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Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Survey: Most Ohio economists think universal school meals would pay dividends
Olentangy Orange High School Senior Connor Morrison and other students urge Ohio lawmakers to make breakfast and lunch free for K-12 schools. (Photo by Morgan Trau, WEWS.) The Ohio General Assembly is considering a bill that would provide free breakfasts and lunches to children attending public schools. A strong majority of a panel of economists agreed that the measure would improve student outcomes, a survey released this week said. Ohio Senate Bill 109, introduced by state Sens. Louis Blessing III, R-Colerain Township, and Kent Smith, D-Euclid, would provide the meals free of charge to all kids in Ohio's public and charter schools at an estimated cost of $300 million a year. House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, claims that Ohio can't afford public education at its current funding level. That level was derived in an attempt to resolve a 28-year-old state Supreme Court ruling that school funding was so paltry that it violated the Ohio Constitution. Ohio students plead with lawmakers for free breakfast and lunch in schools This week, Huffman introduced a budget decimating the amount called for under the Fair School Funding Plan by about two-thirds, to $226 million. Huffman claims that Ohio can't afford to fund public schools a year after he supported giving nearly $1 billion a year in vouchers to families with kids in private school. The measure was sold as a way of helping low-income families afford private education, but nearly 90% of families receiving money are not low income and nearly 20% are in the state's top income bracket. Ohio subsidizes the wealthy in other ways, including the $1 billion it forgoes each year on an LLC tax break that has failed to produce the promised jobs. The subsidies also include more than $1 billion over a decade that used to flow into the state treasury from the liquor franchise. It's now handed out as business incentives through JobsOhio — though the private agency hasn't proven that it's attracted any jobs. Huffman says Ohio doesn't have $666 million to fund public education, but his budget has $600 million to subsidize the billionaire Haslam family in building a new stadium for the perennially underperforming Cleveland Browns. The Haslams have claimed that the project would generate far more in tax revenue than the cost to taxpayers. But an expert told The Statehouse News Bureau that their assumptions were far too optimistic. And Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne has said the Haslams' own model assumes that ticket prices would climb to $800 over the 30-year life of the bonds. Ohio hasn't had the best record when it comes to such deals. last week reported that the state has little power to claw back $600 million it's put up for an Intel plant that is now not expected to open until 2030 at the earliest, and is said to be unlikely to live up to its original promises. Meanwhile, good public education seems to be at least as important to growing the Ohio economy as tax breaks and other subsidies for the wealthy. But spending $300 million a year on meals for public schoolchildren hasn't made it out of the Ohio Senate committee to which the bill was assigned. Majority of Ohioans are in favor of universal free school meal program, according to poll The great majority of economists surveyed this week seemed to think it should. Asked whether 'universal free school lunches will improve student outcomes such as test scores and graduation rates,' 14 agreed and three were uncertain. 'There is an abundant body of literature that finds that universal free school lunches not only improve average test scores and overall academic performance…, but also reduce suspensions,' Will Georgic of Ohio Wesleyan University wrote in the comments section of the survey. 'While not every student's academic achievement will improve, the average effect for all students will be unambiguously positive.' Bill LaFayette of Regionomics said such a program would benefit family budgets and promote good nutrition. 'Many children, especially in urban districts, live in economically challenged families, possibly without access to fresh decent food. Hungry children cannot learn,' he wrote. 'This would also relieve the household of an additional expense.' David Brasington of the University of Cincinnati said he was uncertain of the overall benefit because he didn't know how many families would take advantage of the program. 'It will help children who otherwise wouldn't get the food, but this is a sufficiently small number of students that it wouldn't move the needle,' he wrote. 'My children also don't like the food school offers, so take-up might be low, too low to make the cost worthwhile.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE The economists were also asked whether they believed universal breakfasts and lunches at school would 'promote equitable outcomes in Ohio's K-12 education system.' Fourteen agreed, two were uncertain and one disagreed. Jonathan Andreas said the program would promote student equality by not singling out those from low-income families. 