Latest news with #AmandaMills
Washington Post
19-03-2025
- Washington Post
Best friends say they found ‘heaven' — and a racist landlord ruined it
Amanda Mills and Angela Smith thought they had found paradise when they discovered Lazy Cove Campground, a scenic southern Virginia retreat on the banks of Smith Mountain Lake. The two friends had been inseparable since they were 16-year-olds working at Harris Teeter and when the coronavirus pandemic hit, they saw an opportunity to bring their families together in the secluded outdoor area. Mills would be in one camper with her family; Smith would be in one nearby with her husband, Damien Smith, who is Black, and their 8-year-old son, who is biracial.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How proposed federal cuts are threatening Maine's free school meals for all
Students getting their l lunch at a primary school in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Maine's universal free school meals program is under threat as a result of proposed federal budget cuts, combined with the drop in bipartisan support at the state level. Five years ago, Maine became one of the first states nationwide to make school meals free for all students regardless of family income. That resulted in a majority of students benefiting from the program and led to increases in the number of students eating at school, but with a proposed $12 billion federal funding cut to school meals and cuts to Medicare and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the inability of the state to make up for the loss of federal funding in the state budget, advocates are sounding the alarm to try and preserve free breakfast and lunch, as well as summer and after school meals for all public school students. For a state such as Maine, which faces the highest child food insecurity in New England, that presents serious cause for concern, according to experts from several nonprofit organizations, the Maine Department of Education and food bank leaders. 'We're very concerned about these overlapping cuts as they pile on,' said Anna Korsen, policy and program director at Full Plates Full Potential, a nonprofit working with the state on several nutrition programs. 'We know that school budgets cannot shoulder those cuts. We know that the state budget can't afford these cuts. So we're concerned about how all of them together will impact funding for these programs.' Under the universal meal program, the state pays districts to offer meals without charging students, but the amount of money that comes from the federal government depends on the percentage of low-income families each public school serves. The higher the percentage of families that qualify for free meals, the bigger the federal reimbursement. Traditionally, this percentage was determined by parents filling out free-and-reduced meal applications, but now that school meals are free for all students, the state shifted away from relying on the applications and now uses different ways of determining the free and reduced meal eligibility in each school, which is an important data point used for various federally funded programs. One option is the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which at least 75 schools are using this year, according to Maine Department of Education and federal data. CEP simplifies the process by automatically qualifying schools with a high percentage of low-income students for the higher reimbursement rate. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school lunch programs, lowered the CEP eligibility threshold from 40% to 25%, meaning more schools could receive federal meal funding starting the 2024-25 school year. However, Maine has not yet adopted this change. If it does, nearly 400 schools could qualify for CEP starting next year. The 75 schools currently using the provision all qualified using the 40% threshold. But the $12 billion cut proposes raising the CEP threshold to 60%, drastically reducing the number of eligible schools in Maine from hundreds to just 31. This would put the burden on the state or districts, which does not have the budget to support the lack of funding, Korsen said. Cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would further strain the free meals program by reducing eligibility for federal reimbursement, because CEP takes into account participation in these programs to determine which families can be considered economically disadvantaged. Last year, the Maine Department of Education also started using this data (called direct certification) to determine student eligibility for free or reduced-price child who is enrolled in SNAP or MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program, is automatically deemed eligible for free and reduced price school meals, so that means that the school is going to receive federal funding to support feeding those students even without being a CEP school, Korsen said. If work requirements or other restrictions are added to SNAP and MaineCare, fewer families would qualify for these programs. As a result, even the 31 schools that currently meet the 60% threshold for CEP could lose their eligibility. 'At some point there's going to have to be hard choices, and we don't want school meals for all to suffer because of that,' she said. Finally, Korsen warned that although Gov. Janet Mills has called for extending the universal meal program in her budget proposal, its once bipartisan support is 'unraveling at the state level,' as the cost of the program has grown with inflation. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
USDA cancels $18 million in funding for school meals and food banks in Minnesota
Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The U.S. Department of Agriculture is cancelling roughly $1 billion in already-promised spending on local food purchases for schools and food banks nationwide, Politico reported this week. The Local Food for Schools program provides funding for states to purchase food from local farmers and distribute it to schools and child care programs. A similar initiative, the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, buys and distributes locally-produced food to in-state food banks. For fiscal year 2025, Minnesota had been awarded roughly $13.3 million to purchase food for schools, and an additional $4.7 million to cover products for food banks. Those funds will no longer be distributed. The programs were initiated under the Biden administration as a way to help farmers, schools and food banks weather the supply chain disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Minnesota was the first state to be awarded an LFS grant in 2022. 'More Minnesota schools will have access to reimbursement grants to support local purchasing, which will strengthen our state's local and regional markets, support small and emerging farmers, and ensure our kids are eating the freshest, most nutritious food our state can offer,' said Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen at the time. USDA data shows that more than 100 Minnesota farmers and food producers participated in the LFPA program. Those producers will now have to find other markets for their products. The $13 million reduction in local school food spending is about 5% of what the state spends on school meals annually, which could complicate lawmakers' ongoing efforts to pass a budget to fund state government for the next two years. Compounding the effect of the USDA cuts are efforts by Republican lawmakers in Congress to slash school meal funding to help pay for $4.6 trillion in federal tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy. 'Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health,' said Shannon Gleave, president of the School Nutrition Association, in a statement. 'These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs.'
