Did you know, lots of families, not just the poor, can’t afford meals in schools? That is surprising if you just thought the middle class could afford meals. Currently, there are free school meals but only if families meet the income eligibility, which is lower than the middle class. Before then, little or no one was aware of this problem. It only takes a huge emergency or a long crisis to know about this situation. The income eligibility for free school meals should be increased for the lower half of the middle class because we can’t assume that they have enough to afford. However, some think that school meals should be free for every student. The federal government has made this happen during an emergency, but didn’t want it on a regular basis.

Why should we stress the importance of free school meals for every student on a regular basis? We can’t assume that every family in every type of income can afford school meals. Well, we can assume that families who make a great amount of income could possibly afford school meals but for those who couldn’t afford it, only some of them got help from the federal government. The USDA has a resource that lists certain sizes of families with certain income and uses the federal poverty guidelines in order to determine if they need help. The list changes every school year to keep up with the population for those who are in school. In summary, the poor and some of the middle class could get help with school meals but the rest of the middle class who can’t afford it and couldn’t get help is a problem. So on a regular basis, when school meals aren’t free for most, those who can’t afford it are something we have to look out for.

Now that the decision has gone to the states, how would they handle making school meals free? Leah Butz of the New York City Food Policy Center lists some states making their choice. California was the first state to make this permanent. Colorado and Maine made the same decision. Massachusetts, Vermont, and Nevada made school meals free for a few more years. And 21 other states are considering this topic but it didn’t happen in some states. In those 21 states, Connecticut, which made school meals free but only for the 2022-2023 school year however, they are considering expanding for the next year. So what does all this huge amount of information mean? Some states decided to make free school meals permanent or temporary and the rest have considered this topic but didn’t make it happen. In other words, states vary when it comes to making school meals free.

So what can we stress about the importance of free school meals? The answer is that not all families on every income can afford school meals and that after the federal government failed to continue making school meals free in every state, which leads to around half of the states considering making school meals free there. My suggestion is that if it’s hard to have free school meals in the country, it shouldn’t be hard for a state to consider their own version of this.