Maine was one of the first states to pass legislation providing free school meals to all students after pandemic-era funding expired. The policy has been adopted in seven other states and is being considered nationwide.
But since the law took effect a year and a half ago, some districts have been plagued by unintended consequences. With parents no longer having to fill out an application form to qualify their children for free meals, authorities have lost an important source of information. Information about low-income households in the district and has traditionally been used for fundraising.
The Free or Reduced Price Meals Application Form is a federal application sent to families with students at the beginning of the school year that allows school districts to determine the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced price meals.
This information has traditionally been used to allocate funds to districts and schools and to identify whether students and teachers are eligible for certain subsidies or exemptions.
But now that all students receive free meals, fewer parents are filling out the forms. For example, at RSU 71 in Belfast, the district received only two applications last year. I haven’t received anything this year.
Traditionally, school districts have been compensated by the state for all meal costs. The federal government then reimburses states based on the percentage of those meals that are free or reduced price. If a parent does not fill out the form, the child will be considered eligible to pay for full-price meals and the state’s payment will be reduced.
Justin Strasberger, executive director of the child nutrition advocacy group Full Plate Full Potential, said the state still reimburses districts for each meal served, but the issue is that the state The question is how much money does the government receive from the federal government?
“States should receive the full amount of money for every eligible student, but we know that it is underreported, meaning states are being asked to take a larger share of that reimbursement than they should.” ” he said.
His organization has sought to spread awareness about the usefulness of these forms, even though meals are free for all students.
“We have been working hard to lead an advocacy campaign to get people to fill out the application,” he said. “But this is another hoop we ask people living in poverty to jump through.”
Free and reduced-price meal data has always been a flawed measure of student poverty, said David Knight, an associate professor of education finance and policy at the University of Washington’s School of Education. This is because it is a binary indicator that indicates Not eligible. ”
Many people who study education policy have long wanted to distance themselves from education policy, he says.
This school year, the Maine Department of Education stopped using free and reduced-price meal data to allocate Title I funds to low-income districts. Title I funding supplements state and local education budgets with the goal of helping low-income students, who have been consistently shown to have lower educational outcomes than their more affluent peers, succeed in school. Federal funds for the purpose of
And more than half of Maine’s school districts have adopted non-formal school nutrition programs.
Despite administrative challenges and questions about funding, experts and school officials say the move to universal free school meals is a clearly positive development for students.
At RSU 71, School Nutrition Director Parley Martin said the district is actually receiving more subsidy funding than before because more students are eating breakfast and lunch at school. Last year, the number of students eating breakfast increased by 19 percent and the number of students eating lunch increased by 9 percent.
“So we don’t see much of an impact on school lunch programs if parents don’t fill out this form,” Martin said.
However, he said the district’s Title I funding has been affected. The superintendent did not respond to questions about how Title I funding was specifically affected.
Thirty-eight percent of RSU 71 students qualified for free or reduced-price meals in the 2022-23 school year, according to state data. This compares to almost 56 percent in 2018. Martin said the change does not correspond to a dramatic change in poverty levels, but simply due to a lack of information.
Martin said the best idea for the state might be to find another way to collect data on economically disadvantaged students.
“I don’t think applications for free or reduced lunch will come back,” he said.
This is recognized by the Maine Department of Education.
“We have heard from key stakeholders about the unintended negative impacts of this incredibly positive move to provide free school lunches to all students,” said Cheryl Lang, ESEA federal program director at the Maine Department of Education. I hear you loud and clear.” Last year’s video update.
“This much-needed action, as you know, has resulted in fewer families submitting free and reduced-price lunch forms. ) was used by Title I as an alternative data” that will allow us to more accurately fund our state. ”
Lang said the department is researching alternative ways to measure poverty based on standards set by the federal government, focusing on “what would be the least harmful to our districts.” Stated.
Large school districts, such as Bangor and Portland schools, are locked into the census formula that the federal government uses for Title I funding, but the state has other poverty data to fund smaller districts. , Title I expert Rita Pero explained in a video.
The state of Maine decided in 2002 that counting free meals was the best way to measure student poverty in small school districts. This method was used until this year. But with the pandemic and Maine’s move to universal free meals, things have changed, Jessica Caron, another Title I specialist, said in the video.
“Students are eating for free, so we fully support that, but there’s not a lot of incentive to fill out forms like that. This is what’s happening in Maine. But it’s happening all over the country,” she said.
For the past three school years, the department and school districts have used pre-pandemic school lunch data to make allocation decisions, but the federal Department of Education has now announced that that will no longer be allowed. Maine education officials then began researching alternative ways to measure student poverty in small school districts.
While some other states use census data, Caron said the department’s research has found it is not a reliable indicator of local poverty levels.
This year, the state decided to use direct certification data. This data determines a student’s eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch without a family application, and instead determines whether the student is eligible for her SNAP or TANF benefits, or whether the student is eligible for foster care. This confirms whether the person is in a nursing home or not. Be from an immigrant family or have experienced homelessness. The department has also applied to have MaineCare eligibility added to the list and expects to receive a response this spring, a spokesperson said.
The department will then increase the number of students in poverty by multiplying the number of students on the direct recognition list by 1.6, according to a federally approved formula. Perot said the department hopes this method will provide consistent data each year and allow smaller districts that just barely meet the threshold to remain eligible.
Although school lunch forms are no longer used in the department’s Title I appropriations, they are still required for child nutrition data collection and can be used as one of three data sources in Maine’s school funding formula.
When determining the allocation of local and state funding for each school, department officials use a combination of school meal data, direct certification data and data collected in alternative formats, a department spokesperson said. The newly introduced alternative forms separate the collection of household income from school meal data and are intended to be used only to inform funding calculations.
One school nutrition option that some school districts have adopted is the Community Eligibility Provision, a national program that allows schools in impoverished areas to provide free meals to all students. Under CEP, schools do not require parents to provide income information, instead relying on direct verification data.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school lunch programs, recently lowered the low-income household threshold required to participate in CEP from 40 percent to 25 percent. This change will take effect next school year, and more Maine schools will be eligible for his CEP.
As of the 2022-23 school year, 66% of eligible school districts in the state have implemented CEP.
RSU 10 in western Maine adopted CEP before the pandemic. All but two schools in the district participate in CEP, and the district plans to switch between those two this year, said Jeanne Lapointe, director of food and nutrition.
Lapointe said RSU 10 parents were hesitant to fill out the school meal eligibility application.
“People didn’t want to give us that information because they felt it was too sensitive to send back to school. They also felt like there were too many eyes on their personal information. Because I felt that way,” she says. “CEP cuts out all that and just provides food for the kids. And it takes the financial burden off families.”
