'I worry about what happens next year:' Federal waivers that decreased childhood hunger end soon

When schools shut down in March 2020, nutrition programs stepped up. The U.S. Department of Agriculture granted seemingly endless waivers for schools to keep students fed — allowing them to feed every child, regardless of the family's income, and take food off-site, as congregate settings weren't safe with a largely unknown virus moving through the country. And in the weeks and months that followed, childhood hunger decreased. Data released last month from the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey showed roughly 20 percent of at-risk households with children reported food insecurity in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as those nutrition programs expanded, that number decreased by about 7 percent by last summer. Eleni Towns, associate director of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said community and school food programs were able to transform to meet the needs brought on by the pandemic. "In the beginning (of the pandemic), we were all really scared about the impacts of the pandemic," Towns said. "And while they were severe, they were in no way what could have been without the expansion of these programs." Locally, Second Harvest Food Bank President and CEO Julie Chase-Morefield saw the number of families with children served by its distributions decrease throughout the pandemic, with the majority of that drop when the child tax credit was in place. During fiscal year 2019, about 45.2 percent of its households served had children, but now in 2022, that has decreased to 39.6 percent of households. "We have definitely seen a marked decrease in the number of children and the number of families with children," she said. "And that trend is reversing itself as all these extra supports go away. It's all going to kind of happen at the same time and unfortunately, it's high gas prices and high food costs along with everything else. So all those things are going to go away, but it's not like you're going back to what 2019 was with 2019 prices. You're going back to 2022 prices, and that's going to be a huge burden on families." 'Our children ate' Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, school meal programs were need-based. For districts like Lorain Schools, every student qualified for free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the high school under the USDA's Community Eligibility Provision for schools serving low-income areas. To qualify for CEP, each building must have more than 40 percent of its students qualify for free meals on their own. At Lorain Schools, well over 80 percent of Lorain's students qualify for free meals based on familial income, Aramark General Manager Frank Horvatich said. "When the sky opened up and everything went to COVID and the schools started shutting down, we were told on Thursday that starting Monday the kids would not be here and we had to figure out how to feed them," he said. "So our weekend was a little busy." At first, Lorain Schools' Aramark employees set up meal sites at Longfellow, Southview and General Johnnie Wilson middle schools, but it was quickly apparent that transportation problems throughout the community were hindering families' abilities to pick up food for their students. From there, they transitioned to the bus-stop model — loading food onto Aramark trucks and driving the bus routes throughout the city, stopping at corners to distribute food. Horvatich led the winding neighborhood routes, a megaphone in hand, encouraging residents to come to each stop. Waivers allowed them to give multiple days' work of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks to anyone 18 and younger — including meals over weekends and holidays, and for community members to pick up for multiple families at a time. They coupled with Second Harvest Food Bank sites at the middle schools to extend distributions into the evening, allowing families to pick up the prepared multi-meal packs, and Second Harvest boxes and produce. "The people were so grateful, very grateful … every single one would thank us. They all were wonderful," said Bambi Dillon, a longtime Lorain Schools volunteer, including with the schools' food pantry. Horvatich agreed. "There were times the line was incredible," he said. "And the people were so appreciative." But part of the waivers ending this year include the ability to take meals off-site, or for schools or community centers to give out multiple meals at once. Now, Lorain Schools can still offer meals to students this summer, but the students must come to the buildings and eat it there — forcing families to find transportation to and from the district's summer learning programs and requiring staff to manage students coming to the various sites rather than loading boxes into the trunk of cars in a drive-thru line. During that same time, participation in the district's food pantry, supplied by the Second Harvest Food Bank, skyrocketed. Waivers allowed volunteers to give food to anyone who came through the drive-thru. For 2021, Lorain Schools' pantry served 3,157 households totaling more than 10,000 people. Of those served, 7,447 were minor children. Dillon said they went from having 150 attendees at a pantry to 400 to 500. "When you look at our numbers of children, I would in my heart of hearts, I would say our children ate," said Jeff Keruski, Lorain Schools' executive director of Family and Community Engagement. "We were providing them with multiple days of meals, which is a beautiful thing because families were struggling, right? Families could not go out." Chase-Morefield remembers traffic gridlocks at Elyria High School and Black River Landing, when more than 800 cars came through their distribution. In April 2020 alone, Second Harvest was unable to categorize the 135,000 people in Lorain County it served that month — it was too chaotic, and they couldn't put the information into the system. She said at some of the school's distributions, Aramark employees were on one side of a car and Second Harvest volunteers were on the other, just loading up families with food. "People would show up just because they knew (Lorain Schools meal boxes) were there," she said. 