Lost Opportunities, Small Victories, Access Preserved:

Western Region Anti-Hunger Consortium

2004 Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill Analysis

In 2001, the Western Region Anti-Hunger Consortium launched a three-year effort to insure positive outcomes for two key Congressional reauthorizations: the Food Stamp Program and Child Nutrition Programs. While the Farm Bill rewrite happened sooner than we thought, Child Nutrition reauthorization dragged out until the end of June 2004, requiring several extensions for Congress to complete its work.

Gains in the Farm Bill were significant, particularly here in the west: access to food stamps was restored to most legal immigrants denied assistance in 1996; new state options provided numerous ways to streamline program reporting and definitions to conform to other assistance programs; transitional benefits were permanently extended as a state option for families leaving TANF cash assistance. Newly released regulations for the 2002 changes threaten in some cases limit the gains, but many states have taken advantage of new options to improve access to food assistance by working families. With the addition of California as an Electronic Benefits Transfer state, all states now provide benefits on EBT cards, spurring USDA to call for comment on changing the name of the program.

While the Farm Bill provided new gains through state options, it also has necessitated increased advocacy at the state level to insure that state agencies adopt positive changes. These efforts have provided the work plan for many of WRAHC’s member organizations.

On the child nutrition side, in many ways the most important aspect of the recently adopted reauthorization bill is what it DOES NOT include. Proposals in 2003 from the Bush administration would have increased verification requirements for the school lunch program. Advocates were deeply concerned that these requirements would block access to many eligible children from this cornerstone anti-hunger resource. Senate discussions in the summer of 2003 included significant changes. Fortunately, USDA research on pilots of increased verification and documentation revealed that many eligible children fell off the program and that the measures did not significant improve administrative errors. Considerable pressure from national and state-level advocacy organizations, and a targeted media strategy, also served to highlight the negative aspects of changing how families apply for school lunch.

Advocates initially pushed for a $1 billion increase in investment in the child nutrition programs. WRAHC proposals included expanding universal school breakfast, making the Lugar pilots that streamlined reimbursement for the Summer Food Service Program nationwide and adding non-profits, reducing eligibility thresholds for summer meal programs in rural areas, and a variety of measures to improve the school nutrition environment.

Unfortunately, far less than $1 billion was made available to child nutrition reauthorization through the Congressional budget resolutions. The bill does contain positive elements, many in the form of pilots that will affect programs in only a few states.

Western states already designated for piloting of good ideas include extension of the Lugar pilots to Oregon (Alaska is already a participating state), and a pilot of the current waiver available to school districts to serve meals year-round through the National School Lunch Program to a non-profit in California. In addition, the provisions for cost-containment for WIC-only stores was strongly supported by WRAHC due to the proliferation of WIC-only stores in California, as were piloting of fresh fruits and vegetables in the WIC food package.

School, Child Care and Summer Food Provisions:

• Expanding to private non-profit sponsors the successful paperwork reduction pilots in the Summer Food Program (“Lugar Pilots”) that have already resulted in thousands more low-income children receiving nutritious meals during the summer months in 13 states (the pilot currently only applies to public sponsors);
  
  
• Adding six new states - Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana, Michigan, Oregon, and Ohio – to the expanded Lugar pilots, and making the pilot program permanent for the current 14 states;
  
  
• Writing into statute the Seamless Summer Waiver (Alisal Waiver) allowing schools to offer meals during non-school periods reimbursed at school meal rates, and adds a pilot for one non-profit entity in California of the seamless waiver;
  
  
• Extending eligibility for snacks and meals for children in homeless and domestic violence shelters up to the age of 18 (the current age cut-off is 12);
  
  
• Making it possible for more children from low-income military families to receive free and reduced price school meals;
  
  
• Allowing for-profit child care centers that serve significant numbers of low-income children to feed children using the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP);
  
  
• Providing migrant, runaway and homeless children with automatic eligibility for free school meals;
  
  
• Providing for a Nebraska CACFP pilot for family child care homes and a Pennsylvania summer food pilot, each of which lowers the area eligibility threshold in rural areas from 50 to 40 percent low-income families in the area;
  
  
• Establishing a three-year summer food rural transportation pilot for 60 sponsors in five states;
  
