Child Nutrition Reauthorization
Posted by Pat Nicklin on Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Yesterday, when the big snow in Washington cancelled USDA’s press conference, Secretary Tom Vilsack released the Obama White House’s legislative priorities for Child Nutrition Reauthorization. The eight priorities focus almost exclusively on what Congress, states, and schools can do to improve access to nutritious foods for children in the school environment.
Share Our Strength’s strategy to make sure no kid goes hungry focuses on these same priorities: to remove barriers that prevent kids from getting a nutritious school breakfast and to improve quality of school meals.
Our “no kid hungry” plans in Maryland and Colorado, led by Governors O’Malley and Ritter, are right now making these real connections for parents and their children where they live, learn and play. We need more connections and we need to address problems like this: only about 80,000 schools offer school breakfast out of 100,000 that offer school lunch, and many schools do not even have the kitchen equipment to cook vegetables, grains, and hot nutritious meals.
Share Our Strength supports the Administration’s emphasis on solutions and policies that will end childhood hunger, such as direct certification, monetary incentives to states and schools that increase access for kids and parents, and farm-to-school programs.
However, a larger fix is needed.
Current government and school policies make it difficult for parents who qualify to apply for the free or reduced meals˜why should low-income parents have to apply more than once for food stamps, school meals, and summer meals? And as Congress considers reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, they must provide additional funds needed and support President Obama’s call for $1 billion more per year for the next 10 years.
February 9, 2010 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: Child Nutrition Reauthorization, childhood hunger, childhood hunger strategy
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