Minnesota can afford equality in the cafeteria

What are you having for lunch today?

That usually isn't a political question, but for thousands of students in Minnesota's schools, it is. For them, the answer may depend on whether legislators now beginning their work in St. Paul can reach agreement on the Hunger-Free Schools campaign.

Gov. Tim Walz has taken the first step and included school meals for all in his proposal for how to use the state's $7.7 billion surplus. It will be up to the state House and Senate to determine its fate. As legislative decisions go, it should be an easy call.

The Hunger-Free Schools campaign's goal is straightforward: to provide a nutritious breakfast and lunch, free of charge, to every student in the state of Minnesota. And although the idea has the governor's support, it didn't start with him.

Our campaign has support from all parts of Minnesota's political spectrum and all corners of its geography. It's backed by a coalition of business partners and nonprofits that is literally too long to list here, but it includes some of the state's biggest employers. Among them are Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and Cargill.

The money is available. With less than $200 million we can provide breakfast and lunch to all 900,000 K-12 students in Minnesota, at no cost to them. Remember, the budget shows a surplus of $7.7 billion, and projections suggest there is more to come.

Not only should the initiative be a no-brainer, financially and politically; it's also been proved doable — by virtue of its already having been done. Federal money made available for pandemic relief has gone to this exact purpose for the past two school years. Now, though, that money is about to dry up. It's time for the state to shoulder some of that responsibility.

You may be thinking, wait a minute — isn't there already a program that subsidizes school lunches? You're right, there is. And it works, up to a point. But a quarter of the kids who need that support don't qualify for it. The result is that some students eat well, while others are just getting by.

And even though a state law prohibits "lunch shaming" of students who fall behind on their payments, it would be naive to think that an act of the Legislature could succeed in abolishing embarrassment.

But it could level the playing field — or at least the cafeteria floor. In a hunger-free school, kids would come through their lunchroom doors as equals, with everyone entitled to the same meal and no one needing to prove that they are paid up or sufficiently poor to eat for free.

One middle-schooler expressed his view of what's at stake more succinctly than I could have done at his age: "You expect me to be brilliant," he said. "How can anybody be brilliant when they're hungry?"

Research shows that hunger is the enemy of an effective education. And in too many homes, hunger has the upper hand. One in six Minnesota children is food insecure — which is another way of saying that one child in six lives in a home that knows hunger.

There are plenty of issues on the legislative agenda this year on which public servants will disagree. But there are also common goods on which they can make common cause. Making sure kids are fed in schools is one of them.

Colleen Moriarty is executive director of Hunger Solutions Minnesota.