  
• Requiring that school districts create a wellness policy by July 2006, and funding efforts to provide technical assistance and best practices to schools and states;
  
  
• Providing vendor management cost containment requirements for WIC-Only stores in order to reduce higher prices charged by many of these stores which, if unaddressed, could lead to fewer WIC participants;
  
  
• Expanding the fresh fruit and vegetable pilots (currently in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Mississippi) with special emphasis on serving children in low-income areas (likely expansion states are Mississippi, North and South Dakota with one state and one tribal spot not yet determined);
  
  
• Making it possible for up to five states (or parts of states; one must be a rural state with significant Native American population) to offer free school meals to households with incomes up to 185% of poverty (subject to future Congressional funding);
  
• Application and eligibility changes:
• Making eligibility good for the entire school year and for the beginning of the next,
• Requiring direct certification of families receiving Food Stamps,
• Prohibiting requiring a separate application for each child in a family,
• Improving cross-program eligibility without duplicative applications,
• Limiting verification sample size to 3% and targeting families reporting income close to eligibility cut-off amounts,
• Requiring districts to include a toll-free number to call for assistance with verification and to make at least one additional attempt to contact non-responsive households,
• Allowing electronic applications and signatures, and
• Allowing districts to exempt up to 5% of approved households from verification and replace them with applications from other households in order to protect vulnerable children for whom verification documentation might be impossible to obtain.
  
  
• Allowing district-wide Provision 2 and 3 certification and claims;
  
  
• Removes cost accounting for severe needs breakfast;

• Removes the requirements that schools offer whole milk in meal programs, requiring that milk served be in a variety of fat content, and allowing flavored and lactose free milk;
  
  
• Reconsitutes the Nutrition Education and Training Program (NET) with funding of up to ½ cent per lunch and allows part of the funds to be used in summer food programs.

For effective dates of the above provisions, see http://www.asfsa.org/newsroom/sfsnews/cnrenactdates.asp.

WIC Provisions:

• Revises the definition of nutrition education adding ". . . physical activity habits, and that emphasize the relationship between nutrition, physical activity, and health . . . ;"

• Revises the definition of supplemental foods adding ". . . and foods that promote health as indicated in the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans . . . ;"

• Includes language to extend certification for up to a year or until a woman discontinues breastfeeding for breastfeeding women;

• Includes language to exempt physical presence at appointments for infants under 8 weeks;

• Allows for demonstration projects for fresh, frozen, canned fruits and vegetables at 10 local sites;

• Provides for the periodic review of the WIC food packages for consistency with current dietary science;

• Allows the rounding up to the next whole can size for infant formula;

• Calls upon State and Local WIC agencies to partner with others in support of the breastfeeding goals of the Healthy People 2010 initiative;

• While grandfathering existing State alliances and allowing small and Indian State agencies to join alliances, limits State alliances for infant formula and other purchasing contracts to 100,000 infants;

• Requires State agencies to have a system to ensure formula rebate invoices provide a reasonable estimate or an actual count of the number of units sold;

• Provides $14 million for infrastructure, special projects to promote breastfeeding and of regional or national significance to WIC, $30 million to establish, improve and administer MIS systems, $20 million for nutrition education such as breastfeeding peer counselors and other related activities;

• Requires State agencies to establish vendor peer groups, competitive price criteria for participation in WIC that does not result in inadequate participant access, procedures that prevent price increases once a vendor is selected, allowable reimbursement levels for foods for each vendor peer group; exempts pharmacies supplying exempt formulas or medical foods; vendors with more than 50% of the annual revenue of the vendor is from the sale of WIC food items; limits the use of incentives used by WIC-Only stores;

• Prevents the imposition of equipment and processing costs for EBT on retail stores;

• Forbids payments to vendors providing incentives unless demonstrated that they were obtained at no cost; and

• Allows for increased spend forward authority of 3%.

In conclusion, vigilance and effective advocacy by national, state and local advocates made the best of the limited funds available in the Child Nutrition reauthorization, and blocked efforts to increase obstacles to receipt of nutritious meals by our children. Multiple pilots will lay the groundwork for more extensive, and nationwide, changes over the next few years. As we have seen in the past, good changes can be made in child nutrition programs any year through appropriations and other legislation. The next real opportunity we’ll have to rewrite child nutrition programs will likely not be until 2009.