'It feels like a no-brainer' Elyria Schools faced similar hurdles as Lorain Schools, but without the benefit of qualifying for completely free meals based on districtwide income. Elyria Schools Aramark General Manager Lauryn Palgut said the district provides free breakfast for all kindergarten through eighth graders outside of the pandemic, with some buildings qualifying for free lunch as well based on community income. But as buildings shuttered during the start of the pandemic, Elyria Schools soon was able to feed every student, regardless of their family's income or what building they attended. Adults were able to pick up seven breakfasts, lunches and dinners in one distribution, rather than coming to get one meal every day, she said. "There's been a lot of lobbying at the state level, at the national level really trying to advocate for these kids because there are so many families – we know this subjectively and objectively — are borderline," Palgut said. "So whether mom or dad or grandma or grandpa have lost their job during the pandemic or whether they were kind of borderline for qualifying for free meals prior to the pandemic, we know a lot of folks have faced a lot of financial hardship over the past two years. So there are a lot of families who are really going to be hurting if that free meal waiver does not get renewed next year. And as it stands right now, it's not looking like it will, which is really unfortunate." After two years of free meals, Elyria Schools is in the midst of reeducating families on applying for free/reduced lunches and getting ready to accept an influx of applications after July 1. "It's been such a blessing for the past two years, not even just because it's alleviated a lot of administrative burden. … The big thing is a lot of people are like 'Oh well, I've gotten meals for free for two years, I'm not going to fill out this application,' and now we're going to have to be (urging people to apply)." Chase-Morefield agreed with Palgut's concerns. "I worry about what happens next year when the free lunch program (is not there)," she said. "There are kids who are just not going to be eligible. But then you're also talking to parents who you have to sign up for all those programs, and it's something you haven't done in several years." The school meal waivers were at times coupled with expansions to benefit programs including SNAP and EBT, with those set to roll back to pre-pandemic levels in mid-July. There are concerns that without those myriad waivers in place, kids will go without meals, or families will turn to cheap, fast-food alternatives or whatever is available at their local convenience store. "The reality is, if you don't have a car, your access to food is probably limited to the convenience stores near where you live," Chase-Morefield said. "I see people going into Family Dollar and Dollar General and coming out with their groceries … that's heavily processed food. There's not a lot of fruits and vegetables in that." Towns, joined by other advocates against childhood hunger, have lobbied Congress to see the waivers continued. While it may be too late to keep summer meal programs the same as last year, there's still time to continue to feed every child during the school year, regardless of the family's income. "It feels like a no-brainer to us. I think we among thousands of organizations across the country were really shocked to see that Congress didn't take action," Towns said. "There was bipartisan and strong support for extending the waivers and our concern is that it really sort of got lost in the larger shuffle at the federal level and wasn't included when it should have been." She urged Ohioans to contact their congressional leaders and ask them to expand the National School Lunch Program waivers before they expire for the 2022-23 school year. Food bank feels the crunch Chase-Morefield has worked with food pantries since 1998 — providing services through multiple recessions — but has never seen anything like what is happening in 2022 with families taking hit after hit with rising food costs, rising fuel costs and overall instability. Even Second Harvest is feeling the crunch. Supply chain issues have affected how long it takes for purchased food to reach the food bank, as well as the amount it receives in donations from retailers. The amount of food it receives from federal allocations has also dropped by 50 percent, and she expects commodity prices to continue to rise in the fall as crops are impacted by an increase in fertilizer prices and compounded shipping costs. "There isn't a quick resolution, that's where it's extremely concerning," she said. She expects to see an increase in families turning to the food bank to make ends meet, as many benefit programs — including free or reduced lunch programs in schools — are based on incomes less than 180 percent of the federal poverty level. "The gaps that we see, the people that have the most struggles, are the people who typically didn't have any benefits, she said. "Those are the families that we worry about the most, that we're going to see really serious challenges." Palgut agreed that it doesn't seem like any of the ongoing issues facing nutritional programs will clear soon, but said there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel. "The thing that I remind myself of especially on the most challenging days, or the days where we get an email that tells us there's 30 things on our food order that are out of stock, is like, we're still feeding kids," she said. "Even on the most challenging days this year, we fed the kids that wanted to get fed … eventually we have to get back to normal. I'm pretty confident in that." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.