'Universal benefits are more equitable than means-tested benefits because they literally treat everyone the same,' he wrote. 'They increase equitability of social status by eliminating the stigma of singling out the needy for special help.' Even though the program wouldn't force anyone to eat school meals, Michael Jones of the University of Cincinnati disagreed that it would promote equity. He said it would discourage some kids from staying home and having breakfast with their families. 'Encouraging children to eat breakfast at school rather than at home shifts parental responsibilities to government programs. This sends the message that providing basic needs such as food is something families can opt out of rather than prioritize,' he wrote. 'Parents who value family time together should not be put at a financial disadvantage simply because they do not use a free school breakfast. Families are strengthened when children see their parents taking care of them.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio students plead with lawmakers for free breakfast and lunch in schools
Olentangy Orange High School Senior Connor Morrison and other students urge Ohio lawmakers to make breakfast and lunch free for K-12 schools. (Photo by Morgan Trau, WEWS.) A group of high schoolers from across Ohio rallied at the Statehouse Tuesday, pleading with lawmakers to make breakfast and lunch free for students. School lunch isn't just a period to socialize with your friends, they said, it can be a lifeline for kids. 'They helped to make sure we had a meal every day that we were at school, 'cause that might not have always been the case at home when my mom was going through everything,' said Corbin Eaton, a junior at Antwerp High School in Paulding County. Data from Feeding America reports that 1 in 5 Ohio children is unsure of where their next meal is coming from. Eaton was one of them. But once his school got involved and helped offer free and reduced lunches, he knew he could get through the day. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'I think that without them, we wouldn't be able to eat every day during school, which makes our academic performance lower than what it should be,' he said about the importance of lunch. It would cost $300 million per fiscal year to provide meals for all public and charter schools in the state, which is less than 1% of the proposed state budget. The students are hoping to get this in the state budget, but they are also agreeable to a bill that would accomplish the exact same thing that was just recently introduced. State Sens. Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Township, and Kent Smith, D-Euclid, introduced the bipartisan S.B. 109, which would provide free breakfast and lunch to public and chartered nonpublic school students. Bipartisan Ohio Senate bill aims to pay for public school breakfast and lunch Donovan O'Neil with conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity warned about the price tag. 'When we hear ideas floated out there that would increase the obligation that the state has, whether it's for school lunches or something else, we're going to throw up the caution flag and encourage folks to take a good hard look if this is really where the state needs to be prioritizing its spending,' O'Neil said. The budget isn't just a concern for advocates like O'Neil — it is for schools, too. Ohio Republican leadership has proposed cutting more than $650 million in public education funding. Republicans in U.S. Congress are also looking at making cuts that would slash national school meal programs, with impacts for 280,000 Ohio kids. And now, there is another Ohio bill that educators say could increase costs for them. H.B. 145 would increase the number of instructional hours in K-12 schools from a minimum of 1,001 hours to 1,054. 'The more time students spend on meaningful learning, the better they're going to perform academically,' state Rep. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, said. More than 280,000 Ohio kids would be impacted by proposed national school meal program cuts This is an effort, in part, to make up for learning loss during the pandemic, Bird added during his news conference introducing the legislation. But Parma City Schools Superintendent Charles Smialek said that with the way the state keeps cutting the budget for public schools, they will be forced to decrease the amount of classes. 'You would eliminate electives,' Smialek said. 'You would be looking at, 'what exactly does it take to graduate from high school and then eliminate anything else.' This is an unfunded mandate, he argued, telling the lawmakers they can't both cut their funding and increase the hours teachers need to be in school. They would be forced to cut staff with budget cuts. Plus, more instructional time drives home how important meals are. The students at the Statehouse remain optimistic. 'I think something, hopefully, will get done about it,' Eaton said. Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on X and Facebook. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
