By — Adam Kemp Adam Kemp Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/after-pandemic-school-meals-funding-expired-this-oklahoma-program-pairs-schools-with-farmers Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter This Oklahoma program pairs schools with farmers to cut down the cost of school meals Education Oct 6, 2023 6:02 PM EDT Dropping the door to the trailer hitched to his pickup, Brandon Crow steered a forklift to unload boxes of okra, squash, cucumbers and cantaloupe. He arranged each stack next to a small paper sign with a local school name on it. Riverside Indian School, with less than 200 students, gets one or two boxes. Much larger stacks are set aside to go to places like Shawnee School District, which has more than 3,000 total students districtwide. Crow Farms sells to local school districts in the state as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s expanded Local Food for Schools program in Oklahoma, which connects school districts with local farmers and ranchers to purchase locally-grown food. The program, which launched in the state last spring, is funded through a $3 million cooperative agreement with Oklahoma’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. Similar programs run in states like Texas, New York and California. Brandon Crow delivers boxes of okra, squash, cucumbers and cantaloupe that will used to feed children in Oklahoma schools as part of a local food for local schools program. Photo by Adam Kemp, PBS NewsHour For Crow and his family farm business, which normally retails through farmers’ markets and small grocery stores, every last sale counts. “In the past as school starts, we slow down because people have more activities going on and are busier,” Crow said. “But now that we are selling to schools, business is still going strong and It’s a great way to extend our season and make more money.” More than 45 school districts in Oklahoma are taking advantage of the USDA program to buy meats, produce and livestock from local producers to help feed their children and reduce the cost of school lunches, which have risen thanks to inflation at the same time pandemic-era funding to subsidize school meals has ended. Chris Bernard, the president of Hunger Free Oklahoma, a nonprofit advocacy group that helps provide access to affordable and nutritious food, said families came to rely on free lunches at a time when inflation, rising home costs and a lack of affordable housing have made situations for many families even worse now than it was in the beginning of the pandemic. “This is one place that they thought they’d have support and now they’ve lost it,” he said. “So you’re seeing schools rack up a lot more school lunch debt in a lot of communities and trying to figure out how to help these families and not punish these kids. At the same time, families have to make sacrifices either here or somewhere else.” For two years, pandemic federal funding helped provide free school meals for all students, which studies have shown significantly impact children’s physical and cognitive development, but that program ended in 2022. A change in eligibility by the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in September will make millions of additional students in schools serving low-income communities eligible to receive breakfast and lunch at no cost. But many states have had to seek out their own solutions. California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont have already made school meals free to all students regardless of income. Oklahoma is the fifth hungriest state in the country, according to Hunger Free Oklahoma, based on data from the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, which distributes on average 50 million pounds of food each year in central and western Oklahoma. Thirteen percent of families experience food insecurity, or a lack of access to sufficient food, or food of an adequate quality, to meet basic needs (nationally, that number is 11.8 percent). Members of the state’s House proposed a bill to fund free lunches for more students in the state by raising the income threshold. It failed to advance in the state Senate. Local Food for Schools distributes grants between $5,000 and $25,000 to schools that purchase food from local producers. Food that school districts purchase from local farmers and ranchers must be unprocessed or minimally processed and grown or raised within 400 miles of the school district to qualify for reimbursement. Jeff Dewitt, the CFO for Tuttle Public Schools, said his small school district about 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City started buying pork products through the program last year to raise the quality of its breakfasts for students. Dewitt said rates from bigger, wholesale producers have been steadily increasing, and the savings Tuttle schools by buying locally-sourced food went far beyond the $5,000 they were reimbursed through the program. “It’s an incredible deal for us,” Dewitt said. “Everything is more expensive right now, and to be able to save anywhere right now is so important.” Dewitt said since the end of the pandemic-era program that offered free school meals to everyone, debt from unpaid school lunches has also been on the rise in the district. Nationally, public school meal debt reaches $262 million annually as 30.4 million students can’t afford their school meals. Nearly 70 percent of schools surveyed by the Education Data Initiative in 2022-2023 said they have unpaid school lunch debt. Schools that cannot pay off meal debts usually write off the debts as an operating loss, though some schools may look to state, local, or charitable sources to try to offset the meal debt. A nationwide survey by the School Nutrition Association found the end of universal free meals caused unpaid lunch debt to increase in 93 percent of the hundreds of school districts that responded. Responding school