Cure Hunger Blog

It’s July. Our federal legislators are busy on the hill trying to wrap it up before their August break. In the anti-hunger world, we have been watching, supporting and advocating for a bill that will make a difference here in our own Hoosier communities. It is called Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010 (H.R. 5504).

On July 15, the House Education and Labor Committee completed the markup of its draft and approved it. The bill calls for about $8 billion in new funding for child nutrition programs over the next 10 years. No funding sources have been identified to cover the additional spending. The bill cannot go to the full House for a vote until that is done, and it may prove to be the roadblock. In the Senate, the Agricultural Committee approved its version in March, but it hasn’t been to the full Senate yet.

It’s a big bill with many provisions important to the work we do in east central Indiana in terms of filling nutrition gaps for low-income children. The bill could authorize a pilot program targeted at providing nutritious, child-friendly food to at-risk school children on weekends and during extended school holidays. This sounds a lot like the BackPack Program that Second Harvest does in schools throughout our region. Adequate funding would allow us to sustain and expand the program.

The bill also encourages expansion of the school breakfast program by providing competitive grant awards to help schools establish or increase the program. One possibility would be to encourage schools to provide breakfast service outside of the cafeteria. In Indiana in a 2009 210,886 children participated in the breakfast program. School lunch had 788,167 participants.

The bill addresses hiking the reimbursable cost of a school meal by 6 cents, the first increase in 30 years. There are provisions for increased food safety measures, nutritious foods in school snack machines and getting local farm produce into local schools.

The last one I will mention is the Summer Food Service Program. Second Harvest has sponsored sites for several years throughout our service area. We have encouraged other organizations to be sponsors. This is “food that’s in when school is out” and provides summer meals to children who eat free and reduced-price school meals.

The act will provide grants to existing Summer Food sponsors to expand their programs, and to new sponsors to develop sites. Nationally, only 2.2 million children of the more than 19 million receiving free and reduced-price school meals participated last summer.

The bill could fund initiatives to get more children into the program. Another provision would allow the program to be offered even if only 40 percent of the participants are eligible. The threshold is now 50 percent and eliminates good programs that could be feeding more children.

Want to impact this legislation? Call Rep. Mike Pence and urge him to support Child Nutrition Reauthorization at the proposed level of $1 billion per year so we can increase food access to our low-income children. Dial the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for Mike. Time is of the essence!