SmartTranscript of House Agriculture – 2025-01-30 – 1:00PM

[Chair David Durfee ]: Even though we'd had that introduction and learned a little bit about our I think it was maybe the same day you were the food bank was here. But we wanted to have you come in and just give us an update on the universal school meal program on which the legislature passed a couple of years ago. After during the pandemic, the federal government had extended universal school meals throughout the country. Vermont kept it up on a one year basis, I think, twenty twenty two, and then we made it permanent in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four. It's come back up sort of resurfaced in part because it's paid for through the education fund. And along with everything else that is part of the education fund, it is coming under some scrutiny. We from us as legislators. So just as we looked at current use yesterday, which is a piece of the education fund, this is as well. And then I think more recently even more recently, in the governor's budget, my understanding and we'll ask more to clarify it because as I said earlier, I haven't actually read the budget. But my understanding is the funding may have been removed from the Ed Fund for this program. So in any case, that's sort of the background. And I won't say any anything more, but I'll turn it over to you and or if you'd like to walk us through whatever you have. Great. [Anore Horton ]: Thank you so much, chair Durfee. And thank you, members of the House Agriculture Resiliency and Forestry Committee for having me back and to, share with you about Vermont's universal school meals program and how incredibly successful and effective it is. And I know that, some of you, have been more members of this committee when this, the u Vermont's universal school meals program was enacted in act sixty four in twenty twenty three, and I know that some of you are not. And so, just please ask me any questions that you have about just even how school meal programs work in general. And I've tried to work some background into this as well. [Representative John O'Brien ]: So I'm sorry, We [Chair David Durfee ]: all we have another guest on the agenda. I don't know whether you want to make an introduction or whether we're gonna have a separate presentation. [Anore Horton ]: Oh, yes. And I'm sorry. For the record, also, I'm Manore Horton, and I'm the executive director of Hunger Free Vermont. I should have started there. And yes. So, we, Kayla Strom from the NOFA Vermont, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont is also here because a critical interconnection of Vermont's universal school meals pro meals program is with local food purchasing and the local food purchasing incentive and our farm to school programs. And so, Kayla is here as an expert on that and will be doing an additional presentation. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So in twenty twenty three, as I just said, the state of Vermont made a commitment to families, students, educators, school administrators, and communities. Act sixty four passed with very strong support from all of Vermont's political parties. And that commitment was breakfast and lunch for every student in every school day, in every Vermont public school, and independent schools that opt in to add, at no charge to individual students. And governor Scott allowed this bill to become law without his signature on June fourteenth of twenty twenty three. And prior to that, a one year pilot was passed by this legislative body with strong support that tested Vermont's school meals universal school meals program for a year. And the success of that year then led the legislature to make it permanent. Sorry. My computer is being really, really yeah. Yeah. And so then we collectively made a permanent commitment to universal school. Yes. [Chair David Durfee ]: Then we're Brian. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Anur, so that one year pilot was that was federal COVID ARPA money that funded that? [Anore Horton ]: No. It was funded with it was it was the same structure as the program is now. It's mostly federal funding, and it's a supplement of state funds in the education. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: It was coming through the education. [Anore Horton ]: So governor Scott is now proposing to repeal the law. So the the language all of the language constructing Vermont's universal school meals program is proposed to be struck in the, fiscal year twenty twenty six budget. So what does this mean, though? So, this proposed repeal of Vermont's universal school meals program would really cost Vermont kids, families, schools, and farmers a lot. It means two point five million fewer healthy school meals served to Vermont kids every school year. Twenty seven thousand children and families in the missing middle, would have to pay for school meals or pack meals from home, who are so these are families who these are children who are living in families earning less than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. So in that group that our own joint fiscal office, has said are either, not able to afford to meet, all of their basic needs or on that, you know, on the cusp of that. It will cost families about one thousand five hundred dollars per child per year to pay for school meals. If you add all of that up at the average cost of a meal in Vermont and what school meals what what paid school meals would cost if we were charging for them now, which we're not, we're talking about twenty four million dollars a year in cost burden shifted to the fam Vermont families who are not able to afford to meet their basic needs right now, but are not eligible for free school meals. [Chair David Durfee ]: And [Anore Horton ]: having a universal school meals program has enabled us to draw down seven to ten million dollars a year in additional federal funding for our school meal programs. And as Kayla will talk about, after me, quite a bit of that funding is finding its way to Vermont farms as well. So it would governor Scott's proposed reveal repeal of Vermont's universal school meals program would stick school districts and schools with the bill because it's really important. And this is, like, hard for us to remember, I think, because we actually haven't had the old broken model of school meals since twenty nineteen. Right? But