(The Center Square) – More school districts across Washington are providing free school meals for students, both breakfast and lunch, at no cost to families.
Other districts will be providing meals in the next year or so as universal school meal programs are phased in.
But as the saying goes, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
Which begs the question, where is the funding for universal meal programs coming from, how much of that food is going to waste, and at what cost to taxpayers?
Washington taxpayers will shell out $33 million this fiscal year for school meal programs, and Washington lawmakers have budgeted nearly $80 million for fiscal 2025.
A spokesperson from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction spoke about how the process works.
“Every month, each school district reports to OSPI how many meals they served and then we reimburse them for the meals,” Katy Payne told The Center Square. “In schools with universal meals under the recent legislative efforts, state funding supplements the federal reimbursement to bring every meal up to the highest federal reimbursement level.”