Children pick up their school lunches. A new bill in the Alaska Legislature could provide free breakfast and lunch for all students. (Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
All Alaska students could be provided free breakfast and lunch at school, under a new bill in the Alaska Legislature.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Dibert of Fairbanks prefiled the legislation, House Bill 12, ahead of the legislative session that began on Tuesday. The bill would direct the state to provide sufficient funding to all districts to have breakfast and lunch for any student who requests it, free of cost.
“I’ve seen the effects of feeding our kids, and especially during COVID, when all kids got lunches and breakfast at no cost,” said Dibert, who has been a teacher. “So it was just very enlightening, and I would love to see that again for our families and for our students and for our school staff.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funding allowed schools to provide free meals due to federal waivers. But those funds sunsetted in 2022, resulting in some school districts struggling to fill the gap.
Last year, over half of Alaska’s students — 51% — were eligible for free or reduced price meals. An estimated 46%, or roughly 48,000 students, were enrolled to receive free school meals.
As an elementary school teacher in Fairbanks for 22 years, Dibert said she herself sometimes paid for her students to eat, rather than see them go hungry.
“Over the years, if a student didn’t have enough money, or their bill wasn’t paid, oftentimes I would even pay with my account,” she said. “I don’t know entirely how big those bills got, because I was on the classroom side of it. But I did really not like seeing kids come into the classroom sad that they couldn’t get breakfast or lunch.”
Dibert, who is Koyukon Athabascan, also cited the current Yukon River salmon crash leaving communities and families who subsisted and shared fish going without.
“My grandparents lived out on the Yukon River, and as a child, they would always send us salmon from the Yukon River. And we always would have food on our table, lots of salmon,” she said. “So with no salmon on the Yukon, I know that’s a hardship to feed families, and it’s costly to families. So in that aspect, this bill could be very beneficial to ease the pain there, to help feed kids.”
Education and health researchers point to universal free meals having multiple benefits for students, including improved academic performance, attendance and student health outcomes.
Dibert said the bill is in the beginning stages of the legislative process, so details will be worked out, but she hopes the program would also promote local foods on school menus, like salmon or moose. “It would be working district by district, for sure,” she said. “I don’t want it to be canned, you know, protein, like, one grain, one fruit.”
The allocations to school districts would also vary by region and food prices, she said, accommodating notoriously higher grocery prices in Alaska’s rural areas.
She said funding the proposal could include some federal or municipal contributions as well.
“It’s not that much to have the opportunity to feed our kids,” she said.
Last year, the Legislature axed funding for making reduced-priced lunches free for low-income students, during budget conference negotiations. The estimated $480,000 in funding was to be taken from the Department of Corrections, but lawmakers voted against it.
Once the bill has been formally introduced during a House floor session, it will next be assigned to relevant committees for discussion and debate in the coming weeks.
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