Low-income families attending schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program will now have their meal copays covered by the state.
That’s due in part to a report created by researchers at Arizona State University.
Researchers at the College of Health Solutions’ Food Policy and Environmental Research Group helped secure $3.8 million to provide free school meals for tens of thousands of kids at Arizona’s public and charter schools.
Punam Ohri-Vachaspati leads the research group. She said they were asked to create a report estimating how much it would cost to increase access to school meals to children under various scenarios.
“You know, what if the state did free meals for all? What if the state did increase some other provisions? And one of those was what if the state paid the co-pay for the reduced price meals? So that’s the option the state took,” Ohri-Vachaspati said.
The budget the state Legislature adopted last month includes funding to cover the cost of those copays.
“I’m really proud of this work because now the findings from that report are being used to actually have the state funds to go towards school meals and this is the first time in our state’s history that that has been done,” she said.
Those meals had previously been free with the help of COVID-19 relief money. The new state funds will extend that for at least another year.
Ohri-Vachaspati added that school meals have a lot of benefits.
“School meals are the healthiest meals that are accessible to children, no matter what income group,” she said. “School meal participation has been associated with more regular school attendance and higher academic achievement.”
