Millions of children could lose free school meals: USDA cancels $1 billion in funds for student lunches and food banks
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More bad news out of the federal government this week, and its only Tuesday: The Trump administration and its chaotic Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are now turning their sights on kids school lunches, the latest casualty in the administrations war on the federal governments budget. Millions of children could lose free school meals, the School Nutrition Association (SNA) said in a statement, as a result of the $1 billion in cuts to the Department of Agriculture(USDA). That means about $660 million of those funds will no longer go to feeding needy children in schools and childcare facilities, set up through the LocalFoodfor Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. Those funds were meant to purchase healthy, local,and regional foods for school meals, supplied by local farmers and ranchers. Also cut: federal funds to purchase from those farmers for food banks and other organizations.These proposals [come] . . . at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs, said Shannon Gleave, president of the SNA. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.According to the SNA, one proposed cut to the Community Eligibility Provision would eliminate free meals available to some 12 million students in 24,000 schools nationwide, all with high-poverty rates.This is all bad news for our nations children and parents, as well as teachers and schools, which are already reeling from the administrations efforts to dismantle the Department of Education, which Trump has attacked, calling it a big con job.Its also another blow to American families, who are already reeling from the rising cost of food and having to increasingly turn to food banks, while Republicanspush for more cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for those with the lowest incomes, according to the Guardian.
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