Finish the Job! Massachusetts falls short on free lunches

We need to have a real talk about food insecurity, schools, and why Massachusetts still needs to finish the job to make its school breakfast and lunch program actually accessible.

As a recovering poor kid, I cannot describe my delight that Massachusetts has a universal program where every student can have two meals a day. But it won’t matter if we don’t also give our students the time to actually eat them. 

Schools need dedicated breakfast times and longer lunch time (and to hire cafeteria staff, which gets harder every year).  Right now most students are only getting 20 minutes for their entire lunch period including waiting in line, with only approximately 5 minutes to eat for those kids in the back of the line.

And there’s so little time set aside for all that free breakfast, that people hardly even study it.

The lack of time leads to students eating too quickly or not at all. This contributes to food (and therefore money) waste, develops habits for disordered eating, erodes any of the new health education guidelines on mindful eating and nutritional choices, and decreases much needed time for students to socialize and let off steam before heading back to learn.

How can we keep universal lunch from becoming just another well-meaning policy without on the ground conditions for success?

There are a lot of pathways, but they most often suggest measuring lunch periods by “seat time,” meaning, how much time students spend actually eating. Allowing students to eat during class or  giving them grab and go options (especially for breakfasts) which gives student time to eat without missing lessons. Opening up “swipe lines” allows students to get through the line quickly and have more seat time.

Look, there is no one-size fits all solution because every school is different. The state can set some helpful guidelines, but the real leadership needs to come in working with local districts to find practices that are going to balance  nutrition with instruction time and with social time. Students need all three in order to learn effectively.

Ultimately, the hard part will be what the hard part always is in education policy: letting the science and not the politics lead the way.

Too often attitudes that diminish teachers and education get their way: No Child  Left Behind’s obsessive insistence on testing, limiting recess or  punishing kids by denying them recess, too early start time, and too few teachers to students (even before the teacher shortage).

Getting food in schools is a victory for schools and the evidence-based policy, but to keep it a success story, students need the ability to use the programs.

So, it comes down to what it always comes down to: money and politics. But we’re finally spending the money, so let’s spend it right. 

Keep reading for the personal connection:

At the end of some columns,  I want to  share with you a little  about why this issue means so much to me.   

The Personal Connection: 

I remember in 7th grade my teachers telling me I was  lazy and “too stupid to graduate high school” (if you taught at Bartlett High School in Webster in  ‘94 and ‘95,  I’d just like to say that it is  Doctor Too Stupid to Graduate High School, and a few other words I picked up working for the Navy).

The thing is, I wasn’t stupid or lazy. I was tired and hungry.

The teacher who called me stupid did so because I couldn’t read the paragraph in the book when he asked me to. It wasn’t that  I couldn’t read. It was that I couldn’t see it. I still get anxiety thinking about remember trying to read the paragraph (I was sitting in the third seat, row closest to the door), but it was just fuzzy words on the page. The written equivalent of the adults talking in Charlie Brown.

My mom had traded the food stamps for drugs again, and since we were getting less than we usually did, all those stale cheerios and frozen hot dogs went to my little sister. I was running on the Blueberry Nutrigrain I bought for $0.50 that I stole from my mother’s laundry fund. I tried learning the fine art of shoplifting an orange juice that my bad-crowd friends taught, but I felt so guilty that it didn’t work out.

Back then, no one told me I could get to school early and eat breakfast. Even if I had known, I  couldn’t leave my sister alone that long. I ate what free lunch I could get, but it was never enough, and our 18-minute lunch period didn’t help.

If you know, you know. If you don’t know, consider yourself lucky.

Either way, speaking as a recovering poor kid, as a mom with kids in public schools, and as a political scientist: great policies mean absolutely nothing unless we can make sure people can  actually use them.