Understanding Why More Eligible Kids Got Free Meals During Pandemic Summers

[VERONICA SEVERN]

The flexibility really set up through FNS at the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020 likely paved the way for the historic high level of participation that we saw in the summer meal programs in summer 2020. […] Average daily participation in summer meals in July 2020 was about 6.7 million, which is nearly double what it was in July 2019 at 3.6 million. And at the same time, as more children were receiving meals, the number of meals served in the summer meal programs in summer 2020 was more than double the number served in the previous summer.

[J.B. WOGAN]

I’m J.B. Wogan from Mathematica and welcome back to On the Evidence.

On this episode, we’re going to talk about children’s access to meals in the summer and what happened during the pandemic when the federal government waived program rules, giving meal providers much more flexibility in how they fed kids.

A little background may be in order. During the school year, children can get free or reduced-price meals at school for breakfast, lunch, and after school. But policymakers have long worried that millions of children from low-income households aren’t getting enough to eat when is school out, posing risks to their health, learning, and overall well-being.

The federal Food and Nutrition Service runs two programs to try to fill the summer gap by feeding children at places where children congregate, including schools, but also churches, housing complexes, YMCAs, parks, and other settings. Historically, those programs have reached only a small fraction of the children who receive meals during the school year.

Recent research from the Food and Nutrition Service and Mathematica shows that in 2020, with temporary program waivers in place because of the pandemic, these summer meals programs reached many more children and served many more meals than they usually do. The research also showed how the waivers helped keep kids fed amid pandemic-related disruptions during the school year. We’ll talk about how and why the waivers made a difference and what it could mean for summer meal access now that COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency and those temporary waivers have ended.

My guests for this episode are Shana Christrup, Lindsay Aguilar, and Veronica Severn.

Shana is the public health director for the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Lindsay is the Food Services Director for the Tucson Unified School District.

And Veronica is a survey researcher at Mathematica who co-authored the recent report on the pandemic-era waivers for child nutrition programs in the spring and summer of 2020.

Welcome Shana Christrup, Lindsay, and Veronica.

All right. So, Veronica, I mentioned in my intro that the federal child nutrition programs reach fewer kids in the summer months. But when school lets out, how big of a drop really is it?

[VERONICA SEVERN]

So our report primarily focused on operations during March through September, 2020, or the early months of the pandemic, which showed a very different story as we know. But when we look at data for 2019, which represents a more typical year, average daily participation, or the average number of children receiving meals each day in the National School Lunch program, was about 30 million during the school year. And average daily participation in the summer meal programs dropped to just 3.6 million in July 2019. So there's historically been a pretty serious drop in the number of children getting meals in the summer.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Shana, why don't these programs reach more children in the summer months?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

Well, there are two types of summer assistance, like we've discussed, providing meals to families through the summer food service program or the seamless summer option, or doing a debit like card benefit to provide cash to families to purchase foods during the summertime. And that's kind of an EBT program. Mathematica looked at that providing the meals part of it, but why would you take advantage of the meals? It's just, it's a lack of awareness. And then in school time, you've got a captured audience when they're off in the summertime, there isn't a capture audience, which means you have lots of logistical issues. It's difficult for transportation. Parents have to kind of take the kids to the area to get there. They have to, kids have to be there. The parents can't just sign and sort of get the meals that are there. You're required to eat the meals there as a congregate setting. That's kind of the piece of it. So there's no grab and go options. You have to do one meal at a time, which means you have to keep coming back. As you can imagine, logistically that's very difficult and it's a limited timeframe. You're sort of looking at when you can provide the meals or sort of breakfast and lunchtime. So a parent couldn't take the child after work or before work necessarily because of those sort limitations on when food is available.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. And is it particularly challenging in rural areas? I thought -- I got the impression that rural areas might be an especially challenging sort of part of the story here.