what was going on back then is that most of the school meal programs in Vermont were in the red every year. They did not break even. They did not have the economies of scale with the federal reimbursement rates to actually cover all their costs and operate under that old model. So school districts were making general fund transfers to their school meal programs every year. And where was that money coming from? From ultimately the education fund and property taxes. So I think it's just really important to say that one way or another, if we want school meal programs to operate at all, we it we would we have to pay for part of that. And we're paying for right now in a very equitable, efficient way. And if the school universal school meals program was repealed, we would be returning that cost to school districts to manage. And they would have to cover millions of dollars in unpaid debt to school meal programs from families. So this problem so these are, families who their their students would would charge for meals under the old system, and then they wouldn't pay for that bill because mostly they couldn't afford to pay for that bill. And at the end of the year, by federal law, that money has to be repaid to the school meal program. So school districts would have to cover those debts with unbudgeted general fund transfers every year. And before the pandemic, we we documented that there was at least one point five million dollars in unpaid school meal program debt in Vermont schools. Since the pandemic in states that have returned to a pricing system for school meals, so who have not created the universal school meals program that Vermont has, unpaid school meal program debt has skyrocketed. There there are national news stories about this every week. Just in Concord, New Hampshire, in our sister state, unpaid debt to their school meal program has increased six hundred and twenty percent since the COVID nineteen pandemic. So even if that didn't happen to that extreme degree in Vermont, even a three hundred percent increase in unpaid school meal program debt would be we would be talking about four point five million dollars a year. And then, as I said, school districts would also have to make planned general fund transfers to their meal programs. Most of them would. And, we calculate that that could be around five NOF dollars a year. Then it also the governor Scott's proposed repeal of universal Vermont's universal school meals program would cost Vermont kids, families, schools, and farmers all year round. Because thanks to the way that Vermont's universal school meal law is constructed and the new ways that that allows for, the calculation of low income students, it's made, it's connected to two other federal child nutrition programs, summer meals and after school meals for kids. Those are also programs that provide meals for free and with a hundred percent covered by federal funding. And the Vermont's Universal School Meals Act has made dozens of additional towns and communities in our state eligible to operate these programs for the first time. And without that this the, way that that low income students are calculated under the universal school meals provisions, those towns would become ineligible again. So we would end up with thousands of Vermont kids missing out on summer meals. And the burden then to cover the costs for those meals when school is not in session would fall back on families. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: And it does. Okay. So at the bottom, it says additional millions in federal funding for summer Mhmm. After school meals would be left on the table. I was talking to representative like like what do you think? [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Teddy Was President. Wozanek? [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Yeah. From Mary. Thank you. And what is the cost to our Ed Fund to to pay for school meals right now? [Anore Horton ]: To for the universal school meals program, seventeen point five million. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Seventeen point five. [Anore Horton ]: Mhmm. That is forty percent less than the original projected cost of the program, I would like to add. So the cost has actually gone down each year, and we are still covering, all students in all [Representative Greg Burtt ]: And how much do we receive in federal funds? [Anore Horton ]: Overall for the entire school meals program [Chair David Durfee ]: Yeah. [Anore Horton ]: Thirty four point five million or so. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Thirty four point five million. So so we're getting about a two to one leverage. Yeah. And if I understand this correctly, by doing the universal school meals, we're not requiring families to fill out the paperwork to get the federal funds because now it's done by I don't know if it's done by the principals or school districts or who, but they use their poverty level indicator and turn that in to get the match month. So serving on school board for fourteen years, the last year we had a retired debt at North Country Union High School. It was eighteen thousand dollars Mhmm. Because people hadn't paid their meals, and it was the rule was either paid their meals or they didn't walk. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Mhmm. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: And everybody gets fed. [Chair David Durfee ]: Mhmm. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: And we we ate the cost. So but we also had issues that people would be too proud or just wouldn't fill out the paperwork to get the aid that was available to them. So through this program, that requirement is gone. [Anore Horton ]: That so first of all, you should just come and talk about you. [Kayla Strom ]: No. I hear [Anore Horton ]: you. That was a beautiful articulation from the perspective of a school board member of kind of the the costs, right, on the school district, not just financial, but emotional. And, you know, to have to make a decision, like, are we gonna let students walk in graduation if they haven't paid their meal debt, or are we gonna cover this? Or, you know, how are we gonna handle that? So I I just appreciate that. I appreciate [Representative Greg Burtt ]: It wasn't a hard decision to make for some of us. [Anore Horton ]: Yeah. I I appreciate that as well Because we don't think that, that