Back to School: Food is the Most Important School Supply

Back to School: Food is the Most Important School Supply

Important Information about School Meals Changes 

All across Virginia, kids are headed back to school—but thousands of children in the Commonwealth are living with hunger. This year and every year, school meals will be critical to ensuring they have the nutrition they need to thrive in and out of the classroom. 

We believe food is the most important school supply a kid can have. In many ways, school meals are just as vital as textbooks. Kids can’t learn on an empty stomach, and school meals help kids focus on the important stuff instead of worrying about hunger. When kids feel better, they do better.

This fall, school meals will help ensure every kid gets the food they need to grow up healthy, happy and strong. Caring and creative nutrition staff are excited to welcome students back to their cafeterias. But the school meals application process is changing: in many divisions across Virginia, school meals will no longer be free for all students.

Since March of 2020, all students have been able to receive free meals at school without submitting a school meals application, thanks to a special flexibility allowed by Congress as part of the country’s coronavirus response. That flexibility has expired, and this fall, many schools can no longer automatically serve meals for free. 

This means that in many divisions, families must submit an application form to their school to determine if they are eligible for free school meals. It is important to note that school divisions operating the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) will not collect school meals applications and will provide free meals to all students using other eligibility data. Many divisions are able to use CEP to continue serving free school meals, but Virginia has roughly 50 school divisions that have no CEP opportunities, or CEP opportunities at a limited number of schools.

To gain access to free meals, it is incredibly important that families complete their school meals applications. In addition to connecting kids with quality nutrition, school meals applications may qualify families for additional benefits, like discounted exam fees and college applications, extracurriculars, scholarship opportunities, and even home Wi-Fi. 

Here’s what you can do right now:

• If you are a parent or caregiver, please fill out your school meals application! Not all divisions require these applications. If your local school division is on this list, please follow the link to complete your division’s school meals application.
• If you are a program operator, please share this language with families in your network. We encourage you to reach out to families through as many methods as possible, including flyers, robo-calls, emails, and letters. You can find some examples in our School Meals Applications Outreach toolkit.  
• If you are a neighbor/supporter/friend, you can spread the word by sharing this blog post with your community. Please remember that families in your division only need to fill out the application to determine the cost of their school meals if you see your local school division on this list. 

The process is changing, but this remains constant: school meals help kids learn. Thank you for helping us spread the word.