On the first day of school, in Hillsborough County and throughout the state, activists in stood in front of Miles Elementary School in North Tampa.
They were there to call on the Hillsborough County School District to get with the program — the community eligibility program, to be specific — which allows qualifying high-poverty schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students without having to collect and process individual meal applications.
“We have a bureaucratic problem right now,” said the Reverend Russell Meyer, Executive Director of the Florida Council of Churches (FCAN). Meyer said that in his discussion with Hillsborough School officials, he learned that large school districts depend on scholarships for students who meet certain specific financial needs.
“The only way to collect the data for those scholarships is through the applications that come with the free lunch and breakfast program,” he said. “When a school district qualifies to feed every child in every school, then they can’t put out the application and ask people to fill it out … And so what we have right now in Hillsborough County is this bureaucratic standoff between feeding every child, and getting scholarships for the most needy children. This is a place we end up over and over again in this society.”
Under the community eligibility provision, the federal government pays for only a share of the expansion, leaving states to pay the balance. As a result, not every school district was expected to take part when the program went nationwide last summer.
Schools where 40 percent or more of the students automatically qualify for the school lunch program (because their families are already receiving food stamps, for example) are eligible to use community eligibility. There are more than 28,000 such schools nationwide.
In Florida, 37 percent of eligible districts have implemented community eligibility, but only 26 percent of eligible schools, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
In addition to Hillsborough, Miami Dade and the Broward County school districts have also not yet adopted the provision. These districts are among the nation’s seven largest and collectively serve more than 600,000 students.
In a press conference convened by the Florida Consumer Action Network (FCAN). Spokesperson Olivia Babis also urged Congress – and specifically Pasco/Pinellas Republican Gus Bilirakis – to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act by the end of this year.
Former Tampa state representative and now Senate District 19 candidate Betty Reed was scheduled to attend the news conference, but did not appear. In a statement, she said, “It is so important for the food programs to continue and in some areas expand because sometimes that is all the food some children get that day.”
FCAN officials also say they hope to work with School Board member April Griffin on the issue.
“We are going to look at it again this year, because we are supportive of the concept of it,” says Connie Mileto, Chief Government Relations Officer with the Hillsborough School District. “We just don’t want some of the unintended consequences to cause problems otherwise.”
