,061 students returned from February vacation this week, teachers across the state asked their students a familiar question: “What did you do over break?” Answers varied. Some may have skied, others ice fished, or travelled to Florida. What many won’t share is that they went hungry since they couldn’t eat school breakfast and lunch.
There is a childhood food insecurity crisis in our country and our state. In spite of this, politicians in Washington, D.C. are on the verge of voting for drastic cuts to school meals and food assistance programs. These cuts will worsen the food insecurity crisis in Maine for thousands of children and families.
School staff, especially the 300-plus members of the Maine School Nutrition Association, know that 78,600 students live in households that can’t afford the basic cost of living. Supplemental food assistance, also known as SNAP or food stamps, helps families below the federal poverty line pay for groceries. However, there are many families above the federal poverty line who are struggling as well. These are families with a working adult, who struggle to pay the bills, and yet don’t qualify for supplemental food assistance.
State and federal lawmakers know that food insecurity is found in every community in Maine. It’s why Maine passed the landmark Healthy School Meals for All law and funded it. It’s also why Sen. Susan Collins has always supported our work and prioritized funding to feed Maine kids.
Among the four states that have had Healthy School Meals for All in place for at least two years, Maine is leading the nation in meal participation with a 25 percent increase in students eating breakfast and lunch since pre-pandemic times. Maine’s Healthy School Meals For All policy, as well as federal changes that streamlined school nutrition paperwork, have resulted in less time spent chasing lunch money and paperwork. As a result, school nutrition staff have the capacity to invest in scratch cooking, sourcing local ingredients, and serving fresh food to Maine kids. Funding school meals saves families $160 per month per child, which helps to stretch already tight grocery budgets. We are proud of these accomplishments.
But our progress is under threat. Last week, Maine’s school nutrition staff spent much of the break worried by multiple threats to federal funding coming from Washington. School nutrition professionals already struggle to pay staff, source food, and replace kitchen equipment with tight budgets based on a $4.50 per meal reimbursement rate.
While temperatures never rose above freezing here in Maine, we watched partisan duels and vote-a-ramas play out. We applauded when we saw Sen. Collins voted for an amendment, which didn’t pass, that would have protected the National School Meal program from any funding cuts. We also watched her vote late Friday night for a Senate budget resolution that would take food away from children and hand over our federal taxes, paid by working Maine families, to the billionaire class. To add insult to injury, she also voted for including proposed cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, which are not only harmful on their own for struggling families, but will impact how many Maine kids will qualify for federally funded free school meals, and further cut funding for school nutrition.
Nobody understands the heat of the kitchen, or the chaos of the cafeteria, better than school nutrition professionals. I’d rather do cafeteria duty, maybe recess duty, in freezing Lisbon any day than work across party lines in Washington, D.C., right now. We know that Collins is in the hot seat because of instructions from the president, and an unelected billionaire, to cut trillions of dollars in federal spending this year with a budget resolution. But a recent poll shows the majority of Maine voters don’t approve of Elon Musk’s role in making spending decisions, or in his Department of Government Efficiency.
We need more than symbolic votes now. We need Collins to exert her power as the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and push back against protecting the wealthy at the expense of Maine’s children. We are counting on her to let us continue to feed all of Maine’s school children and to respect the voices and votes of her constituencies who do not want to roll back the progress made with Maine’s Healthy School Meals for All policy.
There is no money in our state, town or family budgets to cover the loss of any federal funds for school meals this year. Indeed, with proposed cuts to SNAP and healthcare, we will have more families choosing between groceries and other living expenses.
We thank Collins for her commitment to nutrition access and we’re counting on her leadership to protect the bipartisan mandate of Mainers to feed all kids at school.