School Meals Assistance Proposals to be included in Broader House Corona Legislative Package

As the House votes as early as today on another funding and policy package related to COVID-19, we wanted to flag that the package of legislation to provide relief to states and localities will contain two bills aimed at offering school districts increased flexibilities in administering the federal school meal programs

The first bill is a bipartisan proposal led by Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and James Komer (R-KY ) - dubbed the COVID–19 Child Nutrition Response Act - and would enable the Department of Ed to offer school officials waivers to distribute food in any number of settings across all nutrition programs, and allow for flexibilities around the nutritional provisions of the national school lunch and breakfast programs. The second piece of legislation led by Ilhan Omar (D-MN) - titled the Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students (MEALS) Act - would wave existing requirement that prevents the Department of Agriculture from approving state waiver requests that result in increased costs to the federal government. Check out the full details here.

AASA will keep you abreast of this evolving issue and continue advocating for additional federal support to schools as they're impacted by the Coronavirus.