Maryland State Delegate Keith Haynes reported that thanks to The Hunger Free Schools Act of 2015 any school and school district with at least 40 percent of its population considered low-income to offer free meals to all its students. That number means every single school in Baltimore is eligible.
With a growing number of homeless families, this program is ideal for the health and safety of students. The program lets children get both breakfast and lunch for free. This ensures students don’t go hungry and can perform at their best.
The city joins Somerset and Washington counties, which are participating in the program, along with one school in Howard County.
At Beechfield, the announcement was welcome news.
Principal Renee Browning said she has seen her middle-school students sharing their lunches with one another when students can't afford to pay. The school offers students other options, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but they're a hard sell to a pre-teenager.
She said the stakes of an empty stomach — research shows hungry students are at a great disadvantage in the classroom — are even higher as city students enter an era of more rigorous lessons under the Common Core standards.
"This means from Day 1 to Day 180, every child will have a free school lunch and they will be focused on their academics," Browning said.
But while exciting, the announcement surprised sixth-grader Katia Stanford.
"I think it's good, and kind of crazy because kids should have been getting free lunch from the beginning if they knew kids was hungry," she said.
Advocates agreed. The city was criticized for not opting into the program two years ago when it raised lunch prices to $3, among the highest in the nation. School system officials said then that the city could have lost some state funding if it took part in the program without state legislation.
