(CNN)Schools could lose the pandemic waivers, which give them additional federal funding and flexibility to deal with supply chain and labor issues, if Congress doesn’t agree to extend them in the spending bill to be released this week.
The federal funding expires on Friday. The full-year spending package, which House Democrats plan to unveil as early as Tuesday, could allow waivers to continue for the 2022-23 school year.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is blocking the extension of the exemptions, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The provision is therefore not yet included in the expenditure package.
McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a spokesman for the GOP-ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The Office of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also did not respond to a request for comment.
Congress gave the USDA authority to raise school meal reimbursement rates and waive certain requirements in a coronavirus relief package approved in March 2020 and then again in a federal spending measure in the fall. School districts struggled to provide millions of children with the meals they would have received if schools had not been closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The exemptions remain in place during this school year, but if the authority expires thereafter, the average school district will see a 40% cut in meal reimbursements, according to the USDA. The expansion would cost an estimated $11 billion per department.
Significant flexibilities
The USDA is using the power to help schools deal with the higher cost of providing meals during the pandemic and the resulting supply chain chaos and labor shortages. It reimburses districts an average of $4.56 per meal during the summer, as opposed to the typical $2.91 per meal for the school year. It also allows schools to offer free meals to all students instead of requiring them to verify families’ incomes.
In addition, the agency is able to offer districts more flexibility in managing pandemic outbreaks – e.g. B. by letting students eat or take care of them in their classrooms Meals to go for children who need to quarantine at home.
The USDA can do that too waive penalties for school districts that cannot meet dietary requirements — including those that regulate whole grains, sodium and vegetables — because of supply chain issues.
Menu planning already underway
School districts are currently planning menus and placing orders, but it’s difficult to do so without knowing how much they will be reimbursed or the flexibilities they will have, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association. Members are working with their representatives to provide assurances to districts and their suppliers that the exemptions will be extended beyond this school year.
“Now the need is greater than ever,” Jack Miniard, president of the Kentucky School Nutrition Association, wrote Sunday in a letter to McConnell obtained by CNN. “While the virus wears off, the effects remain.”
According to a USDA survey released last week, about 92% of school meals have problems due to supply chain disruptions. Products are unavailable, orders arrive with missing or replaced items, and shortages of cooks, food prep staff, drivers, and maintenance staff persist. This forces schools to pay more for food and workers.
“They’re really relying on these higher reimbursement rates to cover these new, higher costs,” Pratt-Heavner said, noting that the shortages are expected to continue into the next school year.
Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, is offering cafeteria staff a $3.50 an hour bonus to keep them, but there are still 90 vacancies instead of the typical 50 open, said Dan Ellnor, deputy Director of School and Community Nutrition Services. And the cost of groceries is already up 15% and still is expected to increase another 10% or $2 million over the next year.
Also, the district, which serves 90,000 meals a day, is struggling with shortages of items like cardboard bowls and baby carrots. The substitutions, like kiwifruit for carrots, often cost more, Ellnor said.
The end of the derogations will also affect the distribution of summer meals. Several districts have announced they will have to stop or significantly limit meal serving if they lose the flexibility they’ve had during the pandemic, said Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.
The exemptions allow districts to provide meals to families for several days or to provide food for children. This has allowed the summer meal program to grow from 95 million meals served in 2019 to nearly 263 million in 2020 and nearly 191 million last summer.
“You can’t afford to run it without the flexibility,” Davis said. “It’s a lot more expensive trying to run a website every day.”
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