School nutrition: unfunded mandate

A revealing look at the economics of school lunches from the Asheville Citizen Times, and the vise that local districts are in trying to deliver healthy food with extreme cost constraints. From the story:

Unfunded mandates have long been a bane of local governments. Some genius at the federal or state level comes up with requirements for a program administered by a layer of government below the one he or she is working at, but doesn’t bother to appropriate funds to carry out the requirements.

School lunch programs in North Carolina are facing a doozy of an unfunded mandate. In fact, the programs appear to be turning into faith-based programs, somehow expected to feed children nutritious meals with a complete lack of funding in North Carolina’s $20 billion-plus budget.
To back up a bit, North Carolina is among the 16 states in the nation that do not provide child nutrition program funding. Programs are expected to be self-sufficient revenue producers.
Health-conscious moves
To back up even further, it wasn’t long ago when some of that revenue was reliably produced by the sales of sugar-laden drinks or vending machine fodder with little or no nutritional value. As the nationwide obesity epidemic began to impact the middle-school set, North Carolina sensibly developed new nutrition guidelines. Those guidelines say no more than 10 percent of calories can come from saturated fate, that no more than 20 to 35 percent of calories can come from fat, that no items can be fried and that four vegetables or fruits, along with one whole-grain product, must be offered daily. The sodas and snacks that once generated revenue (and potential health issues) are to be replaced with items like frozen yogurt.
Those are smart choices that we applaud.
But the wrinkle in the plan is probably already obvious to anyone shopping on a budget: Healthier and fresher have a tendency to be costlier.
And a number of factors seem to be converging to create a sort of perfect-storm crisis for nutrition programs.
Economic turmoil and tight budgets at home may mean more children may soon be relying on that school lunch as perhaps their best — or even only — meal of the day.
Impact of energy costs
Soaring energy costs mean food is more expensive to grow and to deliver. The case of produce it cost $2 to deliver not long ago now carries a $4.50 delivery fee. On top of that, the costs of milk for child nutrition programs has doubled, the costs of grains are following suit and — well, everything seems to be going up, including labor costs for nutrition programs.
We bring up those costs because, as we’ve noted, the school programs are expected to be self-supporting. That is noteworthy because when a state wage increase is mandated, that increase applies to nutrition workers. Only, because of the nature of the program, that, too, is an unfunded mandate.
School programs do receive some taxpayer funds.
School cafeterias do receive a reimbursement from the U.S. government. Depending on the numbers of students who receive reduced-price or free lunches, the federal government will pay up to about $2.50 per student.
That falls short of a full reimbursement for systems such as Asheville City Schools, where a meal costs $3.24 to produce.
Seeking more funds
To fill the gap and comply with the new nutrition guidelines, which are slated to kick in for elementary schools, the state Department of Public Instruction and the School Nutrition Association of North Carolina requested $20 million for the coming school year from the General Assembly. The budget contains $0.
A similar request last year met a similar fate, and implementation of the guidelines was put off a year. The same scenario could play out this year.
Feeding our schoolchildren healthy meals isn’t just another budget can to be kicked down the road. Failure to do so can bring immediate problems with distracted or hyperactive students in the short run and sow the seeds of health problems like diabetes and obesity in the long run.
In a budget running at $21 billion-plus, there should be $20 million to be found under the couch cushions. If the state wants to implement its nutrition plan, and it should, it shouldn’t be passing the burden down to folks at the local level.
Lawmakers should find the money for school nutrition, pronto.
This is one unfunded mandate no North Carolinian should tolerate.

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