Massive USDA program cuts hit some Catholic efforts to feed school kids

PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) -- Several diocesan overseers of federally funded school meal programs told OSV News that Trump administration changes stand to leave some children's plates empty, while potentially making surviving versions of the programs too burdensome to operate.

In mid-March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would cut two programs that together offered more than $1 billion in funding for schools and food banks to purchase directly from local farms and producers. The Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, operating in 40 states, represented about $660 million of that total for this year. The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement involved another $420 million used by food banks and other local groups to serve people who would otherwise go hungry.

The local foods program enhanced the USDA's National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program. The former was established under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, which President Harry Truman signed into law in 1946. The latter, originally a pilot project launched in 1966, was made a permanent social support program in 1975 by Congress.

Both programs -- which seek to enhance educational outcomes by ensuring children in schools are properly nourished -- provide nutritionally balanced meals at minimal or no cost. Federal funds for meals are administered by state agencies, which in turn operate the programs through agreements with school nutrition officials.

The local food for schools program "was a win-win for the schools, food banks ... as well as the farmers and producers," Lizanne Hagedorn, executive director of Nutritional Development Service, or NDS, of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, told OSV News.

For NDS, the loss amounts to "between $500,000 and $600,000 that we will not be receiving," she said.

Hagedorn also expressed confusion as to why the program, which she said enabled "fresh or minimally processed food" to be served to children, was no longer being supported by an administration whose Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has prioritized eliminating processed foods from the nation's diet.

In a statement emailed to OSV News late March 24, a USDA spokesperson said, "These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency."

The statement noted the two programs being terminated were "pandemic-era," adding, "The COVID era is over -- USDA's approach to nutrition programs will reflect that reality moving forward. ... With 16 robust nutrition programs in place, USDA remains focused on its core mission: strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets, and ensuring access to nutritious food."

Sister Ann Middlebrooks -- a member of the Sisters of the Eucharistic Covenant and associate superintendent for curriculum and child nutrition at the Diocese of Shreveport, Louisiana -- told OSV News the closure of the program would be felt in her schools, which "serve about 1,000 kids a day, breakfast and lunch."

"It's going to impact me greatly," said Sister Ann. "My total food budget is right under $200,000, and $38,000 of that was local farm to school (funds) that I was able to use over the last couple of years. That's going to make a big impact for me this next school year."

Sister Ann said she would have to look at "switching up some menus," while trying "to figure out how we're not going to kill the budget with not having these resources."

"Nutritionally, I don't see it really as a big hit," she said. "It's just that it's more work and money to recreate new menus now."

She said that "preliminary figures right now are indicating" she will "have to increase paid lunch prices, which for those who are on the borderline as far as finances go ... it will affect their participation, because some families will be on the cusp where they're going to be maxed out or they're already maxed out.

"And going up 10, 15 cents -- whatever it is per meal that's going to be required -- it's really going to impact them," said Sister Ann.

Gerald J. Wutkowski, Jr., communications director for the Archdiocese of New York's superintendent of schools office, told OSV News by email that the local food program closure has not yet impaired the archdiocesan child nutrition program, which operates in 40 schools and on average serves 14,000 meals daily, including 6,500 breakfasts and 7,500 lunches.

However, said Wutkowski, "our primary concern would be changes to the eligibility criteria for students to participate in meal programs, such as raising family income and poverty thresholds."

Hagedorn and David Stier, assistant director for community relations at NDS, echoed those fears, pointing to lawmaker calls to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, of the school meals programs.

That provision allows the nation's highest poverty schools and districts to serve federally funded breakfasts and lunches to all enrolled students, without collecting household applications. Participating schools receive reimbursements through a formula calculating the percentage of eligible students based on their participation in other forms of aid, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

In a March 12 letter, Hagedorn urged Archdiocese of Philadelphia school families to advocate for continuation of the CEP, saying the proposed rule changes under congressional consideration "would make it much harder for schools to qualify for CEP and leave many children without access to nutritious meals they would not be able to obtain otherwise."

She noted in her letter that CEP "removes the need for complicated meal applications and income verification, reducing administrative burdens" while promoting "fairness and efficiency in meal service."

Hagedorn told OSV News her agency uses the CEP "quite effectively" at 99 schools, and estimated the proposed CEP cut would negatively affect 8,000 of the students NDS serves at present.

Along with saving money, the CEP "eliminates stigma and ensures no child falls through the cracks," wrote Hagedorn in her March 12 letter. "Many working families who don't qualify for traditional meal programs still struggle to afford school meals."

Cuts to the CEP would require processing "thousands of applications" and income verification for school meal programs, with paperwork in the schools her agency serves needing to be translated into Spanish, Chinese and additional languages, Hagedorn said.

If income verification were required for all school meal recipients, she and her staff would be faced with processing as many as 26,000 applications, a task that would "exceed our current capacity," she said.

"We would have to hire extra staffing," Stier said. "And the reimbursement for meals is razor thin."

Collection of income verification data would also require program administrators to ensure any sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, was properly safeguarded, adding to the administrative and risk management overhead, Stier and Hagedorn said.

Sister Ann said that while the school meals program in her diocese is "small," income verifications for all participants in larger dioceses "could be very burdensome."

Wutkowski said that any "delays in payment or cuts to the federal portion of our reimbursement for the meals served … would be highly detrimental to our ability to operate our program in the same manner that we currently do."

Eliminating the CEP "is set up so that people will drop off the rolls, and (so) that there will be fewer meals given out to students," said Stier. "So they (the administration) are creating a very heavy burden for schools, for families, for organizations like ours and ultimately for children. … There will be children who will go hungry. And there will be many other children who might eat, but the food they eat will not be healthy. They'll probably have days when maybe they have full stomachs, and days when they don't. The people who are paying the ultimate price here are the children."

Several states have looked to extend pandemic-era "universal free meals" to students regardless of income. California became the first to enact such legislation, requiring all public schools, county offices of education and charter schools to provide breakfast and lunch to students. However, other states have struggled to secure budget allocations and political consensus for such measures.

The USDA's planned shutdown of programs "will create a massive gap that nonprofit organizations on the front lines of the nation's food insecurity crisis cannot possibly fill," John Berry, president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA, said in a March 21 statement.

While some argue "pandemic-era" programs are no longer necessary, food insecurity continues to grow, he said.

"The USDA's own data paints a stark picture of the nation’s food insecurity crisis,'" he said. "In 2023, more than 18 million households were classified as food insecure, according to the latest USDA Household Food Security Report. This represented 13.5% of U.S. households, a sharp increase from 12.8% in 2022 and 10.2% in 2021."

Stier told OSV News that recent moves to curtail federal school nutrition programs mark a step backward.

"The reason NDS was created was … students at Catholic schools were coming to school hungry, and so it was brought to the attention of leaders in the archdiocese," he said. "Unfortunately, this policy is going to push us much closer to the need that brought us into existence in the first place."