Emily Malone, Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools’ director of child nutrition, recently met with lawmakers in Washington D.C. to advocate for local students and school meal programs as part of the national School Nutrition Association’s annual Legislative Action Conference March 3-5.

Malone, who also serves as the Minnesota School Nutrition Association president-elect, was joined by 850 school nutritionists from around the U.S. who called on Congress to increase funding and preserve current nutrition standards.

“We spent a total of four days learning about advocacy and current trends across the U.S. I concentrated the most on our Midwest region and learning what’s going on in those states in terms of free meals for kids and so on,” Malone said. “Then we took all the knowledge and met with state legislators, congressmen and congresswomen, and senators. I did get to meet with Congresswoman Angie Craig and we basically went before the Senate and House and talked about a couple of things that we’re concerned about at the national level and Minnesota level.”

According to the School Nutrition Association (SNA), a recent survey revealed that economic, procurement and regulatory issues have become critical long-term challenges for school meal programs as pandemic-era assistance comes to an end. With additional regulations for school meal programs being finalized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, SNA urges congress to increase funding, preserve successful current nutrition standards and provide every student equal access to healthy school meals.

The USA is getting ready to release its final, more restrictive long-term rules for school nutrition, one of the challenges the SNA is facing. 

“About 12 years ago, Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act started to implement healthier boundaries for school nutrition programs and we’ve reached the target sodium levels which took a long time for everybody to do,” she said. “Our manufacturers in our industry for the last 10 years have been reducing sodium by about 50% and we feel like we’re in a really good place. These manufacturers have to go and do a lot of research to make a palatable food that is compliant for a school nutrition program.”

The SNA explained that with a lack of any nutrition mandates for dining or retail foods, limited demand for low-sodium and whole grain products in the retail market leaves many manufacturers and distributors hesitant to prepare and stock specialty items for K-12 customers.

The SNA is urging lawmakers to leave nutrition standards over fears manufacturers will start pulling out of the industry, Malone said. 

“The manufacturers that serve child nutrition programs have very small margins for profit and we saw it during the pandemic,” she said. “During the pandemic, the first food supply chain that was affected by the disruption was school nutrition. They kept running for grocery stores because that’s where the profit margins were.”

Malone also said due to the ever changing rules by the USDA, suppliers and distributors are left with little options for school nutrition products.

“It’s a frustration and a fatigue that manufacturers have with our child nutrition programs,” Malone said. “Even the distributors, they only have a certain amount of space that they can allocate for each of their industries and because child nutrition products are so very specific, its hard for them to bring in new things because they don’t have enough space for it.”

In addition to maintaining current nutrition standards and offering healthy school meals to all students at no charge, Malone said school nutritionists also advocated to budget more feed time for students to eat their lunch.

With free meals now available to kids in Minnesota, more students are in the cafeteria leading to longer lines and less time to sit down and eat. “What we’re really hoping is that there’s some mandate or legislation saying students need to sit down for at least 15 minutes to eat their food,” Malone said. 

According to SNA, survey data shows that offering free school meals can help boost meal participation and benefit students. Among school districts with free meal service through state initiatives or the Community Eligibility Provision:

• 87.4% reported free meal service increased school meal participation.
• 66.2% noted a more positive social-emotional cafeteria environment.
• 57.0% saw reduced stigma for low-income students.
• 52.7% cited increased operational efficiencies.

In Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools, all students in all-day pre-K, grades K-8 and Bridges Area Learning Center in the district receive breakfast and lunch on school days at no cost. Prior Lake High School will remain off the National School Meals Program, continuing to allow greater flexibility in providing healthy, delicious meals and snacks that meet the needs and expectations of students, parents and staff. Free or reduced-price meal applications are available and families are encouraged to apply.

Malone and other members of the School Nutrition Association also met with legislators at the state capitol on Monday, March 11, to address the issues.

For more information or to apply for the Application for Educational Benefits, visit https://www.plsas.org/about-us/departments/child-nutrition.