by Dr. John Stanford, CDF-Ohio State Director
When you hear news about some of the decisions lawmakers make in Washington, D.C., it sometimes may feel easy to think what happens there will not instantly impact what happens here in Ohio. However, we know that is not always the case. Policies crafted on Capitol Hill can influence life in Cincinnati and the rest of Southwest Ohio just days after they’re ratified. I write to raise awareness about one such proposal that is currently being considered in our nation’s capital. It could quickly change, for the worse, the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people living in our state and the Cincinnati region.
In January, Politico obtained a document from the United States House Ways & Means Committee that outlines a list of possible programs to change or cut during the federal budget reconciliation process. One idea would essentially make it harder for school districts in Southwest Ohio to provide students in need with free breakfast or lunch.
The Community Eligibility Provision [CEP] allows America’s highest-poverty schools to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to students without their administrators having to collect and sort through tedious amounts of paperwork. Currently, schools just receive reimbursement based on how many of their students receive assistance from programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]. The proposal at-hand would make it so fewer schools would fall under the CEP provision; consequently, they would have to do a lot more paperwork and serve less students.
The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) projects more than 700 schools in Ohio, serving roughly 290,000 students, could be affected if this change were to take place as more schools would be forced to deal with bureaucratic red tape. This would impact more young people in Ohio than there are residents in Dayton. That’s not all. Several school districts in Southwest Ohio, including Cincinnati Public Schools, participate in CEP. According to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, almost 27,000 children attend schools in the district that participate in the CEP program.
This proposed change by Congress is unacceptable.
Our 2023 Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio report shows well-nourished children learn better and become healthier. We agree with FRAC’s assertion that not only would this proposal increase hunger in the classroom, but increase school meal debt and “bring stigma back into the cafeteria.”
Our staff at CDF-Ohio remains committed to making sure every child in our state has access to nutritious meals. It’s an effort that carries with it serious implications as our study shows one in six children in Ohio lives in a household experiencing hunger. Perhaps what makes this federal proposal all the more confounding is that in our state, residents on both sides of the aisle believe our children should be able to eat without barriers. The Tarrance Group, a Republican research firm, discovered that two-thirds of all Ohioans support free breakfast and lunch in the state’s public schools. The Cincinnati Enquirer even recently published an article online about a bipartisan-backed state senate bill to provide all students, K-12, free breakfast and lunch. This is a proposal we support.
It’s simply not about politics.
Rather, we need our lawmakers to concentrate on helping children and not waste their time on introducing pointless hurdles to programs that have already shown success. We urge Ohio Representatives Mike Carey and Max Miller, who both sit on the House Ways & Means Committee to fight this proposal. The youth of the Buckeye State are depending on you.
*This column first appeared in the print edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer on March 23, 2025.