Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

Floor Speech

Madam Speaker, I am very proud that the legislation before us includes Important new options for high-poverty schools to provide free meals to all students. These new options, known as community eligibility, will reduce hassles for schools and stigma for students. They will allow schools serving our poorest communities to throw open the cafeteria doors and focus on serving the healthiest possible meals to all their students.

Right now, low-income children who qualify for free school lunches have to apply for this program and prove that they are eligible. Schools then have to process the paperwork and certify that the children qualify. But the community eligibility provisions in this bill minimize all that paperwork both for children and for schools. In schools where there are large numbers of children who qualify for free school lunches, schools would have the option to provide free school lunches to all the children in the school. This option is much more efficient--children don't have to worry about whether they qualify for the program, their parents don't have to complete the paperwork, and school personnel can focus on providing the children with the best education instead of processing paperwork. This is a better way and it's the children that benefit the most.

Low-income children contend with so many stressors in their lives, whether it's violence and addiction in their neighborhoods, parents who are working long hours for the basic necessities of living, or the stress children experience when they don't have enough to eat. The community eligibility provision in this bill makes our most disadvantaged children's lives a little easier by transforming their lunchtime experience from one of stress and stigma, to one of easy access to the food they need to develop to their fullest potential. These options are designed to be simple and easy to adopt. USDA must make it as seamless as possible for high-poverty schools to avail themselves of these new options.

The bill that we passed out of the House Committee on Education and Labor directed USDA to provide outreach and informational materials on these new options to local educational agencies and schools in which a significant portion of students are eligible for free or reduced price meals, including those receiving funds for school improvement under section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965. But USDA does not need new authority to reach out to these schools and facilitate their use of community eligibility. Therefore I urge USDA to set policies that welcome high-poverty schools into these options and provide the support and materials to facilitate their implementation.

S. 3307 also includes a demonstration project to explore the use of Medicaid data for automatic enrollment for free school meals. Due to limited funds, the demonstration project in S. 3307 focuses on the use of Medicaid data by selected school districts around the country. However, I urge USDA to use alternative authority to allow California to conduct a statewide demonstration directly certifying children for free school meals based on Medicaid data. California's sophisticated data matching system is fully capable of conducting statewide matches to directly certify these children. A rigorous evaluation of such a demonstration project would help other states implement statewide direct certification using Medicaid data.

I must also express my deep regret that this bill is partly funded by reducing SNAP benefits. Although I support passage of this legislation, I oppose the SNAP cuts it contains, will work to reverse them, and will strongly oppose any further cuts to SNAP benefits.

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