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
I am once again asking Ohio lawmakers to please just feed the children
Students getting their l lunch at a primary school. (Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) I am once again asking Ohio lawmakers to please just feed the children. For all that is good and decent, at long last, may we please at least just make sure schoolchildren aren't going hungry? Pleading for the state government to make sure that Ohio schoolchildren aren't spending their days dealing with hunger pangs, tired, irritable, distracted, unable to concentrate, unable to learn, well, that has traditionally been an obscene and mind-boggling ask for too many Ohio lawmakers. They keep declining to do it. But as my buddy Alexander Pope says, hope springs eternal in the human breast. Feed Ohio school children. Please. At the very least, feed the children. So I will continue sounding the call, because I hold the firm and unshakeable, but apparently insane opinion that schoolchildren shouldn't be going hungry. They should be fed. All of them. Whatever meals they need. Student hunger is pervasive in Ohio. With more than 1.6 million public school students, about 57% of them meet qualifications and are participating in free and reduced lunch programs. Data from Feeding America shows 1 in 5 Ohio children live in homes that are food insecure. In some counties like Cuyahoga and Adams and Scioto, it's 1 in 4. Here's the rub: A 2023 report from Children's Defense Fund Ohio found that 1 in 3 children who live in those food insecure homes don't qualify for free school meals because their households are technically over the 185% of poverty line. Many others don't participate for fear of judgment. This means that hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in Ohio are going hungry during the school day because either they're not covered or fear the stigma. Rubbing gravel on the wound, Republicans in U.S. Congress are right now looking at making cuts that would slash national school meal programs, impacting 280,000 Ohio kids. Bipartisan Ohio Senate bill aims to pay for public school breakfast and lunch But in Ohio, a new bipartisan bill, Ohio Senate Bill 109, would make sure that no Ohio K-12 student has to go through the day hungry. The legislation sponsored by state Sen. Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Twp., and state Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, would provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to public and chartered nonpublic school students. During the 2023 Ohio budget season, a proposal for universal school meals was made but was never passed. Under this cycle's proposal, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce would be directed to reimburse public and chartered nonpublic schools who participate in the national school breakfast and lunch programs by covering the gap between the federal reimbursements for free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches and those who would be required to pay because they don't qualify for meal assistance. The bill lists an appropriation of $300 million to support the state reimbursements. The state operating budget is projected at $108 billion for fiscal year 2026 and $110 billion for fiscal year 2027. Blessing and Smith plan to push for the bill to be included in the two-year budget due July 1, currently under negotiation in the Ohio House. A group of high schoolers from across Ohio rallied at the Statehouse this past Tuesday advocating for it. Ohio students plead with lawmakers for free breakfast and lunch in schools Every teacher I've ever talked to about it has told me the same thing: Hunger is an enormous barrier to learning. Meanwhile, kids are being put into social situations where they either go hungry or face the judgment of their peers. As we all know, the antenna of fear of social stigma and judgment is sky high in childhood and adolescence. We have a simple and effective solution: Remove the stigma, remove the fear of judgment, remove the school meal caste system, and just feed the children, all of the children. If the basic humanity and decency of it isn't compelling enough, I can make an economic argument. Well-fed kids make for more attentive and engaged students. Attentive and engaged students have better academic success. Most successful students become successful citizens. Successful citizens grow the economy. So, feed the children. All of the children, all the same. Please just feed the children. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Maine school administrators push for more funding for poor, unhoused students
Students getting their l lunch at a primary school in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) School leaders from across Maine are pushing for a change to education funding that would allocate more money to districts with larger shares of economically disadvantaged students and those experiencing homelessness. Despite the financial burden to the state and municipalities, many superintendents and educators as well as some mayors advocated for the investment in students who need more robust support to stay and succeed in school. And while Maine students generally performed poorly on the most recent national assessments, scores for economically disadvantaged students on both state and local assessments were even lower, amplifying the need for additional classroom support, according to several administrators and stakeholders who spoke at a public hearing before the Legislature's Joint Committee of