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

Yes, indeed. In fact, Congress did make some changes specific to rural, rural areas as we'll discuss later. But you have more transportation issues, you know, you've got more kids going on longer bus rides to go to school naturally. So you can imagine that parents transporting them as a part of that process. The sites are further away than, you know, than in an urban sorts of areas as well. And you've got the other sort, sort of challenges that you have anytime you're talking about longer distances, and then sort of how parents react and do the various things they need to do to get the kids to the sites to get the food, and then sort of be able to eat it and so forth.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Lindsay, I want to turn to you. When children in Tucson aren't taking advantage of these programs, or rather when their families aren't able to take advantage of these programs, what happens and how do those families adapt?

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

Yeah. So, as mentioned already, we definitely see quite a drastic drop in meal participation during the summer months. So, I think the challenge that we experienced during COVID what came out of it really was that that -- you know, the waivers that allowed the non-congregate feeding where families could pick up meals, we were able to do the grab and go multiple days' worth of food as mentioned for parents to get to a summer site five days a week at a certain 30-minute window for breakfast and lunch is not very realistic for working families and a lot of our parents in the community. So, we definitely got response. And we saw in our numbers we fed a lot more students, almost double the amount of meals in June of 2021 that we typically serve in a summer because we were able to do the grab and go multiple days' worth of food. So, going back to kind of normal pre-COVID summer meal operations this summer, we're definitely seeing the impacts in participation.

So, we do our best to try to promote on social media and our website and get the word out that we have, you know, over a hundred locations in our community. But the sheer reality that for working families and for many families in our community it's just not very realistic to get their children to a location. Students don't walk to our schools typically anymore in the current day and age so I think there really needs to be some emphasis on adjusting, you know, some of the regulations to align with the more modern-day reality of what our families and our communities are experiencing. So, we do our best to try to make it as convenient as possible. But, as mentioned within the regulations, they do have to eat at the site. They can't take the food to go. We can only serve breakfast at breakfast, lunch at lunch. So, you know, we certainly at TUSD do our best to make it as most convenient and give as many locations throughout the community to make it convenient as we can. But we know there's just pure realities that really limit our participation for families.

[J.B. WOGAN]

If they aren't able to access the summer meals provided by these programs, do they just not eat? Or are there other options? Are they able to turn to food banks or -- and does the quality of the food -- the nutritional quality of the food, is that a concern if they aren't able to access these programs? I was just curious a little bit about, you know, what it actually means for feeding these kids if they aren't able to access food through the programs.

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

Yeah. So, at least in our community in Tucson, we do have a very active food bank, Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. So, families have that resource. Our Family Resource Centers in our district, we have five locations throughout our district that also have food pantries that families can access. There is the summer P-EBT, as mentioned, where families can get a benefit in Arizona. They get $120 benefit if they qualify. So, again, that's not -- in my opinion, obviously compared to receiving breakfast and lunch every day through a summer meal program, that benefit for one child is not certainly going to suffice for the summer months. So, there are obviously SNAP benefits. Families are -- many of these families are receiving food stamps. But just as you mentioned, the nutrition aspect with summer meals, as with school lunch meals, we have very quality nutrition standards that we are adhering to. So, there definitely is a concern in terms of the nutritional content of what the children are receiving during the summer months in comparison to school meals during the school year.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. And, just in case, I'm not sure if we spelled out what EBT stands for, but that would be the Electronic Benefit Transfer. And I think Shana did describe it as a debit card. I think that's probably the best way for folks who aren't familiar with it. But that's what we mean when we're talking about summer EBT is sort of a debit card option.

[VERONICA SEVERN]

Yeah.

[J.B. WOGAN]

So -- oh, go ahead, Veronica.

[VERONICA SEVERN]

People might be more familiar with the term food stamps. It's, it's kind of the same program.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, yes, thank you. And, Veronica, I want to stick with you. So, the May report for Mathematica and the Food and Nutrition Service shows that amid pandemic disruptions the Food Nutrition Service waived many of its normal rules about how child nutrition programs operate during the school year and in the summer months. So, I want to hear about what those operational changes meant in terms of getting kids fed. But, first, I think it would be helpful to listeners if you could walk us through a few of the temporary changes that gave local meal providers more flexibility.

