STATEMENT: No Kid Hungry Senior Vice President Lisa Davis on Child Nutrition Reauthorization Marker Bills, Policy Priorities

Contacts: Meredith Jorss, mjorss@strength.org

Washington, D.C. - This week, lawmakers on Capitol Hill introduced a series of marker bills on Child Nutrition Reauthorization, a process which makes updates and improvements to our nation’s federal nutrition programs. Sens. John Boozman (R-AR) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Hunger-Free Summer for Kids Act of 2019; Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced the Summer Meals Act of 2019; Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Stop Child Hunger Act of 2019. The following is a statement from Share Our Strength Senior Vice President Lisa Davis:

“It’s time that we provide more solutions and opportunities for states to serve low-income children during the summer months. Child Nutrition Reauthorization provides the best opportunity for Congress to modernize and strengthen the Summer Meals Program, which helps kids from low-income families get the nutrition they need in the summer. 

By enacting common sense policies that streamline program rules between summer and afterschool meals, expanding Summer EBT and providing flexible models to make it easier for summer meal providers to feed kids in hard-to-reach areas, we can close the summer hunger gap and ensure all children have equitable access to nutritious summer meals no matter where they live.

These bills are a step in the right direction and send a strong message that we need to do more. We applaud these Senators for getting us one step closer to helping low-income children have consistent access to healthy meals when school is out and toward a strong bipartisan CNR Bill. 

Share Our Strength supports the following policy solutions to help close the summer meal gap:

Streamline the afterschool and summer meal programs into a single program to strengthen congregate sites. Currently, afterschool meals and summer meals operate as two programs with two sets of rules and regulations, two sets of audits and two sets of staff training. The paperwork, red tape and amount of time spent on doubling this work can act as a deterrent for organizations to act as summer meal sites. Allowing these two programs to operate under one set of rules and regulations would reduce administrative burdens, foster greater efficiency and reach more kids with the food they need. 

Provide flexibility around the “congregate feeding” requirement. Many communities need more tools beyond congregate feeding to ensure that kids have access to summer meals. The congregate meal requirement, which requires kids to get to and from summer meal sites each day to consume a meal during a specific timeframe, is a limiting factor of a program that only serves about 16% of eligible kids. Providing flexibility around this regulation would allow providers to drop meals off with low-income families or operate mobile food trucks where kids could pick up a meal and take it home. This innovation will allow the program to better reach low-income kids in rural and other hard-to-reach areas.

Permanently authorize the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (Summer EBT). In many communities, the most effective, direct way to reach kids is to provide additional funds for food purchase through an electronic benefit transfer system. The USDA conducted a demonstration project in several states in 2011 and 2012 and found this was an effective tool to reach children, especially in rural communities, and actively reduced very low food security for children by 33%. 

A few common sense policy changes at the federal level will help more kids get the nutrition they need during the summer months regardless of where they live. We stand ready to work with Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle throughout the Child Nutrition Reauthorization process.”