“By authorizing the USDA to extend nationwide child nutrition waivers, this bipartisan legislation will help schools and community meal providers to feed kids as they respond to challenges in real time,” says Davis.
Contact: Adrienne Carter, acarter@strength.org
Washington, DC – Today, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Lisa Murkowski, along with 50 of their colleagues, introduced the Support Kids Not Red Tape Act of 2022. This bipartisan legislation would authorize the USDA to extend the flexibilities granted by nationwide child nutrition waivers for an additional two summers and the 2022-2023 school year. It would give schools and families time to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic while transitioning back to normal meal operations. The following is a statement from Share Our Strength Senior Vice President Lisa Davis:
“Early in the pandemic, Congress gave USDA the authority to issue national child nutrition waivers that made it possible for schools and local organizations to adapt their programs so they could still reach kids with the food they need. While we are all hoping for a return to ‘normal,’ there’s nothing normal about the environment schools are operating in right now. Schools and community meal providers need continued flexibilities to continue feeding kids.
“By authorizing the USDA to extend nationwide child nutrition waivers, the bipartisan Support Kids Not Red Tape Act will help schools and community meal providers prepare and plan meal programs for this summer and next school year.
“Schools and community meal providers continue to face extreme pandemic-related challenges like supply chain disruptions, rising food prices and staffing shortages. Without waivers, they will have a difficult time responding to these challenges in real-time, impacting their ability to safely and effectively reach kids with the nutrition they need and stunting their ability to transition to normal operations as those challenges subside. In fact, if these waivers are not extended, children in struggling families could miss out on more than 95 million meals this summer.
“We applaud the bipartisan efforts behind the Support Kids Not Red Tape Act of 2022. This legislation is a step in the right direction in the fight against childhood hunger, and we strongly encourage Congress to include it in the next COVID spending bill. Share Our Strength is looking forward to working with Congress to ensure schools and community meal providers have the tools they need to ensure kids are consistently getting the food they need.”
###
About No Kid Hungry
No child should go hungry in America. But in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, 1 in 6 kids could face hunger this year. No Kid Hungry is working to end childhood hunger by helping launch and improve programs that give all kids the healthy food they need to thrive. This is a problem we know how to solve. No Kid Hungry is a campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization committed to ending hunger and poverty.