Policies with the Biggest Impact on Child Hunger

On Thursday, the House Education Committee voted with unanimous, bipartisan support for our priority bills to give families and schools the tools needed to provide free school meals to students who need them most.

HB 1878 will increase the number of high poverty, high need schools that provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students and will ensure that participating schools are reimbursed at the highest federal meal reimbursement rate with a mix of state and federal funding.

HB 1833 will give schools and families an online, accessible option to complete school meal applications or household income surveys to collect the data that schools need to receive reimbursements for school meals as well as state, federal, and local education resources.

Since the start of the pandemic, federal waivers have made it possible for every school to provide free meals without collecting paper applications, but those waivers will end unless Congress acts now to extend USDA’s authority to grant nationwide waivers so our child nutrition programs can be responsive to the operational challenges that continue to burden schools and service providers due to the pandemic. These two bills will help us maintain funding and flexibility to provide this service seamlessly for our most vulnerable kids.

We thank the members of the House Education Committee for recognizing that feeding kids is a Washington value and an important investment for our collective future.

Meanwhile, in the other Washington, we are continuing to advocate for the inclusion of child nutrition priorities in Build Back Better, the federal family and jobs infrastructure bill that is getting a refresh in the Senate. These priorities would ensure year-round, consistent access to healthy meals for kids. Build Back Better must also include the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Both universal school meals and the CTC have been put to the test this past year and have shown dramatic impact in reducing child hunger. Just six months of CTC payments have dropped child hunger rates by 20% and studies show that direct cash transfer payments like the CTC are spent primarily on putting food on the table and paying for other household necessities.

There are opportunities on the table for state legislators in Olympia and for Congress in DC to make these once in a lifetime investments that will help us end child hunger once and for all, and lawmakers need to hear this from you so don’t delay in taking action today!

Upcoming Events

Feburary 7: Hunger Action Day

This is your lobby day to meet in online appointments with your legislators to support anti-hunger and anti-poverty priorities.

Register here. Registration will close at noon, February 4.

Feburary 1-3: Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Days

Register here.

What You Can Do