In immer mehr US-Schulen essen Kinder gratis
Die New York Times berichtet:
“We’ve done a lot of good things to feed kids here in Butte,” Mr. Marthaller said. But introducing universal free meals, he added, was “probably the best thing we ever did.”
Advocates for free school meals have pushed for them to be offered to every student for a long time, but saw significant progress in the last decade and a half. Their first big win came quietly, in 2010, when Congress passed an under-the-radar policy called the community eligibility provision, which made it easier for schools to serve free meals to all. Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government let every public school student eat for free, rapidly transforming the nation’s thinking around school meals.
Eight states have passed their own universal free meal legislation since the federal largesse ended in 2022. Dozens more have introduced similar bills or have one in the works. A surge of additional schools — nearly 7,000 — have signed up for the community eligibility program that West Elementary participates in: As of the 2022-23 school year, roughly four in 10 public schools were enrolled.
In total, more than 21 million American children now attend schools that offer free meals to all — a tenfold increase from 2010.