Students eat lunch at an elementary school. (Photo: Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Many people may not be aware of this, but the expansive majority of public school students in Ohio already receive free breakfast and lunch at school.
According to an economic analysis released last Monday, making free meals available to all students would not only provide benefits equal to costs, but would generate net social benefits of approximately $520 million annually.
Lower-income Americans have declined significantly over the past 40 years. In some ways, this trend may be gaining strength.
More than 1 in 4 Ohioans they are now indigent enough to rely on Medicaid, for example, and their access to education is decreasing.
Even after adjusting for inflation, tuition tripled. Meanwhile, adjusted for inflation, the maximum Pell Grant available is he didn’t budge.
Education is there a powerful predictor of future profits. But even after the pandemic, absenteeism continues in Ohio schools is 25.6% — an enhance of nine percentage points from the pre-pandemic level in 2018-2019.
More than half a million Ohio children – 1 in 5 – struggle with these issues food insecurity.
And state schools reported that in the 2021-2022 school year, more than 26,000 their children “there was no permanent, regular and adequate place to sleep” the Ohio Housing Finance Agency reported.
Columbus-based Scioto Analysis examined what would happen if a relatively modest step was taken to aid the state’s children
Already, over 60% of students whose schools participate in the national school lunch program receive free meals.
What would happen if the state simply paid for all students to receive it?
State Sens. Louis Blessing III, R-Colerain Township, and Kent Smith, D-Euclid, earlier this year presented the bill which would provide free meals to all Ohio school children. But he was assigned to a committee and died.
The $300 million-a-year program was relatively inexpensive — considering Republican leaders of the Legislature found twice that amount to give the billionaire Haslam family to relocate the hapless Browns outside Cleveland’s city limits.
Three days after receiving the gift, the Tennessee tycoons bought a $25 million mansion in Florida.
A study of Scioto analysis he used the projected cost of the Blessing Act as a starting point and tried to weigh the costs against the benefits.
The obvious benefit would be giving more children access to vigorous meals.
“…a study comparing schools that offered universal free school meals… with similar schools that did not provide universal free school meals found that children in schools offering universal free school meals had less household food insecurity,” the report said.
“U.S. data showed that universal free school meals provided under community eligibility provisions would provide food security for 3% of previously food insecure children in participating schools.”
Another benefit would be that if all children received free meals, no one would be stigmatized as indigent for receiving them.
It’s tough to measure, but anyone who has been to school knows how cruel children can be.
With a quarter of children already chronically absent, the last thing they need is another reason to want to avoid school.
Other potential benefits are easier to quantify: money and time saved for families, reduced obesity, greater administrative efficiency for schools that don’t have to keep track of whose bills are paid, and higher lifetime earnings for children who are well-nourished and ready to learn.
The analysis shows that the last benefit would be by far the most valuable, generating $552 million in annual economic benefits.
Overall, he found that universal school meals would generate annual benefits $52 million more than the program would cost.
“Based on available tests on the health, educational and economic benefits of universal free school meals for students of all incomes – even those who already qualify for free meals under existing programs – I believe universal free school meals are a worthwhile investment for Ohio,” Emily Cantrell, a policy analyst who wrote the report, said in an accompanying report blog entry.