districts reported $19.2 million in total unpaid meal debt, though the amount per district varied widely, according to the SNA survey. At El Reno Public Schools, about 30 minutes west of Oklahoma City, cafeteria debt is up 15 percent from before COVID-19, said Jeff Edwards, El Reno’s director of child nutrition. “I’ve got some kids that don’t eat school lunches because they know their parents can’t afford it,” Edwards said. “Those types of kids we’re sending home with backpacks and sending them to food banks, and we’re trying to help as many families as we can. We have seen an increase in food anxiety for those families.” Dewitt credits the local food program in helping Tuttle schools pay down some of its debt from unpaid school lunches. Dewitt said school meals are often the most dependable source of daily nutrition. “We see the same kids day in and day out eating at school and we know they depend on that,” Dewitt said. “Every little bit helps us feed these kids and offset those costs.” In early October, Oklahoma state representative John Waldron announced he would commission an interim study focused on free school lunches and their impact on child nutrition. The study would explore recent developments in school lunch programs and assess the potential cost of expanding eligibility for Free and Reduced Lunch programs. A challenge that remains for most of the schools partnering with local producers is handling the logistics of deliveries to the schools and payments from the schools. Several producers partner with the OKC Food Hub, a nonprofit in the Oklahoma City metro area that helps facilitate not only the deliveries to the school but also makes sure the producers are paid by the schools. Jenna Moore, the executive director of OKC Food Hub, said a large part of why it’s important to partner with local producers is not only because of the added health benefits of fresher food, but also because it helps to strengthen the local food supply chain. “Items are not sitting in a warehouse for a long time, they are picked the day before and delivered the next day,” Moore said. “We think this is a path to creating a more resilient system that will also create better and more farming jobs.” Jennifer Hernandez, 46, holds her granddaughter Jada as they deliver a package of beef sticks that will go to an Oklahoma school as part of the local food for local schools program. Photo by Adam Kemp, PBS NewsHour For Jennifer Hernandez, 46, it’s also a path to keep her family farm in business well into the future. Holding her granddaughter Jada in her arms as she drops off beef sticks from her ranch, Hernandez said she thinks about how the program could someday benefit the 6-month-old — by helping to keep the family ranch open, but also by feeding kids like her at school. “It’s always pained me that Oklahoma is an ag state and we produce a lot of food but hardly any of that food is consumed by us,” Hernandez said. “Finding a way to bridge that financial gap and get some good food to our kids is so important. We lack in so many areas, let’s rise here.” By — Adam Kemp Adam Kemp Adam Kemp is a Communities Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour based in Oklahoma.
Dropping the door to the trailer hitched to his pickup, Brandon Crow steered a forklift to unload boxes of okra, squash, cucumbers and cantaloupe. He arranged each stack next to a small paper sign with a local school name on it. Riverside Indian School, with less than 200 students, gets one or two boxes. Much larger stacks are set aside to go to places like Shawnee School District, which has more than 3,000 total students districtwide. Crow Farms sells to local school districts in the state as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s expanded Local Food for Schools program in Oklahoma, which connects school districts with local farmers and ranchers to purchase locally-grown food. The program, which launched in the state last spring, is funded through a $3 million cooperative agreement with Oklahoma’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. Similar programs run in states like Texas, New York and California. Brandon Crow delivers boxes of okra, squash, cucumbers and cantaloupe that will used to feed children in Oklahoma schools as part of a local food for local schools program. Photo by Adam Kemp, PBS NewsHour For Crow and his family farm business, which normally retails through farmers’ markets and small grocery stores, every last sale counts. “In the past as school starts, we slow down because people have more activities going on and are busier,” Crow said. “But now that we are selling to schools, business is still going strong and It’s a great way to extend our season and make more money.” More than 45 school districts in Oklahoma are taking advantage of the USDA program to buy meats, produce and livestock from local producers to help feed their children and reduce the cost of school lunches, which have risen thanks to inflation at the same time pandemic-era funding to subsidize school meals has ended. Chris Bernard, the president of Hunger Free Oklahoma, a nonprofit advocacy group that helps provide access to affordable and nutritious food, said families came to rely on free lunches at a time when inflation, rising home costs and a lack of affordable housing have made situations for many families even worse now than it was in the beginning of the pandemic. “This is one place that they thought they’d have support and now they’ve lost it,” he said. “So you’re seeing schools rack up a lot more school lunch debt in a lot of communities and trying to figure out how to help these families and not punish these kids. At the same time, families have to make sacrifices either here or somewhere else.” For two years, pandemic federal funding helped provide free school meals for all students, which studies have shown significantly impact children’s physical and cognitive