our kids should ever be put in the position of having to deal with the the kinds of challenges raised by what if we what if our families can't afford to cover that that debt. So, everything that you said is is accurate. And, as part of the transition to Vermont's universal school meals program, our agency of education chose to enter into an agreement with the with USDA to be able to what's called directly certify students. This is what you're talking about, kind of on the back end Thank you. For to be able to document their income, their family's income levels for eligibility to be under their eligibility for free or reduced priced school meals so that applications were are no longer needed for Vermont families. And we're thrilled that the agency of education chose to enter into that pilot. I want to say that through that process with the department for DEVA, information health access, they I were able to document that there were ten thousand low income students who were eligible for free school meals, who were enrolled in school meal programs, who weren't eating meals because of the kind of stigma and pride issue. And that there were additional seven thousand students identified who were eligible but never were enrolled at all. So and I also, though, want to say that that having that direct certification ability is now we we expect unless the federal government makes changes permanent in Vermont. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Representative O'Brien? I know. So what's the the [Representative Richard Nelson ]: the requirement for for the federal government? I mean, we're they're still paying in depending on how many free and reduced bunch of students there are. Is it tied to Medicaid now? Is that where they're getting their data from? Because it used to be more of these forms, but now there there's a new process. Right? [Anore Horton ]: Yes. Yes. You are correct. It is a direct certification through met using Medicaid data. And the cut the income cutoff is still the same federally fed income cutoff for preschool meals, which is a hundred and thirty percent of the federal poverty level, or reduced price school meals, which is a hundred and eighty five percent of the federal public level. And in Vermont, thanks to previous action by this legislature in years gone by, Vermont has covered for many years since twenty thirteen, the reduced price charge. So all students up to a hundred and eighty five percent of the federal poverty level, have been receiving free school meals. But our Medicaid data allows us to identify nearly all students who are eligible income eligible for free or reduced price school meals without requiring because families already have provided that data, right, when they apply for Doctor. Dinosaur for their for their kids. So, families do not have to fill out a an additional school meal application any longer, and that applies to all nearly all, families and students in Vermont now, which is a huge win for kids and families for just data privacy for families, you know, with their school districts and for school administration because processing those forms is unbelievably time consuming and difficult and took a lot of school administration and school nutrition program resources away from the real job at hand of supporting students and families and feeding them. So this is a summary of what I've just shared with you on the on the previous slides that repealing act sixty four would need, losing seven to ten million dollars a year in federal funds for Vermont school meal programs and farms, seeing our participation in school breakfast and lunch plummet, returning cash registers to the cafeteria and shifting staff time from scratch cooking to managing paperwork and entering student codes on computer screens. Each school meal would cost more to make because it would lose the economy of scale of that incredible amount of participation. And school meal program debt and debt collection would return. The administrative burden would increase. We had principals who came to testify when the legislature was debating, you know, enacting this, law in the first place. And they said, forcing me to be a debt debt collector with the families of my students is the absolute worst part of my job ever. So that would we would be forcing principals to return to that work. And we're talking about a program that is a stunning success. So this is the part where I hope you all can really feel some pride in what got created collaboratively with the agency of education, the legislature, including very much members of this committee, and, you know, students and families and and other advocates. No student has had to learn what hunger feels like in any Vermont public school since twenty nineteen. More students are eating nutritious meals than ever before. So we've had a thirty six percent participation in breakfast increase, and a a twenty percent participation increase in school lunch since, enacting this law. So that's two point five million additional meals. And we've seen our federal funding for Vermont school meal programs increased by forty four percent. So it's now that number is thirty four point five million, representative Nelson, that you asked about. [Chair David Durfee ]: Representative Bert? [Representative John O'Brien ]: So if we receive thirty four point five million from the federal government for specifically for lunch programs. What is the total cost then of of our universal lunch program? [Anore Horton ]: Right. So that's for breakfast and lunch, which is also what our universal program covers. So it's thirty four point five million in federal funding and, right, and seventeen point five million in federal funding. State funding. