Free and reduced-price meals are at the center of the National School
Lunch Program. Unfortunately, the current enrollment system leaves
many low-income students out of the program and leaves cafeterias
spending as much time on paperwork as they do on cooking. The good
news is that there are a number of bills on the table right now that
hope to decrease the administrative burden for schools and increase
access to free meals for low-income children.

 - The Paperless Enrollment Act for School Meals of 2009 would amend
the National School Lunch Act to give schools an alternative to
processing applications for free and reduced-price lunches
- The School Meal Enhancement Act of 2009 would make Philadelphia's
paperless free meal program available to schools in other low-income
areas.
- The Hunger Free Schools Act of 2009 would require school districts
to use data from Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance
Program to directly certify low-income students for free meals, and
would require states that directly certify less than 95 percent of
these students to implement corrective action plans. The bill would
also give schools an alternative to processing applications for free
and reduced-price meals.

 Currently, school districts use paper applications to determine the
number of students eligible for subsidized meals. The federal
reimbursements they receive for each kind of meal — free,
reduced-price or paid — are based on the number of each type sold. But
processing all those applications is costly, and families don’t always
fill them out. That means many low-income students are left out of the
program, and cafeteria directors don’t get all the reimbursements they
could potentially receive. All three of the bills above would allow
schools to serve free meals to all students for a period of five years
and receive reimbursements based on socioeconomic data, rather than
student applications. Reimbursement would be based on the total number
of meals served multiplied by the percentage of students eligible for
free or reduced-price meals.

 Hunger advocates love universal feeding because it opens access to
nutrition programs. Programs like the one in Philadelphia allow every
child to receive a free lunch, even those whose parents forget to fill
out forms and applications. But these bills are also important because
they lighten the burden on some cafeterias, freeing up staff and
money. In districts with high numbers of low-income students, very few
students pay for meals to begin with. Making all meals free increases
participation substantially, and in many cases the accompanying
increase in reimbursements more than offsets the revenue lost from
eliminating paid meals. On top of that, the cafeteria no longer wastes
time and money processing applications.

 The National School Lunch Program has so many regulations that
cafeteria directors spend more time processing numbers and filing
papers than they do feeding children nutritious meals. Universal
feeding not only ensures that every child gets to eat lunch, it also
ensures that cafeterias can really concentrate on preparing that
lunch.

 (Cross posted from Schoollunchtalk.com)