[VERONICA SEVERN]

Yeah, so Shana and Lindsay already kind of hit on some of the regulations that local program operators have to operate within, and when the pandemic hit the US in March, 2020, FNS issued a number of waivers that provided flexibilities to states and local child nutrition program operators to help them continue serving meals with appropriate safety measures to children who were no longer routinely being educated in school buildings, and so we're no longer a captive audience for meals. And so FNS later extended many of these waivers into the summer months and future school years, and we generally think about these waivers into broad categories based on their focus or role. So first we have the administrative waivers, which were designed to ease administrative processes at the state or local child nutrition program operator level, and these waivers provided flexibilities with things like meal site monitoring or reporting requirements and deadlines.

And then we have what we call “access focused waivers,” which focused on reducing barriers to children receiving meals. And so these waivers allowed local program operators to serve meals free of charge through FNS’s to summer meal programs, the seamless summer option and the summer food service program during non-summer months, and without meeting the typical administrative requirements for operating these programs in the summer. The waivers also allowed meals to be served outside group settings. They allowed parents and guardians to pick up meals and bring them home to their children rather than requiring the children to be present to receive those meals. The waivers allowed multiple meals to be served to children at one time and allowed the meals to be served to children outside traditional meal service times to maximize flexibility for meal pickup and ultimately keep children safe and fed.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. And I want to pick up on that. Outside of traditional meal service times, I think that connects back to something that Shana brought up earlier that normally you cannot -- you can't pick up meals before work or after work, which might make the most sense for families. So, is that what this allows for parents to pick up meals before work or after work?

[VERONICA SEVERN]

It gave a lot more flexibility Yeah. To local program operators about when they could actually give the meals to the families and children. Yes.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, great. So, Veronica, those are some of the big changes that allow providers to feed kids during periods of remote learning and in the summer months when kids might not be congregating in person at like their local YMCA or public library or park. For the summer of 2020, what did the data actually show? What did it mean in terms of impact or access?

[VERONICA SEVERN]

So we still saw a drop in participation between May and July 2020 or the last full month of the school year and the summer, but the decrease was small and much smaller than in previous summers. And part of that is because there was a significant drop in meal participation in March and April 2020, due to the pandemic. But in summer 2020, we also saw more site serving meals, more children receiving meals, and overall more meals served than in previous summers. Average daily participation in summer meals in July 2020 was about 6.7 million, which is nearly double what it was in July 2019 at 3.6 million. The summer food service program served meals to almost twice as many children in June and July 2020 as it did in each of the five previous summers. So about 5 million children received meals in summer 2020, compared to 2.6 to 2.7 million children who were served meals through this program in the 2015 through 2019 summers.

And at the same time, as more children were receiving meals, the number of meals served in the summer meal programs in summer 2020 was more than double the number served in the previous summer. So the flexibility really set up through FNS at the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020 likely paved the way for the historic high level of participation that we saw in the summer meal programs in summer 2020. And states overwhelmingly reported that the waivers improve services to children in several ways. They said they reduced barriers to children receiving meals. They allowed pickup of multiple meals at one time, improved safety for children. They also said that the waivers increased alternative meal delivery methods and generally increased participation among children.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, perfect. Lindsay, I'd love to hear about the local experience in Tucson. Do those national data that Veronica just described -- do they reflect your experience in Tucson? And what did the waivers mean for children's access to meals during the pandemic?

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

Yeah. So, our data in Tucson definitely aligns with what's being reported. We were able to transition during the peak of the pandemic that summer in June and July of 2020. We were doing over a hundred bus stops throughout our community. We were doing home delivery of meals to our exceptional education students that perhaps obviously with disabilities and such that would really be challenging for families to get to a bus stop. So, we were able to mobilize. We then could shift. And then a lot of what we did was as we go, we tweak. It was a bit of a crazy few month period. But we got much more efficient as we continued on. So, we started doing the multiple days. Storage capacity was a challenge on the buses because you can only fit so much food and so many coolers to keep the food safe. But the multiple days really did help dramatically to make it more convenient because, again, even just getting to a bus stop every day is not necessarily the most convenient. So, we started doing multiple days so families only had to come let's say twice a week. We were also able to do drive-up pickups.

