April 2020 : A Snapshot of Participation During COVID-19

Each school year, millions of low-income students fuel their minds and bodies with the nutritious meals provided through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the School Breakfast Program (SBP), and Afterschool Supper and Snack Programs. These programs play a critical role in alleviating food insecurity and support health and learning. When schools across the country shuttered in the spring due to COVID-19, school nutrition departments, communitybased organizations, and local government agencies worked hard to ensure that students would continue to have access to breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and snacks, regardless of what the school day looked like.

To support these efforts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued in March -and has since extended through the 2020-2021 school year -key nationwide waivers. These waivers allowed for meals to be served safely during the pandemic, including allowing meals to be served through the Summer Nutrition Programs in place of the traditional school meals programs; 1 allowing meals to be taken home and for parents or guardians to pick up meals for their children; and for multiple days' worth of meals to be distributed at one time. In addition, USDA waived the requirement that summer and afterschool meal sites must be located in an area in which at least half of the children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. This waiver ensured that all families in need were able to access meals, regardless of the community in which they lived. As a result of these waivers and community collaboration, school districts and community sponsors were able to adapt and adjust operations to provide meals to children in a variety of ways that minimize contact, including delivering meals directly to homes, providing meals at pick-up or drivethrough locations, and delivering meals along bus routes.
While the waivers provided much-needed flexibilities for meal service and allowed millions of children to be served, the waivers were not enough to overcome the significant barriers that exist in reaching children outside of the traditional school day. In fact, the meals programs that were implemented in the spring -and continue to operate this school year -shine a spotlight on the inherent challenges that the Summer Nutrition Programs 2 face each year. School nutrition departments and community-based sponsors implement summer meal programs every summer while attempting to address transportation barriers, lack of awareness, and high eligibility requirements that limit the number of areas allowed to provide summer meals. And too many communities lack the important foundation of structured summer school or summer programming to draw children to meal sites that keep them learning, engaged, and nourished.
As communities continue to respond to COVID-19, one thing is increasingly clear: more needs to be done to ensure access to nutritious breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and snacks through the 2020-2021 school year and beyond. The pandemic has exacerbated existing barriers to participation while introducing new ones: staffing limitations, additional transportation needs, personal protection equipment, and increased food packaging costs are stretching already tight budgets as schools deal with falling revenue.
The meals provided during the school day have always been a vital source of support for low-income families, and are even more critical as the pandemic has increased the number of families facing hunger. Black and Latinx families have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 with more than 1 in 5 Black or Latinx adults with children reporting that they struggled with food insecurity in July. 5 Children also are missing out on more than just meals during COVID-19: research shows that education inequities are growing and that learning loss is expected to be greatest among low-income, Black and Latinx students. 6 This means too many children are falling further behind academically and nutritionally as schools remain closed.
There now exists an important opportunity through administrative and legislative advocacy to ensure that children have access to the nutritious meals they need every day. The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program, which was created in the spring to provide households that rely on free and reduced-price school meals an EBT card with the value of the free school breakfast and lunch reimbursement rates for the days that schools are closed, was a critical complement to meal sites and helped to fill the nutrition gap for families. Establishing an EBT program to provide families resources to purchase food when schools are closed during the summer and on weekends and school holidays as a permanent complement to the existing child nutrition programs is an important part of any comprehensive plan to address child hunger. This investment, along with targeted streamlining and improvements to the existing child nutrition programs and increased funding for underlying enrichment programming, will help to ensure that children are getting the nutrition and educational support they need.

