I am once again asking Ohio lawmakers to please just feed the children

Students getting their l lunch at a primary school. (Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

I am once again asking Ohio lawmakers to please just feed the children. For all that is good and decent, at long last, may we please at least just make sure schoolchildren aren’t going hungry?

Pleading for the state government to make sure that Ohio schoolchildren aren’t spending their days dealing with hunger pangs, tired, irritable, distracted, unable to concentrate, unable to learn, well, that has traditionally been an obscene and mind-boggling ask for too many Ohio lawmakers.

They keep declining to do it.

But as my buddy Alexander Pope says, hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Feed Ohio school children. Please. At the very least, feed the children.

So I will continue sounding the call, because I hold the firm and unshakeable, but apparently insane opinion that schoolchildren shouldn’t be going hungry.

They should be fed. All of them. Whatever meals they need.

Student hunger is pervasive in Ohio.

With more than 1.6 million public school students, about 57% of them meet qualifications and are participating in free and reduced lunch programs.

Data from Feeding America shows 1 in 5 Ohio children live in homes that are food insecure. In some counties like Cuyahoga and Adams and Scioto, it’s 1 in 4.

Here’s the rub: A 2023 report from Children’s Defense Fund Ohio found that 1 in 3 children who live in those food insecure homes don’t qualify for free school meals because their households are technically over the 185% of poverty line.

Many others don’t participate for fear of judgment.

This means that hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in Ohio are going hungry during the school day because either they’re not covered or fear the stigma.

Rubbing gravel on the wound, Republicans in U.S. Congress are right now looking at making cuts that would slash national school meal programs, impacting 280,000 Ohio kids.

Bipartisan Ohio Senate bill aims to pay for public school breakfast and lunch

But in Ohio, a new bipartisan bill, Ohio Senate Bill 109, would make sure that no Ohio K-12 student has to go through the day hungry. The legislation sponsored by state Sen. Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Twp., and state Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, would provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to public and chartered nonpublic school students.

During the 2023 Ohio budget season, a proposal for universal school meals was made but was never passed.

Under this cycle’s proposal, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce would be directed to reimburse public and chartered nonpublic schools who participate in the national school breakfast and lunch programs by covering the gap between the federal reimbursements for free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches and those who would be required to pay because they don’t qualify for meal assistance.

The bill lists an appropriation of $300 million to support the state reimbursements. The state operating budget is projected at $108 billion for fiscal year 2026 and $110 billion for fiscal year 2027.

Blessing and Smith plan to push for the bill to be included in the two-year budget due July 1, currently under negotiation in the Ohio House.

A group of high schoolers from across Ohio rallied at the Statehouse this past Tuesday advocating for it.

Ohio students plead with lawmakers for free breakfast and lunch in schools

Every teacher I’ve ever talked to about it has told me the same thing: Hunger is an enormous barrier to learning. Meanwhile, kids are being put into social situations where they either go hungry or face the judgment of their peers.

As we all know, the antenna of fear of social stigma and judgment is sky high in childhood and adolescence.

We have a simple and effective solution: Remove the stigma, remove the fear of judgment, remove the school meal caste system, and just feed the children, all of the children.

If the basic humanity and decency of it isn’t compelling enough, I can make an economic argument.

Well-fed kids make for more attentive and engaged students. Attentive and engaged students have better academic success. Most successful students become successful citizens. Successful citizens grow the economy.

So, feed the children. All of the children, all the same.

Please just feed the children.