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Got it. Yes. Costs fifty two. [Chair David Durfee ]: Mark, may I just ask you to elaborate a little bit on that forty four percent increase from twenty nineteen? Mhmm. Can you say how that happened? So but and I'm I'm trying to recall, and I'll just I may get it wrong. But by improving to a universal school meals program, the federal government increased the amount per meal that it was willing to send to the state. Is that right? Or am I conflating with something else? [Anore Horton ]: No. That, that's not accurate. The the federal government sets one standard price each year for what they will reimburse to states and then ultimately to school districts for each meal served depending on the income level of the student. So if the student is eligible for free school meals, it's one price. If the student is eligible for reduced price meals, it's a different price. And if the student is is not eligible for either of those things and the family would have to pay, it's yet another little bit of subsidy. Why we have seen this dramatic increase in federal funding is that many more students are eating. And so that means many more meals are being reimbursed. And it's not just any students who are eating. Many more low income students are eating. So the balance of which students are choosing to eat meals at school remains as it always has been. More of our lowest income students are eating than our higher income students. Although we think everybody should eat in school because, you know, you have to be there all day long and hungry kids can't learn. [Chair David Durfee ]: Everything else. Thank you, chairman. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Are you gonna talk about the bags that are put together on Friday and packed in the backpacks and sent home for some of these kids so they can eat all weekend too? Because that tugs at strings. Yeah. It does. I I don't know if you have a slide on that, but that's part of it as well. [Anore Horton ]: Yeah. Well, I don't have a slide on that because it's that's not part of our universal school meals program. So that's part of the charitable food effort that also supports families because there are many, many families in our schools who, are really struggling. And school meals are a lifeline, an absolute lifeline for those families. And I will talk a little bit about who are we talking about when we're talking about the families with kids [Chair David Durfee ]: in our [Representative Greg Burtt ]: schools. Brothers and little sisters. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. [Anore Horton ]: Did I sufficiently answer your question, shared Durfee? Because I could [Chair David Durfee ]: Well well well it up for the moment. Yeah. Thank you. [Anore Horton ]: So universal school meals has helped many more communities qualify for summer and after school meal programs that are fully reimbursed by the federal government. So we just hit an unbelievable record this past summer of a million meals served to kids in Vermont. We are number one in the country for the number of kids reached by low income kids reached by summer meals, And that is, thirty three point eight million in, additional federal funding that was brought into our state to support the summer meals program in twenty twenty four. So, again, as I said, this is directly tied to this expansion, the identification of so many more low income students and and the way that when schools are allowed to calculate their rate of low income students to qualify for these other programs when they are using a universal school meals provision. So, you know, we're we're reaching kids all year round with school meals and local food in the or school and summer meals and local food in those meals is increasing. And, summer can be the hungriest time of the year for families with kids. Yeah. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Just just, like, how do kids access those meals in summer? Like, I'm thinking of our local schools are mostly closed down. The kitchens are. Anyway, so how do they get that food? [Anore Horton ]: Well, there, there are lots of different sites where summer programming is happening or, even just kids are congregated for summer. So, most of the school kitchens in your district are closed down, but there's likely one that is operating as a sponsor of a summer meals program. And so the food can be created at one place and then satellited out to as many sites as that sponsor is willing to, cover. And so we are talking about, you know, a community pool or a rec program run by a town. And the food, the lunches, the breakfast and lunches, or, snacks and lunches, or however they're parsing that out that are served to kids are often coming through this program. So that the rec program doesn't have to fundraise for that food, we can have the federal program cover that cost. And we can create the food, kind of in bulk a bit, create these meals and get them out to many, many kids. There's also, new opportunities to, have families pick up a set of meals once a week. This is really important in our rural isolated areas, to provide at home for five days or seven days. And then so it's kind of a pop up site that operates. So all of that is really facilitated and supported by our Universal School Meals Act. Yeah. So again and this has really eased the burden on local school budgets for funding their meal programs and reduced general fund transfers to school meal programs by thirty seven percent. And that's even despite we've had about a thirty percent inflation in the cost of food that schools have to, you know, these meal programs have to cover in the last couple years. And families save money. So families with kids, are saving fifteen hundred dollars a year. And I just do wanna pause to note that, currently, the average Ed Fund taxpayer is paying, at most, about thirty dollars a year to make the universal school meals program possible. Now that's an average. And so because our property tax system is, you know, progressive, relatively speaking, wealthier families are paying more. They have more valuable houses, and they're paying higher property taxes, and lower income folks are paying less. But on average, we're talking about thirty dollars a year for this highly successful program. And, I'm gonna just, again, make a nod to the virtuous cycle of this expanded, school meal programs in what are, you know, the largest food, you know, restaurants, if you will, in every single one of our towns, our school cafeterias. And to be able to leverage that for Vermont farms and our Vermont farm economy is really important. And I know that Kayla is gonna speak more about this. And I just also wanna emphasize that, the administration itself, our Vermont Agency of Education, they just issued a summary report of the key themes from the listen and learn tour that the secretary of education has conducted over the last year. And they then document themselves the incredibly strong support for Vermont's Universal School Meals program among education leaders, teachers, and the Vermont public. And we asked what students, parents, and teachers might want to tell you about Vermont's universal school meals program, and here's just a few of the many, many, many quotes that we got. I am so grateful for free school lunches. You saved us. That one gets me every time. Every student feels respected at school. I love school lunch. It fuels your brain so you can do better in school. Those are students. Two promised meals a day. It's a huge deal from a parent. Thank you for helping get my kiddos free meals. Equality for everyone. No one turned away. And from teachers, from educators, food is a basic human need and kids deserve the meals that keep them going. And my students are ready to learn, and all kids have an equal chance at learning. