St. Paul, Minnesota — Today, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed HF 2480, a bill increasing state funding for reduced price lunches on a bipartisan vote. State Representative Shannon Savick (DFL – Wells) voted in favor of the bill.
“A commitment to high quality education means ensuring every student has the chance to come to school and learn,” said Rep. Savick. “But if students are sitting through an entire school day starving, it would be very hard to focus on much of anything. This bill guarantees that all students in our free and reduced lunch programs can get a decent meal and focus on learning.”
School lunches are funded through a combination of federal, state, and individual funds. ; The federal government provides $2.93 for free meals, $2.53 for reduced-price meals, and $0.28 for fully-paid school lunches. Minnesota provides 12.5 cents for each of these three categories. The forty-cent gap between free lunches and reduced-price lunches has resulted in alarming instances of kids being turned away when they can’t pay or being given a less nutritious alternative lunch.
The bill tackles this issue by increasing state aid for reduced-price school lunch by 40 cents, which will fully cover the costs for students. The total cost will be $3.519 million in 2015. The bill also prohibits a district from charging a lunch fee to a student who is free or reduced-price lunch eligible.
In 2013, Legal Aid conducted a survey of Minnesota school districts and found that 15% of districts had policies in place that would refuse a student hot lunch if they could not pay. Another 53% of districts provide an alternative like a cheese sandwich for those students who could not pay for lunch. A significant amount of the students affected by this were students who qualified for reduced lunch.
The full report can be found here.