development, but that program ended in 2022. A change in eligibility by the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in September will make millions of additional students in schools serving low-income communities eligible to receive breakfast and lunch at no cost. But many states have had to seek out their own solutions. California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont have already made school meals free to all students regardless of income. Oklahoma is the fifth hungriest state in the country, according to Hunger Free Oklahoma, based on data from the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, which distributes on average 50 million pounds of food each year in central and western Oklahoma. Thirteen percent of families experience food insecurity, or a lack of access to sufficient food, or food of an adequate quality, to meet basic needs (nationally, that number is 11.8 percent). Members of the state’s House proposed a bill to fund free lunches for more students in the state by raising the income threshold. It failed to advance in the state Senate. Local Food for Schools distributes grants between $5,000 and $25,000 to schools that purchase food from local producers. Food that school districts purchase from local farmers and ranchers must be unprocessed or minimally processed and grown or raised within 400 miles of the school district to qualify for reimbursement. Jeff Dewitt, the CFO for Tuttle Public Schools, said his small school district about 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City started buying pork products through the program last year to raise the quality of its breakfasts for students. Dewitt said rates from bigger, wholesale producers have been steadily increasing, and the savings Tuttle schools by buying locally-sourced food went far beyond the $5,000 they were reimbursed through the program. “It’s an incredible deal for us,” Dewitt said. “Everything is more expensive right now, and to be able to save anywhere right now is so important.” Dewitt said since the end of the pandemic-era program that offered free school meals to everyone, debt from unpaid school lunches has also been on the rise in the district. Nationally, public school meal debt reaches $262 million annually as 30.4 million students can’t afford their school meals. Nearly 70 percent of schools surveyed by the Education Data Initiative in 2022-2023 said they have unpaid school lunch debt. Schools that cannot pay off meal debts usually write off the debts as an operating loss, though some schools may look to state, local, or charitable sources to try to offset the meal debt. A nationwide survey by the School Nutrition Association found the end of universal free meals caused unpaid lunch debt to increase in 93 percent of the hundreds of school districts that responded. Responding school districts reported $19.2 million in total unpaid meal debt, though the amount per district varied widely, according to the SNA survey. At El Reno Public Schools, about 30 minutes west of Oklahoma City, cafeteria debt is up 15 percent from before COVID-19, said Jeff Edwards, El Reno’s director of child nutrition. “I’ve got some kids that don’t eat school lunches because they know their parents can’t afford it,” Edwards said. “Those types of kids we’re sending home with backpacks and sending them to food banks, and we’re trying to help as many families as we can. We have seen an increase in food anxiety for those families.” Dewitt credits the local food program in helping Tuttle schools pay down some of its debt from unpaid school lunches. Dewitt said school meals are often the most dependable source of daily nutrition. “We see the same kids day in and day out eating at school and we know they depend on that,” Dewitt said. “Every little bit helps us feed these kids and offset those costs.” In early October, Oklahoma state representative John Waldron announced he would commission an interim study focused on free school lunches and their impact on child nutrition. The study would explore recent developments in school lunch programs and assess the potential cost of expanding eligibility for Free and Reduced Lunch programs. A challenge that remains for most of the schools partnering with local producers is handling the logistics of deliveries to the schools and payments from the schools. Several producers partner with the OKC Food Hub, a nonprofit in the Oklahoma City metro area that helps facilitate not only the deliveries to the school but also makes sure the producers are paid by the schools. Jenna Moore, the executive director of OKC Food Hub, said a large part of why it’s important to partner with local producers is not only because of the added health benefits of fresher food, but also because it helps to strengthen the local food supply chain. “Items are not sitting in a warehouse for a long time, they are picked the day before and delivered the next day,” Moore said. “We think this is a path to creating a more resilient system that will also create better and more farming jobs.” Jennifer Hernandez, 46, holds her granddaughter Jada as they deliver a package of beef sticks that will go to an Oklahoma school as part of the local food for local schools program. Photo by Adam Kemp, PBS NewsHour For Jennifer Hernandez, 46, it’s also a path to keep her family farm in business well into the future. Holding her granddaughter Jada in her arms as she drops off beef sticks from her ranch, Hernandez said she thinks about how the program could someday benefit the 6-month-old — by helping to keep the family ranch open, but also by feeding kids like her at school. “It’s always pained me that Oklahoma is an ag state and we produce a lot of food but hardly any of that food is consumed by us,” Hernandez said. “Finding a way to bridge that financial gap and get some good food to our kids is so important. We lack in so many areas, let’s rise here.”