House GOP Is Determined To Make It Harder For Poor Kids To Get Free School Lunches

But that progress is at risk. Rokita’s legislation would raise the qualifications for school districts to participate in the community eligibility provision, requiring them to have at least 60 percent of students whose families receive government assistance. 

The changes to the community eligibility provision, if they become law, would mean that nearly 3.4 million students at more than 7,000 schools would need to return to the previous application process in order to receive free meals at school, according to a separate analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That process, advocates argue, causes many low-income children to miss out on meals, due to problems like communication and resistance to being stigmatized by peers.

Sara Gasiorowski, child nutrition director at the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in Indianapolis, has seen how the community eligibility provision has affected her district’s students firsthand.

Since the district began the program at 11 of its 17 school sites, participation in the free lunch program has increased 6 percent, Gasiorowski said. If the GOP legislation becomes law, only four of the district’s schools would remain eligible, she said. Gasiorowski, whose school district lies just outside of Rokita’s congressional district, said that change would make a “huge impact” for the students and families.

“It’s hard to take something away once you’ve given that to people and your families have come to rely on that service,” Gasiorowski said. “I think it’s a terrible disservice to our families.”

Rokita, for his part, doesn’t see the problem.

In an op-ed provided to HuffPost ahead of Wednesday’s markup on his legislation, Rokita asserted that his proposal “in no way alters the eligibility requirements for students who receive free or reduced priced lunches.” He went on to describe the existing rules for the community eligibility provision as “perverse” and said savings would be used to increase reimbursement for the national breakfast program.

“Ensuring that students in actual need have these strong protections in place is how we the people should judge our success, not by how much paperwork an administrator has to do or how much money a school can make off of the entire school population,” Rokita wrote.