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.