So, families could come to our central location and pick up an entire week's worth of food. So, that was very, very convenient for a lot of especially working families. We did the pickup as we kept -- as we keep talking about the flexibility and timeframes, we were able to do the pickups at like from 4:00 to 6:00, for example, p.m. So, families had a window of time after work hours that they could just come drive up, get their food for the week and move on, and have what they need for their children at home without them -- the children having to be present. Of course, we had a registration process to confirm that their were children in the household that qualified for the meals. But all of these flexibilities in the end just made it much more adaptable for our program to be able to shift to what our community needed and ensure that we could maximize our reach for the meal program to make sure that we could feed as many children as we could. So, we were taking advantage of all the various laborers. And they were extremely helpful to our operation and very well received by our community in terms of just being so grateful to have these options available.

So, moving out of the pandemic, this summer is the first summer that we don't have those flexibilities any longer. And it definitely has impacted our program. We're back to our normal kind of lower -- like I said, we doubled our feeding figures. Our peak summer for us was actually in 2021. So, from that summer to now, we're sort of back to our normal down about 50 percent in June, specifically looking at June that we normally [inaudible], so what we fed in 2021 compared to 2019 and now this summer. So, yeah, the waivers, like we said, definitely addressed access and flexibility. That was a very positive experience for me as an operator to be able to provide and maximize services for our community.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Have you -- have the parents noticed? Have they said anything about the changes this summer?

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

Absolutely. It's very confusing for families because we get a lot of calls and emails about why can't we do grab and go, why can't I pick up the meals, why does my child have to stay on site to eat the food. So, I think the current program regulations I feel were designed more specifically for a traditional like summer school program or a parks and rec, you know, camp program, where you have more of what we're referring to as a captive audience that you're trying to feed. You've got 30 children enrolled in a program, you're providing meals at that site. But we're doing open sites for the public. So, that means that any children 18 and under can come to any of our locations. But, again, there's stipulations. They have to be -- consume the meal on site. So, I think there's just -- it's unfortunate because I know we saw -- we have the evidence now specifically in our district that if we have these flexibilities, we can serve more meals and feed more children in our community. So, it definitely makes a difference to kind of modernize in my opinion these regulations to help address the need of, you know, feeding children during the summer.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Shana, the Bipartisan Policy Center published a report last year about strengthening the federal child nutrition programs. And it included recommendations for expanding access to out-of-school nutrition programs. So, this would speak to, you know, rather than just temporary waivers, which is what the Mathematica study looked at which, you know, by its nature was temporary, this is looking at more permanent changes. Did any of the recommendations in that report overlap with the temporary changes the federal government allowed during the pandemic?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

They did indeed. The BPC launched a task force, a 13 member group in 2017, and they had three reports, one related to COVID, one related to child nutrition and a third related to SNAP. They had a series of recommendations in the sum total of it, despite many, many pages. It's just that they believe that nutritious food should be, be, be available to all children at no cost, including the summer program. And specifically looking at the waivers, the, in the COVID report, they strongly recommended that those waivers were extended. So the task force would be supportive of making sure that these, this access is available.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. You kept it short and sweet, but very clear there. And -- but I don't know if we've -- have we flagged that the summer meals are free? I think that's one thing I did not know before I started working on the press release for that research in May. But, you know, unlike the National School Lunch Program where there are reduced priced meals as well as free meals depending on the jurisdiction, the summer meals are free to everybody. Is that correct?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

