When she was in charge of food for the school district she was playing debt collector.
She would call the parents every week to make sure they paid their debts. Many parents don't fill out applications for free or reduced-price meals because of a variety of reasons.
Kapinus said that she would have to call parents and send letters to get them to pay off their debts because they couldn't afford it.
According to a food service director in Massachusetts, there is about $20,000 in student debt every year.
The swine flu hit. Stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment benefits, and other extraordinary measures were taken by the government in 2020. School lunches were free for all K-12 students.
The waivers meant that kids weren't going into school lunch debt, or dealing with the shame of being on free or reduced-price lunch, and that lunch providers could expand their offerings.
The program could end on June 30 if Republicans don't allow the renewal of the waivers.
In Kapinus's district, the number of people participating increased greatly. About 40 kids a day were fed by Botko's program. They're eating at least 280 a day.
The federal government reimburses the more kids they feed. Buying local meat and fresh produce was one of the ways Kapinus' district was able to feed its children. They were able to take care of the equipment. A local farm is partnering with Botko to purchase produce.
Botko said that it helps the local economy and that it helps parents with school lunches.
School lunch is not something that comes out of the freezer anymore. She said it came down the street.
Congress extended the program once in 2021 to make sure that nearly 12 million children who didn't have enough to eat at some point during the Pandemic could get food at school. The universal program was not renewed as part of the spending package that kept the government open.
Some children will still be able to get free meals through the summer, thanks to an agreement between Republicans and Democrats.
Universal school lunch programs exist in some states. State lawmakers in New York, Massachusetts, and a few other states are trying to establish their own programs, but students in most states will be left out once the federal program ends.
The issue of equity is based on where the kids live.
The last two years have seen the expansion of free lunches to all students, but that won't happen again in the next four years.
Republicans argued that universal free lunches shouldn't be made permanent because of the PAIN epidemic. The bipartisan agreement to extend the program past June 30 was objected to by Sen. Paul. The Senate passed it and sent it to the House for Biden to sign.
"Kids deserve to be healthy, they deserve to be well-fed, and by extending these nutrition waivers before they expire we can make sure that no student will have to worry about where they are going to get their lunch during the summer," Schumer said.
Younger children may not remember a time without lunch.
They have lived the majority of their public school life through a swine flu outbreak. The director of partnerships and campaign strategies for No Kids Hungry told Insider that they would no longer be doing that. If there isn't food in front of them on the first day, it will be a problem.
Some of those lunches have been given out by Amy. During the height of the Pandemic, she distributed library books to kids through a pickup window in the library at her school.
Families would come to the school at a certain time each day to pick up their meals. The library's window time was changed so that kids could get their books and lunch at the same time. She was able to see some of the same people every day during a time of isolation.
They didn't have to prove they were a student of the school. It was always a selection of healthy snacks that they could get, and they never put a limit on the number of lunches they could get.
She said that the program made it easier for kids to get their food. Kids on reduced-price lunch had different colored tickets in the cafeteria, but they were treated the same as everyone else.
Families were sent home with larger packs on Fridays to cover dinner.
It's unconscionable that basic needs of food and shelter aren't being met. It is a basic human need. There are a lot of people who think that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps because there are so many jobs out there. Tell that to a single mom with children who use most of their money for shelter.
The food service director in Massachusetts is getting emails from parents who want to know if lunch will be free next year. She is expecting parents to be upset, participation to go down, and relationships with local food sources to be ended.
Botko was able to get a reduced-price lunch when she was a child. She didn't take advantage of it because she was embarrassed. As the waivers end, history could repeat itself.
She said that children are going to be embarrassed to eat lunch again.
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