About This Report
The report focuses on total meals served in April 2020 in the school and out-of-school time nutrition programs to explore the impact of COVID-19 on school, summer, and afterschool meals program operations. It also analyzes the reach of free and reduced-price meals to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on low-income children.
To provide a snapshot of how communities provided meals and snacks when schools shuttered during the pandemic, this report analyzes April 2020 data for the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which includes the meals and snacks served through the Seamless Summer Option (SSO), the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), and the Afterschool Supper and Snack Programs through the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), 7 compared to participation in SBP and NSLP, and the Afterschool Supper and Snack Programs in April 2019.
Meals served through SSO are reimbursed at the NSLP and SBP free rates and are included in the reported number of free meals served through NSLP and SBP. Meals served through SFSP are all reimbursed at the same rate, which is just above the free rate for school breakfast and lunch. For the purposes of this report, meals served through SFSP are grouped under the free and reduced-price category, along with any school meals provided in these two categories.
Information on these programs and participation data can be found in the following reports: School Breakfast Scorecard, Hunger Doesn't Take a Vacation: Summer Nutrition Status Report, and Afterschool Suppers: A Snapshot of Participation.
The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program played a critical role in complementing the meals provided through the federal child nutrition programs. Data on the benefits provided through P-EBT are not included in this report. The report also does not include data on the Meals to You Program, which delivered meals to children's homes.
The participation figures are calculated for this report only and are not comparable to the administrative data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service. More information on the methodology can be found in the technical notes.
In September 2020, FRAC surveyed 273 schools and other organizations currently running the child nutrition programs to glean insight on program operations for the 2020-2021 school year. The respondents included 191 schools, 48 community-based sponsors, 18 anti-hunger organizations, and 16 government agencies.
n Of the survey responses, 81.6 percent are using "grab and go" or curbside pickup models to distribute meals. Many also are using various transportation methods to deliver meals to homes and communities, with 55.3 percent using community site pick-up models, 36.6 percent delivering directly to homes, and 29.7 percent delivering meals to families along bus routes.
n While a majority of respondents are serving more than one day's worth of meals at a time ( n Almost 10 million fewer (-4.5 percent) free and reducedprice breakfasts were served in April 2020 compared to April 2019.
n Thirty-one states saw an increase in the number of free and reduced-price breakfasts served in April 2020 compared to April 2019. The increase in breakfast participation was likely driven by the fact that many states had low breakfast participation prior to COVID-19. Nationwide waivers allowed meal providers to distribute breakfasts and lunches at the same time. This eliminated many of the common barriers to school breakfast participation -such as bus schedules and the limitations of traditional cafeteria models -and aligned breakfast participation closer to lunch participation in April 2020.
Lunch Participation: April 2019 and April 2020 n More than 11.8 million children received a free or reduced-price lunch on an average day in April 2020, a decrease of over 8.2 million children or -41.2 percent from April 2019.
n Just over 158 million fewer free or reduced-price lunches were served in April 2020 compared to April 2019 (-42 percent).
n Eighteen states saw the number of free and reducedprice lunches served decrease by over 50 percent.
n Only nine states -Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming -saw an increase in the number of free and reduced-price lunches served in April 2020 when compared to April 2019.
Participation in April 2020: Breakfasts, Lunches, Suppers, and Snacks Vermont Vermont is a rural state that historically ranks high nationally for summer lunch participation, but the state still only served one child in July 2019 for every 33.5 who received a free or reduced-price school lunch during the 2018-2019 school year. The area eligibility requirement that at least half the children in an area are low-income makes it difficult for many rural communities to establish summer meals sites. Rural poverty is often less concentrated than in urban areas. The area eligibility waiver provided during COVID-19 allowed Vermont to establish meal sites in rural communities that would not have been eligible during a normal summer. Vermont was able to provide more lunches to children in April 2020 than the state served in April 2019. Lowering the area eligibility threshold permanently would allow more rural communities to provide summer meals.

Looking Ahead
Millions of low-income children were not getting the breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and snacks they needed in spring 2020 through the school and out-of-school time nutrition programs, despite significant efforts in all states to operate meal sites. 8 The loss of meals through the child nutrition programs compounded by the economic crisis that has been driven by the pandemic helps to explain the dramatic increase in food insecurity among families with children. 9 It also highlights the financial challenges for schools and community organizations that missed out on the reimbursements necessary to support program operations at a time of increased program costs. Schools and community sponsors continue to provide meals through the child nutrition programs, and many of the challenges faced in the spring remain. The lessons learned from this spring highlight the ways to reenergize, reimagine, and reinvest in the school, summer, and afterschool nutrition programs meant to fill the nutrition gap for children.
n Support Schools With Relief Funding. In May and again in October 2020, the House passed a comprehensive COVID-19 relief bill that would provide emergency funding to school meals programs and Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) sponsors, centers, homes, and afterschool programs to help cover operatingcost deficits that were created by school, child care, and afterschool program shutdowns (at an amount equal to 55 percent of the amount that the school food authority or CACFP program was reimbursed for meals and snacks that same month in the prior year). Providing emergency budget relief to support the schools and community sponsors that are struggling financially is needed to ensure they are able to continue serving meals. n Expand EBT Programs to Complement the Child Nutrition Programs. The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program, which gives families additional resources to purchase food during the summer months, and the Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program, which was created to provide nutritional support similar to Summer EBT during school closures that were related to COVID-19, are effective ways to provide nutrition resources to children when schools are closed. While P-EBT has been extended through the 2020-2021 school year, and Summer EBT is available to a handful of states, establishing a more permanent and comprehensive EBT program that all states can operate and that provides benefits when schools are closed during the summer, on weekends, and school holidays will help dramatically reduce childhood hunger.
n Increase Funding for Afterschool and Summer Programming. Significant investments on the federal, state, and local level are needed to create more opportunities for enrichment programs, which provide an important foundation for afterschool and summer meals. These programs will be necessary to counter the educational inequities that the pandemic is exacerbating. 10 Out-of-school time programming was hit hard by COVIDrelated closures, and it will take additional support and funding to ensure that these critical services rebound. The need for increased investments is compounded by the fact that funding for afterschool and summer programming was already failing to meet the need before the pandemic.