Education and Cultural Affairs Wednesday. The current Essential Programs and Services (EPS) state formula for determining state and local contributions to public education relies on several factors, but a major one is each district's enrollment, called per pupil count. For every economically disadvantaged and multilingual student, more money is allocated to each district. The EPS formula essentially counts every student who is economically disadvantaged as 1.15 students — meaning there is an additional 15% weight per pupil. A bill introduced by Rep. Kristen Cloutier (D-Lewiston) would change the weight from 15% to 25%, increasing the amount of money districts with economically disadvantaged students would get per student. The proposal cost more than $70 million, according to written testimony from the Maine Department of Education, which would be split between the state and municipalities. That's a worthwhile investment, according to proponents of the bill, which included the Maine School Management Association, the Maine Educators Association and several superintendents from throughout the state. During the last school year, more than 64,000 Maine students — or 38% of all students — were considered economically disadvantaged, according to MSMA. 'This is not just about money. And I know the $70 million is a lot… but this is about making a decision based on what's right and wrong,' said Biddeford Superintendent Jeremy Ray. Machias Bay Area Superintendent Scott Porter echoed Ray, saying that additional funding would be 'a game changer for Washington County.' 'We need more resources to address the needs of thousands of students — this would impact thousands of students in a positive manner,' he said. School districts are allowed to determine how to use EPS funds. This can include paying for academic interventionists to help students catch up; social workers that can address their needs beyond school, including access to food and shelter; or transportation to ensure these students can access career and technical centers if they want to learn trades, according to Sanford Superintendent Matt Nelson. During the COVID pandemic, the funding formula was temporarily changed to 20% more per economically disadvantaged student. 'We were able to see the necessary impact that that change made for our students and for our educators,' Nelson said of this change, asking the committee to make the increase permanent. The EPS funding formula does not currently provide any special allocation for students experiencing homelessness. A separate bill introduced by Rep. Michael Archer (D-Saco) would expand the funding to provide districts with an additional weight of 50% per each unhoused student. The students would be identified by their district as a homeless child or youth under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. 'This is becoming such a huge part of our population, that I think it's appropriate, now to consider this piece moving forward,' Ray, the Biddeford superintendent said. 'While we all look at the dollars and cents that go into this, I think both parties can agree that a child who is homeless needs some extra funds or wraparound services around them, they are not in that position by any fault of their own.' Transporting students who don't have a permanent address to and from schools in York County is a big challenge, Ray said. That includes gas mileage, finding someone to drive a van to pick up and drop off students, and the transportation time. When his district receives requests to transport students who may be temporarily located an hour away but are enrolled in Biddeford schools, for example, the district does not have any additional funding assigned to meet those needs, he said. The Maine DOE didn't testify for or against the two bills, but provided some context about the challenges of tracking economically disadvantaged and homeless students. If the changes the bills propose were made to the funding formula, an accurate count of both categories would be required, which is hard to do in Maine for several reasons. Since the state started offering universal free meals, it has been increasingly difficult to track economically disadvantaged students, since the number of students eligible for free breakfast and lunch was the primary way districts would track their poverty counts. While the department has begun relying on other ways to estimate economically disadvantaged populations — such as looking at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicaid data as a proxy for student-level poverty — eligibility in these programs is limited and Maine's poverty calculations remain difficult to validate, according to the DOE testimony. Identifying students experiencing homelessness presents a similar challenge. Students lacking a regular nighttime residence have to be identified by schools and reported to the DOE, but this identification can occur at any time during the year. Once a student is identified as experiencing homelessness under the McKinney-Vento Act, they carry homeless status through the end of June, after which a liaison will connect with families to determine if they still lack stable housing. But the EPS model is designed to fund districts based on data collected on October 15 each year. This would make it difficult to correctly account for and allocate necessary funds. 'Pupil counts conducted on October 1 would not capture an accurate picture of students experiencing homelessness over the course of the school year,' the DOE said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
