KSHB 41 reporter Olivia Acree covers portions of Johnson County, Kansas. Share your story idea with Olivia.
A push to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal school meal program, could hit families and school districts in Kansas.
In the Shawnee Mission School District, one in five students gets free meals through SNAP. Right now, those students are automatically enrolled if they receive government assistance like Medicaid.
A new federal budget proposal could make access more complicated, and according to Grace Liss, the SMSD Director of Food Service, it may hurt more than just families.
“When we have less number that qualify for free and reduced meals, that affects our state funding too. So not just for the food service department, but for the district on a whole, they may receive less at-risk funding because of the fact that we have a less number of free and reduced students," said Liss.
The funding cuts total$12 billion. It would reduce the number of free meals available and make the process and paperwork more difficult.
Liss said that if fewer families get benefits, the district could also see more bad debt from unpaid meals, plus a loss in state at-risk funding tied to meal program numbers. Also, if students who need free meals don’t meet the new requirements or families don’t know how to navigate the new paperwork, that doesn’t mean that these families aren’t in need.
“Changing the requirements of Medicaid and SNAP means it doesn't mean that these families don't still need school meal benefits,” said Liss. “It just means that the families now have the burden of doing additional paperwork. So we're becoming less efficient.”
For now, school officials are waiting to see what happens with the proposal and urging lawmakers to consider the real-life impact on students and schools.
Public schools will never deny a student a meal, but if a student’s unpaid balance is more than $75 at the start of summer, the family is sent to collections, and the district has to pay for the meals using its own budget.
“We feed them a reimbursable meal, regardless of whether they have money or not. So yes, if less families are getting directly certified, less families are qualifying for meal benefits, there is a high likelihood that our negative balances will be higher than they are,” said Liss.