Conclusion
School and out-of-school time meals have always been essential to ending childhood hunger and supporting children's health, learning, and development. With food insecurity at unprecedented levels, and the expectation that they will continue to rise, access to these programs is even more important. In order to ensure access, Congress should support schools with relief funding, strengthen school and out-of-school time meals in the upcoming child nutrition reauthorization, expand electronic benefit transfer programs, and increase funding for the afterschool and summer programs that provide the platforms for serving meals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also must continue to provide the flexibilities communities need to ensure access to the child nutrition programs. Working together at the federal, state, and local levels is critical to ensure that programs are able to rebound and respond.

Technical Notes
The data in this report are collected from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This report does not include data for students or schools that participate in school meals programs in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Department of Defense schools. The participation figures are calculated for this report only and are not comparable to the administrative data from USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

Breakfast and Lunch Participation
Data for children reached in April 2019 is based on daily averages of the number of free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches served during that month through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP), as provided by USDA. States report to USDA the number of meals they serve each month. FRAC calculated the children reached in each state by dividing the total number of free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches served in April 2019 by each state's average number of serving days in NSLP and SBP during that same month.
Data for children reached in April 2020 includes free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches served through NSLP and SBP during that month, which includes breakfasts and lunches served through the Seamless Summer Option (SSO), and all breakfasts and lunches served through the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). Any meals served under SSO during April 2020 are included in the NSLP and SBP free data reported by the state agency.
FRAC calculated the number of children reached in each state in April 2020 by dividing the total number of free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches served and all breakfasts and lunches served through SFSP by each state's average number of serving days in NSLP and SBP during April 2019. While FRAC would normally use the service days from the same month (in this case, it would be April 2020) to determine the number of children served, disruptions to the number of traditional service days -and the transition to SFSP in many states -in April 2020 would not provide a fair comparison. Using April 2019 service days assumes that school schedules remain consistent year over year. The percentage change in meals served and children reached is the same for each state for this reason.

Supper and Snack Participation
Supper data for April 2020 includes the suppers served through the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) At-Risk option and through SFSP. Supper data for April 2019 includes just CACFP through At-Risk.
Snack data for April 2020 includes those snacks served through CACFP, NSLP, and SFSP. Snack data for April 2019 includes those snacks served through the CACFP At-Risk option and through NSLP.
The number of children reached on an average day in April 2019 and April 2020, across all available snack components (CACFP, NSLP, and SFSP) and all supper components (CACFP suppers and SFSP suppers), is based on the total number of combined snacks and combined suppers served in April 2019 and 2020, divided by the number of NSLP service days from April 2019 for each state. While FRAC usually uses NSLP service days from the same month (in this case, it would be April 2020) to determine the average daily participation rate for suppers and snacks , disruptions to the number of traditional NSLP service days -and the transition to SFSP in many states -in April 2020 would not provide a fair comparison. Using April 2019 service days assumes that school schedules remain consistent year over year.   April 2020 breakfasts include those served through SFSP and the free and reduced-price categories in the School Breakfast Program (SBP), which includes breakfasts served through the Seamless Summer Option (SSO). 2 April 2020 lunches include those served through SFSP and the free and reduced-price categories in the National School Lunch Program, which includes lunches served through SSO. 3 April 2019 breakfasts include those served through the free and reduced categories in SBP. 4 April 2019 lunches include those served through the free and reduced-price categories in NSLP.

Free and Reduced-Price Breakfasts Served
Free and Reduced-Price Lunches Served