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Okay. Just anecdotally, and maybe this is coming in in future slides. What are you hearing from teachers as far as them noticing students doing better because they're getting through a lot? [Anore Horton ]: I mean, that we're hearing this over and over and over again. I have students who are better ready to learn. There's so many challenges and disruptions and mental health crises that that teachers are dealing with every day. And to have to have them in the midst of that still be noticing and saying to us, wow. It's so different when every kid has had breakfast in the morning before they come into my classroom. It's makes a huge difference. Yeah. [Representative John O'Brien ]: We're there. Oh, sorry. I was gonna mention that when I was a kid that [Representative Greg Burtt ]: I went school [Representative John O'Brien ]: counselor. So I I'm getting emotional about this. But we have a Yeah. It's not. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: We're about twenty five. Not that long. And then [Representative John O'Brien ]: what what else? So I agree with everything that's being said. [Anore Horton ]: I really appreciate you sharing that. And it makes me I get emotional about this too because when I started my job at Hunger Free Vermont thirteen years ago now, I sat in a cafeteria. You know, I visited cafeterias all around the state, and I sat in cafeterias with students. And I talked to them. I was like, you know, tell me about your lunch and what's going on. I was just trying to learn my job. And they said to me, well, I'm I'm free. So I get this. So I'm reduced. I get I mean, I just hope that we're all clear that our kids are smart, and they know exactly what is going on. And that is the world that our kids lived in at school before you all passed the universal school. And I don't think we should ever risk going back to anything like that again. [Chair David Durfee ]: Representative Nelson. Thank you. Our [Representative Greg Burtt ]: principal, a few years ago, went to our high school, great principal, and talked about how ashamed he was to use his card to get lunch because his mother, single mom, raising two kids. And I never forgot it. And I just wrote down a little thing. If it comes to the floor, stand up and say, let's choose heat with dignity and parity. [Anore Horton ]: I could not have said it better. Thank you. Alright. So I'm stating the obvious to you all here, but, you know, children and youth are at risk of hunger and food insecurity when they live in households that don't make enough income to meet their basic needs unless their basic needs are met through other means. And that is who we're talking about here. So and I wanna be mindful of, Kayla's time. There's quite a number of data slides here. But I'll just pause to say that our most recent joint fiscal office basic needs budget, compared to the cutoffs for free or reduced priced school meals that the Fed set. And you can see that that cutoff is half of the income needed to meet basic needs in Vermont. Were we to return to a pricing system for our meal programs? So we were talking earlier about how we are we are we now know because we have we have the ability to directly certify students and identify student income on the back end through our Medicaid data. We know that there are twenty three thousand students living in that income gap between the cutoff for free school meals and the joint fiscal office's basic needs budget for family, you know, with kids. So that's a lot of kids. It's a big percentage of all the kids who are attending our public schools who would really not be able to afford their meals and not have any way to access the program if the Vermont Universal School Meals program was repealed. And how many kids are we talking about? This is the Census Bureau's data, and I just wanted to show you how many of our kids are living in these lower income families. It's almost all of the school age kids in our state are living in families with incomes below a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. So if you add all that together, eighty percent of the students we're talking about are in that category. They really need these meals. The vast majority of students in our schools and their families rely on these meals. And so only Vermont's universal school meals program, like the one that we've designed, can deliver all of these benefits, reaching all food insecure students, taking cash registers out of the cafeteria, eliminating stigma, eliminating unpaid meal debt, reducing paperwork and costs, allowing staff to focus on preparing scratch meals and offering attention to students, and ensuring all students are well fed and ready to learn. Vermont's commitment to feed students breakfast and lunch every school day made a huge difference for students, families, teachers, school administrators, and communities. We should reaffirm our commitment now, not take it away when it's working so well. This investment is less than one percent of the education fund, and it means that every student will be well nourished and ready to learn. Thank you so much. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Thank you. Thank you. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Other questions, representative. One thought. For context, have you ever looked into, like, your stat on, like, approximately thirty dollars for the average Vermont taxpayer? You know, what what's cost that same taxpayer, say, for school sports or for busing? It'd be really interesting to know what those numbers are too because I [Anore Horton ]: That's a great question. I've I'll give some thought to how we might be able to identify that. I appreciate that. