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U.S. Rep. Loebsack: Introduces Hunger Free Schools Act
11/20/2009

CONTACT: Sabrina Siddiqui

Sabrina.Siddiqui@mail.house.gov

202.226.6476, office

202.870.1138, cell


WASHINGTON DC – Congressman Dave Loebsack (D-IA) introduced the Hunger Free Schools Act to increase access to school meals programs, enhance children’s learning, and support a robust farm and food economy. The Hunger Free Schools Act ensures that children who are eligible for free school meals receive them and that those children are enrolled with minimum paperwork. The bill focuses on automatically enrolling low income children for free school meals and on providing free school meals to all children in schools that serve low-income students almost exclusively.

“Last year, over 16 million children lived in food insecure households where they did not get enough to eat--they had to cut the size of their meals, skip meals, or even go whole days without food at some time during the year,” said Congressman Loebsack. “This is not acceptable in a nation as wealthy and developed as the United States. In Iowa, my bill increases access to the school lunch program while cutting down the unnecessary paperwork for schools. If we want to prepare our children to compete in an increasingly global economy, we must make childhood nutrition a priority.”

The Department of Agriculture reports that in 2008, over 500,000 families with children had one or more children who did not get enough to eat. The Hunger Free Schools Act will bring additional federal child nutrition funding into states, and empower communities to reduce food insecurity and hunger, especially among our children.

“By automatically enrolling children who are eligible for these free meals, we will increase child access to nutrition, ease the paperwork burden on families and school employees, and help ensure that schools are the center of nutrition, education, and wellness,” added Congressman Loebsack. “These school meals programs also bolster and develop local economies by purchasing quality foods from our farmers and ranchers.”

Child nutrition programs often play a significant role for farmers and ranchers. Each year, USDA purchases approximately $1.5 billion of healthy foods through its commodity distribution programs. These purchases help support the entire agriculture value chain - from growers to packers, shippers, manufacturers, to retailers.

Children in households receiving food stamp benefits are eligible for free school meals and school districts are required to work with the Food Stamp Program to automatically enroll them, using a process known as “direct certification.” Often, due to the extra paper work, many children who need free meals are overlooked.

The Hunger Free Schools Act:

· Improves automatic enrollment for eligible children by providing bonuses to states that perform well.

· Expand direct certification to reach many more children by enabling states to use data from the Medicaid program to automatically enroll eligible children.

· Allow schools or districts serving a high proportion of low-income children to serve free meals to all students and be reimbursed based on socioeconomic data (like Census data) rather than individual applications. In the Second District of Iowa, this provision may help 24 schools and 5,321 students.

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