(Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Plans to offer free breakfast and lunch to all public school students in Washington appear shaky ahead of a Friday deadline in the state Legislature.
Right now, about 70% of students in public schools have access to free meals. Reaching 100% would cost about $120 million a fiscal year. And with the state facing a budget shortfall in the ballpark of $12 billion over the next four years, that’s proving to be a tough sell.
Asked during a press conference Wednesday whether the bill was a good idea proposed at the wrong time, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, replied: “Yes.”
The Senate already allowed its version of the legislation to lapse last week in the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee as an earlier deadline came and went.
That leaves a House version — House Bill 1404 — now pending in the Appropriations Committee. That panel must approve the bill by Friday for it to stay alive.
“Given the number of competing demands we have, it’s a challenge, but nothing in House Appropriations is dead until after Friday,” said House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle.
This expansion of the state’s free school meals program is one of the priorities Gov. Bob Ferguson identified at the outset of his term in January.
Under the bill, public schools, including charter schools and state-tribal education compact schools, would have to offer free breakfast and lunch to any student who requests it. This would take effect in the 2026-27 school year and the state would reimburse districts for meal costs.
Ferguson has intervened to move along other legislation this session. A spokesperson for the governor did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday about whether he planned to do the same with the school meals bill.
Lawmakers this session have been under pressure to pass other pricey school legislation, including bills to boost funding for special education, school operations and transportation.
These latest versions of these bills, which have been moving in the Senate, would cost around $1.5 billion altogether in the next two-year budget.
The special education bill, which Pedersen and Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, are co-sponsoring, and the one to boost state assistance with school materials, supplies and operations costs are scheduled for Senate Ways and Means votes on Thursday.
The bill to strengthen student transportation has had a Ways and Means hearing but was not scheduled for a committee vote as of Wednesday afternoon.
Friday’s deadline is when bills that need to go through fiscal committees, like Senate Ways and Means, must gain approval from those committees in the chamber where they originate.
There are ways lawmakers can revive proposals that die at this deadline later in the session, working instead through the budget process. But on the school lunch bill, Fitzgibbon said, “If the bill doesn’t pass out of House Appropriations on Friday, then it’s not passing for the year.”
He said a middle-ground option, rather than expanding the program, is “probably paying for the cost of the existing free school meals programs that we’ve already legislated in previous years.” He noted that there is about a $30 million increase required just to meet that cost.
“We very much hope to be funding that as part of our budget,” he said.
Deputy Senate Majority Leader Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, emphasized that the discussion about free school meals needs to be balanced against broader discussions about assisting people with food insecurity in Washington.
There are also worries about the possibility of federal funding cuts to nutrition programs as Republicans in Congress move ahead with their budget plan.
“It is a much larger conversation,” Dhingra said. “School meals is one part of it.”
This post was originally authored and published by Bill Lucia from Washington State Standard via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
