Demand has surged for California’s free school meals. But with a drop in extra federal funding, can Bay Area kitchens keep up?

When the flood of students rushing into the cafeteria eased to a trickle, Maria Darnell — the kitchen manager at Alameda’s Lincoln Middle School — texted her boss.

“524 lunches today!” Darnell wrote, along with a smiling, but sweating, emoji.

It had been nine months since California began providing free meals for its public school students, no matter families’ income level. Even so, Darnell was still shocked by how much the program had changed demand. That day, her staff had served 230% more meals than their average before the pandemic, on top of a 530% jump in the number of daily breakfasts.

For years, federal and state funding has buoyed schools like Lincoln, helping them manage the growing costs of nearly everything in their kitchens, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. But next month, a national policy to offset inflation for school cafeterias is set to expire — and in California, that’s happening right when demand has risen the most.

“We’re feeding more kids, and we’ve hired more staff,” said Nicole Meschi, the nutrition director at the Cupertino Union School District. “But with the sunsetting of the increased reimbursement rate policy, it’s going to be really difficult to balance our budgets.”

That policy is called the Keep Kids Fed Act, which boosted federal funding by $3 billion — 40 cents per lunch and 15 cents per breakfast — for children who qualified for free and reduced-price school meals to help districts offset the rising costs of food, supplies and delivery. Although all California students will still have access to free meals, school kitchens will have to find a way to keep staff and maintain the quality of school meals without the extra federal inflation supplement.

The Cupertino Union School District is looking at a loss of $566,800 for next school year alone, said Meschi, half of what’s expected for bigger districts such as Mt. Diablo and Oakland Unified. Despite overall inflation inching down, the cost of school meals across the country is still high, jumping by nearly 300% between this April and last, according to federal data.

James Assia, the nutrition director at the Alameda Unified School District, said he’s seen the price of bread, rolls and tortillas go up by 85% since Russia invaded Ukraine. Then there’s the cost of lettuce, Darnell added, which had tripled in price by the end of last year. Denisse Mendez, the nutrition director at the Alum Rock Union School District, said her biggest worry is milk — the cost of which has doubled since 2020.

And then, there’s labor costs. School districts across the Bay Area have either hired more cafeteria staff or extended existing workers’ hours to keep up with increased demand for free meals. For 60-year-old Helen Gee, who’s worked at Lincoln Middle School for the last 23 years, getting more hours at work has been huge — it’s added to her benefit package and boosted her take-home pay.

With so many more kids accessing meals at school, nutrition directors say cutting hours or jobs is not an option.

“At the end of the day, food costs are increasing, and labor is increasing,” said Mendez. “If the reimbursement rate doesn’t offset the true cost of the program, that’s going to be really challenging.”

A well-functioning nutrition department operates like a little business, Assia said. That business should be self-sustaining — and if it’s not, nutrition departments have to reduce the price of their meals by driving down the quality or dip into their school district’s general fund to cover their costs. That means less money for teachers’ salaries, instructional materials and other day-to-day operating costs.

That’s something California has long tried to help school districts avoid, even before the economic shocks following the COVID-19 pandemic. For years, the state has subsidized school meals beyond the support given by the federal government, recognizing that the cost of food, labor and supplies in California far exceeds the average in the United States.

Because of that, the state has supplemented funding with one-time grants to improve kitchen facilities, provide staff training and connect kitchens to local farmers, among other initiatives to strengthen the quality of school meals.

“The governor and the legislature have shown tremendous leadership and commitment to school meals, and California is incredibly proud to be the first state in the nation to implement school meals for all,” said Abby Halperin, the policy and grants manager of the Center for Ecoliteracy, a Berkeley-based nonprofit. “It would be unfathomable to take school meals away from California children at this juncture.”

Despite a $31.5 billion deficit in the state’s budget, this month Newsom retained a $1.5 billion commitment to providing free breakfast and lunch to all students, including an additional $110 million one-time provision and a $191 million ongoing provision to fully fund the universal meals until the 2023-24 school year.

Even so, Halperin said that the magnitude of the state contribution depends a lot on what happens federally, and that no state — not even California — is immune to the supply chain issues or inflationary pressure across the country.

Assia, for one, feels good about the money in his nutrition department’s wallet. One-time grants and this past year’s funding increase have kept his kitchens in the black. Still, he doesn’t want to reduce the quality his team has tried so hard to improve.

“As of right now, we have a good amount to cover the loss we’re expecting next year, so we’re not as worried as other districts,” said Assia. “But with the increase in product costs and food costs, and salaries always going up, I could be wrong. Ask me again this time next year.”

Three thousand miles from California, U.S. Representative James McGovern, D-MA, is trying to replace the Keep Kids Fed Act with a new bill — one that would permanently increase federal funding for school meals across the country.

If passed, that money would trickle down to California kitchens, giving them more to work with.

“(States) who have universal meals still have to grapple with the costs of putting good food before students. The costs are still going up, and we need to address that,” said McGovern, who introduced his new bill — the Healthy Meals Help Kids Learn Act — in March. “This is a no brainer.”