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Jennifer? Are there other states that do have the universal meal program like Vermont? [Anore Horton ]: We are one of eight states that have a universal meals program. I will say with Vermont pride that our bill is the best. And in fact, we are sought out by other states because there are still other states looking to pursue this. That to because we're a model, We draw down more federal funding than any other state with our bill. We have we have found the way, and I give a lot of credit to our agency of education for this, to make a model that is highly effective. And that's why the cost has gone down even as we are reaching more and more students. So that's really thanks to the very wise design of that bill, which was hammered out in this committee, in this very room, [Kayla Strom ]: in twenty twenty three. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Yeah. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: What was the original number? [Chair David Durfee ]: It was, like, twenty six? Twenty six is what I The the cost. It [Anore Horton ]: was twenty nine known yet. I don't know what you mean. [Chair David Durfee ]: The state. Yeah. That's what [Anore Horton ]: that's what was actually passed by the legislature in twenty twenty three, but it's actually seventeen point five. [Chair David Durfee ]: Hey. Go ahead. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Just a statement. Don't crochet that. My father buys Trump hats by the case, and he supports this. And he he told me this long before the pandemic, that it should be covered. Long before the pandemic. And I can tell you that if farmers spoke the truth, how many farm kids would qualify? K. And they're too proud to do it. [Chair David Durfee ]: We had last year, the agency of education came in, maybe with you or maybe separately. I'm not sure. Maybe with under Figma mater, maybe on a separate occasion and shared a report that I think is an annual report or some data, anyway. They had a and it was a very positive report last year. I think that we're still breathing on the agency to have this year's version, but I think I suspect it will be soon, and we'll ask them to come in and give us an update when we have that. I think we think that will help complete the picture Mhmm. To see how how many students are involved and how many are being helped. [Anore Horton ]: You know? Yes. We're excited to see that report as well. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Thank you [Chair David Durfee ]: so much. Well, thank you, Anur. And we well, we've left a little bit of time to hear from Nova. So if you'd like to come up here. Kim. Alrighty. [Kayla Strom ]: Thank you all so much for having me. For the record, my name is Kayla Strom. I am the farm to School programs manager at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont. My work focuses on increasing local foods in schools and early childhood programs while ensuring that these institutional markets work for our Vermont producers as well. So I'm here today to share how Universal School Meals and Farm to School work together to create a win win, supporting Vermont families, strengthening our local economy, and ensuring that no child in our state is distracted at school by hunger. So I urge you to continue funding universal school meals to the education fund and to not support the governor's proposed repeal of this important commitment to our students, families, teachers, and school administrators. Feeding our kids is a must in how we fund education. So as a representative from the Vermont Farm to School and Early Childhood Network, I also want to share that I'll be back at the State House on February twelfth for Farm to School Awareness Day. And at that time, I can share more about the network and some of the grant programs and the local foods incentive, things you might be familiar with. But today, I'm gonna be focusing on how universal school meals and farm to school work together. So we know that for many students, school meals provide nearly half of their daily nutrition. In Vermont, Farm to School connects food access, education, and local purchasing so that while children receive essential nutrition, they also learn about the impact of food on their health, communities, and local farms. Universal School Meals strengthen the system by increasing meal participation, bringing in more federal dollars, and allowing schools to buy more high quality food, more high quality and local food, supporting over one hundred Vermont farms and keeping more money in our local economy. Some statistics. And then this is the virtuous cycle that Anur touched on a little bit. But so farm to school and universal school meals increase participation in school meals, which improves the revenue of the program and then allowing program directors to be able to purchase more local and then leading to increased participation. When all students have the opportunity to eat, school nutrition programs thrive. When all students have the opportunity to eat, school nutrition programs thrive. More meals served means bigger food budgets largely supported with federal dollars for the Universal School Meal Program, which allows schools to shift their purchasing power towards Vermont producers. And every dollar spent on local food generates an additional dollar sixty in economic activity for Vermont. And we should be doing everything that we can to be keeping those dollars in our state and putting them in the hands of our farmers. That money ripples out not just to farms, but to local processors, distributors in rural communities. So last year, schools that reported their local spending to the Agency of Education through the Vermont Local Foods Incentive Program reported one point two million spent on Vermont products, food products. So with universal school meals in place, school nutrition programs have been able to shift their focus, moving away from those burdensome administrative tasks like collecting school meal debt and instead putting time and resources into what really matters, which is serving high quality locally sourced meals to all students every day. Okay. So, Harley Sterling, the food service director at Wyndham Northeast