SCOTT COUNTY, Ky. — For almost two years now, families with children in public schools didn’t have to think about lunches. The free meals began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

What You Need To Know

  • For nearly two years, school districts have received pandemic waivers

  • The waivers helped serve meals to students for free

  • Congress passed a $1.5 trillion funding bill that doesn’t cover the extension of the waivers

  • Pandemic waivers will end in June

 

But that could all change, with the pandemic wavier end date approaching soon.

Congress moved forward with a new $1.5 trillion funding bill earlier this month, but it doesn’t include any extensions to cover the meals that schools have provided here not only in Kentucky, but across the country for free.

“They’ve had breakfast and lunch served to ‘em free for the past two years, and it’s been a little bit of stability in their life and we’re about to lose that,” said Mitzi Marshall, the Director of School Nutritional Services.

It’s Marshall and her crew’s responsibility at the Scott County Schools to feed students daily.

“We have around 10,000 students in the district and over 75% of our lunch eaters in the school,” Marshall said.

She’s calling for an extension of the pandemic waivers.

“They need this waiver in order to not pay for lunches for the next school year. They need a break somewhere. They’re not getting it from the economy. It needs to come here. We need to be the one thing that they are secure in knowing is that their children are fed,” Marshall said.

So they’re asking Congress to act.

“We’ve got this high inflation. We’ve got all kinds of things hitting families all at once. All we asked was that this be continued for one more year,” Marshall said.

It’s easing the burden that families are experiencing, something Madison County School District Food Services Director Scott Anderson sees first hand.

“We’re getting ready to go back to what we were doing before the pandemic and that’s going to cause a lot of problems for not just Madison County but Scott County and other districts throughout the state of Kentucky and national,” Anderson said.

The problem is much bigger, Anderson explains.

“We’re having trouble getting food. So it goes back to acquiring food. Those types of things. We’re paying more for food and the distribution and amount of food that we are able to acquire is difficult,” Anderson said.

It’s harder to get food.

“So before the pandemic, we didn’t have supply chain issues, we didn’t have food costs rising, we didn’t have the short, the shortages of labor, it’s hard to get workers, long hours, those types of things so right now the cost of everything has greatly increased,” Anderson said.

The pandemic waivers are expected to expire at the end of June, if no action is taken and that could affect meals for summer school programs in different districts.

Nationally, the School Nutrition Association is also pleading for Congress to take immediate action to extend pandemic waivers for school meal programs. 

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