School Lunches

Pickerington Schools and Groveport Madison Schools have joined the Community Eligibility Provision to provide free meals to all students.

School children in eight states can now eat free meals and advocates are urging Congress to extend free meals to all kids nationwide.

The federally funded Pandemic-Electronic Benefit Transfer program was created to support families who count on free and reduced-cost lunch programs when schools went virtual in 2020. The program ends with the current school year.

Public schools across Ohio have seen numbers of meals provided to kids plummet since the waiver expired and parents, advocates and politicians are seeking solutions to feed kids.

There are two resolutions before the Ohio State Board of Education that pertain to free breakfast and lunch programs for students.

Thanks to a pandemic program, over the past two years about 90% of schools were able to serve free meals to all students regardless of income. We take a look at the lessons learned from the two-year experiment in universal free school meals.

President Biden signed The Keep Kids Fed Act last week. It extends pandemic flexibilities for school meals, although with some changes.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a survey this month that showed over 90% of midwest schools used waivers to serve free meals to students throughout the pandemic. But those waivers are set to expire this summer.

The USDA has extended the summer food service program to allow schools that have been providing meals to low-income kids through the summer to continue...

Parents of K-12 students in Ohio who receive free or reduced school meals will soon see a Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer – or P-EBT – card in the mail. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is sending the P-EBT cards to make up for the 53 days of school breakfasts and lunches students missed out on when the state’s public schools went virtual in March. Families will receive one card for every student in the free meals program. Each card will have $302 or $231, depending on when the student enrolled in the program.