Supervisory Union puts it best when he said that the amount of time that we were spending on free and reduced applications and various administrative tasks that we no longer have to do has allowed us to focus more on the core of our program, which is making tasty, nutritious food for kids. And when meals weren't universal, there was this moral dilemma knowing that some kids couldn't afford the food and but weren't eligible for free meals and that moral injury was real. Now our focus is exactly where it should be, on making the best food possible for all of our students. This shift in focus has directly impacted local purchasing. With increased participation and more stable budgets, schools are buying more Vermont grown food than ever before. Schools typically purchase food in a couple different ways. Many have direct purchasing relationships where they're working directly with a farm to bring in products to their cafeteria, but we've seen a need for more aggregation of local products and food hubs have really stepped up to meet this demand, growing in number and capacity, helping to strengthen Vermont local supply chains and build a more resilient food system. So this chart, shows the steady increase in school sales over the last few years for these for four food hubs, Food Connects, Green Mound Farm Direct, Acorn, and the Vermont Farmers Food Center. And while there are other food hubs and distributors that play essential roles, these four have really worked together to ensure that every school in the state has access to locally grown, and produced foods. So you can see in school year twenty twenty one-twenty two, there's about three hundred and twenty thousand dollars The following year, about one hundred thousand dollars increase, and then last school year up to about seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And so this these are aggregate totals of the four food hubs together. So programs like Vermont Local Foods Incentive and the federally funded Local Food for Schools initiative have been instrumental in this growth. However, it is the stability and predictability of universal school meals that allows these programs to have the greatest impact. When all students have the opportunity to eat school meals, schools serve more meals creating stronger financial foundations for food service programs and in turn enables them to take full advantage of funding opportunities, invest in high quality ingredients, and build lasting partnerships with Vermont farmers and food producers. So one area of impact where this is especially evident is in sourcing Vermont local beef. Before universal school meals and the local foods incentive, Food Connects reported that selling Vermont raised proteins to public schools was extremely challenging, primarily due to budget constraints. So now that schools both have financial means and an incentive to prioritize local sourcing, this barrier has been significantly reduced. In fact, in one of the most effective ways for schools to increase their local purchasing is for them to incorporate a center of the plate protein like beef. So Boyden Farm in Cambridge, Vermont is Food Connect's primary beef supplier. In school year twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, so looking back at this graph, the purple, Food Connect sold approximately thirty five thousand dollars worth of Boyden Farm beef to Vermont public schools. The following year, that number rose to forty eight thousand, which was a thirty seven percent increase. And then last year, school sales climbed to over a hundred and ten thousand dollars, which is a hundred and twenty nine percent increase in local beef sales for this one producer. And this demonstrates not just growth but the increasing integration of Vermont raised proteins into school meal programs. So so far this school year alone their sales are at ninety eight thousand and they have five months left to go. So it's just going up. So this is a clear example about how universal school meals and farm to school initiatives work hand in hand, not only ensuring that students have access to fresh, nourishing food, but also strengthening Vermont's agricultural economy in the process. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: Are you sell to schools? [Representative John O'Brien ]: Yeah. Just go under on the Memorial School. [Kayla Strom ]: Oh, yeah. Actually. What's your firm? [Representative John O'Brien ]: Birds App Orchard. Oh, cool. Yeah. [Kayla Strom ]: Awesome. We worked with Kelly. Yeah. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Yeah. Well, that people that's Jeff. Okay. Jeff Brin. [Kayla Strom ]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, awesome. So, this is Jen Hutchinson. She's a food service director at Berry Unified Union School District, and I just wanna share some of her her words. The fact that we have consistent high participation because of universal school meals means that I can do all of this cool stuff. I have hydroponic units. I do harvest of the month events. I bring in fresh and local ingredients. I get to spend my time on what really matters to students and it's getting them excited about healthy food instead of processing paperwork to determine which kids get to eat for free and which kids don't, and that shift has meant everything. There's Jen. I didn't realize she was covered up. So these moments where students learn that eggs on their plate come from the farm down the road or see that beef in their burger was raised in their own community create meaningful connections. When we highlighted eggs, and we worked with a local farm, the kids were mesmerized by all the different colored eggs, and when we told them that this was from your buddy's farm right here in town, their faces just lit up and that that connection, that magic is what makes local food so powerful. So how am I gonna have time? I have another food service director I'd love to share some words from. Please do. Okay. So this is Scott Fay, another food service director up in Essex Westford. So, he really underscores the financial impact. So universal school meals have allowed our budgets to grow, and we're able to think more about supporting local producers now than we were a few years ago. I have seen my own program turn on its head for the better. More kids are eating. We are scratch cooking with whole foods. We are processing local