Yes, but you are restricted to students that are on either the free or reduced lunch meal program. So you are sort of looking at the lower income individuals, but if they are a lower income individual and they qualify for the free or reduced school lunch program, then they then would qualify for the free food during the summertime.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, perfect. So, sticking with that report for a second, Shana. After the report was released, what kind of policy response did you receive? Were -- had any of the -- have any of the recommendations around out of school nutrition programs become permanent policy? And, I don't know, have any of them attracted the kind of bipartisan support necessary to become permanent policy in the future?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

Well, as I mentioned, the task force had this big picture goal of making sure that, you know, children had access to nutritious food, you know, no matter what their income for no, no cost at all. And that, that's a, that's a great big picture goal, but it doesn't get into like the, the hard tradeoffs that Congress has to do or we have to do as policymakers. But Congress did do, as part of the omnibus in December, they had some additional money, so they unlinked some of the SNAP emergency benefits from the public health emergency. So they sort of ended those a little bit earlier and as a result had additional funds to sort of assist children during the summertime. And they opt to provide a grab and go option in the rural areas under the summer food service program. And USDA anticipates that'll be a 19 percent increase from the previous year once those sort of changes are implemented, as well as making that summer EBT program that we sort of talked about more permanent. So while there was additional funds available during the pandemic, this new sort of permanent summer EBT program will be about $40 a month per eligible child for each month during the summer months.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Lindsay, so we're recording this podcast in the summer of 2023 which, as you alluded to, is the first summer since 2019 when states and local program operators don't have the temporary flexibility afforded to them during the pandemic. You've already talked a little bit about what this has meant to schools and families in Tucson, but is there anything you would add there?

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

I think the only other thing I would like to add is kind of a real-life example of the impact. I received an email recently from a mother of a disabled child in our district that had previously for the last three summers participated in the summer meal program and was so thankful to have access to that option for the grab and go and being able to pick up meals for her daughter, who's in a wheelchair. And, so, she reached out to me asking why she was told that she couldn't, you know, take the meals to go home for her disabled daughter any longer. So, having to explain, you know, that the waivers had expired and we were back to, you know, having to adhere to the regulations of the congregate feeding. And, so, that -- you know, that's just kind of an example of how these waivers really impacted a lot of families, specifically, you know, our students with disabilities or even just the access issues. So, we have received, you know, a lot of -- it's very confusing even for the operators at our school sites that are running these summer programs. We, obviously, partner with our school staff who assist, you know, with serving the meals with our staff, our community sites. So, it's -- the training for this summer, we had to spend a lot of time going over like making sure our staff understand why the meals can't be picked up by the parents, they can't be taken home, they have to -- you know, all of that. So, it's just -- it is a bit confusing going back to kind of our pre-COVID operations.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. So, this last question is for the group. The report for Mathematica on that time period from March through September of 2020 is only the first in a series to be released over the next couple of years. As policymakers and anti-hunger advocates look for solutions to the gap in summer meal access, what would be valuable to know about this, you know, special historic period in child nutrition policy in our country? Is there any evidence that you hope to see from later years in the pandemic? And if you don't mind, why don't we start with Veronica?

[VERONICA SEVERN]

Yeah, so as Lindsay has talked about, we know that states and local program operators learned a lot during this time period and had a lot of innovation to make sure that children were still getting fed. So I'm really looking forward to learning more about what strategies were particularly successful and how lessons learned during the pandemic can inform how we improve access to child nutrition programs in both the school year and summer months. And as you mentioned at Mathematica, we're currently working on a report on the 2020 to 2021 school year, so the first full school year in the pandemic. And we did surveys of states and SFAs. So it'll be really nice to get their perspective on this as well and hear about their experiences. We're also collecting data on how the child nutrition programs operated in the following two school years, including the first school year after the pandemic. So that should provide us with a lot of really interesting and useful information too.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Lindsay had mentioned earlier that in Tucson there was some evolution or iteration that went on during the pandemic. Might those futures -- future years or future reports capture some of the stories of how states and school food authorities were modifying their approach throughout the pandemic?