foods. They're actually processing local beef into meatballs for their entire district every month. We're purchasing better foods, more fresh fruits and vegetables. The stigma around school meals is gone, and we are focusing entirely on high quality meals. Yet despite all of this progress, school meals continue to be mischaracterized as a driver of educational costs. In reality, as you heard from Manore, Vermont will spend two point three billion on education this year and the state's cost of universal school meals is just seventeen point five million. That is less than one percent of the educational fund. It's one percent. So the states so to even suggest that we should lower property tax by taking food away from kids is just not the Vermont way. My colleague Carol Pent, the food service director at Mount Mansfield, says that universal school meals is not competing with education, it's fueling education. The state of Vermont made a commitment to families, students, teachers, and school administrators when Act sixty four was passed in twenty twenty three and the governor is now proposing to repeal this law and universal school meals with his proposed budget for FY twenty twenty six. If accepted, this proposal would mean that school districts would lose one of the most critical programs providing funding and support needed to prioritize local purchasing, undermining progress made in strengthening Vermont's farm to school supply chains. Losing universal school meals programs would create financial uncertainty for school nutrition programs, making it harder for them to commit to purchasing from Vermont farmers and producers. This could lead to the decline in farm viability, disrupt, disrupt established relationships between schools and local suppliers, and reduce access to fresh, nutritious, locally sourced meals for students, completely contradicting the state's investment in a values driven food system. At its core, Universal School Meals is a cornerstone of equity in Vermont schools. Offering meals to students regardless of income removes barriers that stand in the way of learning. It eliminates stigma, ensures that no child is left out due to bureaucratic hurdles, and creates a more inclusive school environment. When every student has access to nutritious meals, we level the playing field. School meals become a part of the school day just like textbooks and teachers and technology and ensuring that every child has access to nutrition they need to thrive. So when we invest in school meals, we are investing our students, our farms, our local economies, and Universal School Meals is a policy that works for food security, for Vermont farms, and for the success of our students. So I'll be back at the State House on February twelfth, for Farm to School Awareness Day, where you'll have the opportunity to hear from farmers and school nutrition professionals and students, about the impact of these programs. But in the meantime, I'm happy to be a resource, to answer any questions, and please don't hesitate to reach out between now and then. [Chair David Durfee ]: So thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Yep. We I'm I'm pretty sure that we have already got you booked or some folks booked Yeah. Testimony on to hear on Farmer School Day to hear more about these connections Yeah. That are and and this has been helpful just to get sort of an introductory exposure to it and how it relates to the Universal School of Meals. So thank you for that. Yeah. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: So yeah. I I mean, what what's the budget for the local incentive? [Kayla Strom ]: It's five hundred thousand dollars [Anore Horton ]: per year. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: We we said that. Right? [Chair David Durfee ]: Mhmm. So [Representative Richard Nelson ]: it has no real connection to our drawdown from for for universal school. [Kayla Strom ]: No. It does not. No. [Representative Richard Nelson ]: So are they I know some years they weren't even using it all. [Kayla Strom ]: Yeah. So [Representative Richard Nelson ]: seeing now it getting much closer to being [Kayla Strom ]: There's a trajectory of growth for sure, and it takes a long time for food service directors to put these systems in place. Like, they're already thinking about orders for next year today. So to put that in perspective, I think this year, this past December, they had their grants open, and I think we're probably closer to four hundred thousand of that allocation this year, probably a little bit more. So, yeah, we're getting closer to that five hundred thousand. We also want that five hundred thousand we want the grants to be available for those who applied as well. So yeah. [Representative John O'Brien ]: Jennifer, how was it decided what what amount to do for local purchasing versus the rest of their cafeteria budgets? [Kayla Strom ]: Yeah. So, I mean, we strive to support schools in increasing their local purchasing, and the local purchasing incentive has some tiers. Fifteen percent of their budgets gets them fifteen cents back per lunch served, and then twenty percent of their budget locally gets twenty cents back per lunch served and twenty five percent. So there's, like, a fifteen, twenty, and twenty five percent tier for the incentive program. Yeah. [Chair David Durfee ]: Those decisions are all local. They're all [Kayla Strom ]: Yeah. [Chair David Durfee ]: Local. The the tier we decide the tiers. [Representative Greg Burtt ]: Yep. [Chair David Durfee ]: But they [Kayla Strom ]: Yeah. I mean, so it's up it's by choice for the a school food authority to apply to this program. It's not mandated in any way, but they there is a financial incentive for them to participate, and it mostly aligns with a lot of values that we're seeing in school meal programs. [Chair David Durfee ]: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you [Representative John O'Brien ]: both of [Chair David Durfee ]: you. And it was very compelling testimony and data and stories. And I I know we're, you know, at the end of the day, we're looking at budgets, which are numbers, but it's really helpful to have the stories, you know, behind the behind the numbers. Thank you. We will take a break. I'm sorry. We're running a few minutes late, but we'll we'll be back in ten minutes for our next

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