[VERONICA SEVERN]

That is the goal. And one of the things that we are looking at in this upcoming report is changes in the 2020 to 2021 school year compared to both the like march through September early months of the pandemic in 2020 and also compared to the beginning of the 2122 school year. So we're, we're really trying to look at how, how things have changed over the course of the pandemic and what local program operators and states have modified as they've gone on and learned.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, excellent. Shana, I want to turn it to you now. So, what do you think is valuable to know from this period in child nutrition policy? And is there any evidence that you're going to be watching for as new reports come out from Mathematica and other sources?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

As we've sort of discussed, there's a variety of different programs available for children to help with the nutrition pieces, whether it's SNAP or it's the EBT program or the summer food options. And so from my perspective, I want to get a better feel, given that there are waivers across all of those, right? We increased the SNAP benefits, we did, we made a lot of different waivers. And then what were very helpful is teasing out which ones had the most impact for which students. I mean sometimes it is that different students will want different things and what makes more sense. So is it the EBT program, is that helpful for more with other SNAP recipients? Is it, is the nutritious food option that's, you know, the full food meal more important to certain families and sort of teasing out a little bit more where, where what had the most impact for which families?

So that when we have limited dollars going forward, we don't have necessarily all the money or all the flexibilities, what's the targeted way we can kind of concentrate those dollars in a way that makes sense? And that's, that's a difficult part. Because a part of this too that I'd like to make sure we kind of highlight is that, you know, SNAP does provide your ability to go purchase foods, but it's not necessarily nutritious foods. And you know, the nice thing about the summer food options is that we know that they're nutritious foods because they kind of have dietary guidelines tied to those and we know that they're, you know, sort of designed and already, you know, already put together, right? Like as a parent you don't have to go out and buy the food then prepare the food and sort of do that. And so is that the more beneficial way for certain families to do that if you're sort time management and other kinds of things are tied into this. So it's really kind of looking at the variety of programs that are available for children during the summer months and trying to figure out, depending on the child and depending on the area and depending on all sorts of other kinds of things, what is the best way for us to respond on the federal level to make sure that we do improve both the nutrition and, and food security for all of our children.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Let me ask one follow-up because the Bipartisan Policy Center you do engage with, you know, congressional members and federal policymakers and, you know, you're in Washington. So, I wondered -- I asked what you thought would be valuable maybe from your perspective. But do you have a sense of what policymakers in Washington need to learn in order for them to implement some of those changes that were in the Bipartisan Policy Center's report? Like is there any consistent questions that you get about what they would need to know in order to make changes?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

I think what they want to know, and it just, it's, it, it's the stories, it's basic knowing what their constituents need and what they heard and what's happening with that. So just by having this sort of discussion about how it was hard for a disabled daughter to get the food would be very helpful to kind of bring that to Congress and sort of highlight how much these flexibilities did help and what the sort of challenges are that they aren't that, you know, that arise because those flexibility still aren't there and what those expectations are and really having a, a really good conversation about the various pieces. And unfortunately in some ways, you know, there is a farm bill that's going through reauthorization right now, so there will be some discussion to talk about SNAP. We haven't had as much of an opportunity to talk about the child nutrition programs and their reauthorization except through the funding process that happens every year. So I have a feeling that there will be some of those discussions as we saw since the last omnibus that we sort of took funding from SNAP to start to cover this, the summer food options. So I think there will be additional conversations and the best thing to do at this point is to take the knowledge that people have from this summer and take it to the hill and sort of tell the stories and make sure that they're aware of how this impacted children this summer.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, perfect. Lindsay, I want to give you the last word. Same question to you. What are you hoping to learn, what evidence are you still interested in about this period of experimentation and innovation during the pandemic with respect to child nutrition programs?

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

Yeah, I definitely echo my colleagues here in terms of just the unique opportunity that we have to, you know, address policy and make changes based on this gift of time that we were given to actually implement some of these alternative strategies. I think that's something that I hope is applied to policy moving forward, what we learned, what was effective, what was, as mentioned, the most impact. I also think it's going to be very interesting as the Mathematica reports come out of the participation levels in particular as we moved through the pandemic and even just into the coming school years, the 2020 -- '21-'22 to see participation overall because, at least in my district, for example, we already had the majority of our schools that were qualifying for free meals through the CEP Program. So, for us to open up the free meals to all of our schools instead of just, you know, 75 percent of our schools, we now have the data to show what that did to our participation and the cost of that because, a lot of times -- I know every school operator and district is unique, but I'm very curious to see what is the overall increase in participation when the meals were free, that 30 million student meals that was mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, what was that number when meals were free during the school year, because that's really what I'm interested in in terms of trying to move forward universal free meals.

We actually would have -- we have the data to show when meals were free to all students in our country what the participation level was. It doesn't mean that we're feeding every single child in every single school. We're never going to have 100 percent participation. But just to open up that door and have that access for all of our families, I'm very curious to see the data on that overall for the programs, because, at least in my district, it wasn't a huge drastic difference. But just the impact to our families and community and district and schools of not having to have families apply for the program. There's no differential between this student and that student, negative meal account balances, all of these things that impact our programs, I'm very hopeful that we could have the financial data to show that perhaps going the universal route isn't going to be as costly as perhaps once anticipated because we have this unique opportunity where we have the data now for two full school years to show what that impact was.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. And, I don't know, have we defined what CEP stands for? That would be the Community Eligibility Provision. And, generally speaking -- and correct me if I'm screwing this up, but, generally speaking -- well, maybe I should just let one of you define it for our listeners. But just -- I think it would be helpful for listeners to understand unless you're in a state that has enacted legislation around universal free school meals, what does that Community Eligibility Provision mean? And what is -- yeah, like what -- because I think you're highlighting or underscoring a really important point that is kind of probably going to be a hot topic for the next few years in school nutrition policy.

[LINDSAY AGUILAR]

Yeah, I can speak to it. So, Community Eligibility Provision, CEP, it's a provision of the National School Lunch Program that allows free meals to be offered to all students at a school based on the amount of students that automatically qualify for free meals based on food stamps or other things like foster, migrant, homeless. So, you take that value of students enrolled at that school that automatically qualify, and then there is a multiplication factor to determine what percentage of students in that school would be eligible for free meals. And then you're able to -- upon qualifying for that threshold, you're able to offer the free meals to the entire school because you have the data to show that the majority of the students enrolled in that school already qualify for free. So, that benefit can be extended to the entire school.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, perfect.

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

And then adding to that, the Biden administration has been moving to reduce the CEP number, which is helpful, but, and that is allowed within the current statute. But to, for that to really be helpful for universal school lunches, you'd also need to increase the multiplication factor and that would require Congress to act. So it's those two kind of things together that kind of allow states to determine whether or not they can provide universal free school lunches. And so there's some movement in that direction that's great coming from the Biden administration, but Congress needs to act further to be able to basically reimburse schools at a higher rate so that that is a financially feasible thing.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. When you say "reduce the CEP number," that is kind of lowering the threshold

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

Yes.

[J.B. WOGAN]

that would -- for a school to qualify for providing free meals to all students?

[SHANA CHRISTRUP]

Right.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, okay. All right. Well, I think that might be an example where it would be appropriate to say, "Watch this space." I have a feeling that -- I know that there are states that there are actually -- have already or have at least entertained legislation around enacting universal free school meals at the state level. I know that there have been some congressional proposals around that, too. And I know that the financial considerations there are a sticking point at this moment. But I think this is a great note to end on. Lindsay, Shana and Veronica, thanks so much for joining us today. And for people who are tuning in, thanks for listening to another episode of "On the Evidence," the Mathematica podcast. Any resources we mentioned on the episode are available in the episode show notes. And if you liked this episode, please consider subscribing. We're on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, as well as other podcasting platforms. To learn more about the show, visit us at mathematica.org/ontheevidence.