Around 6pm yesterday, October 10 2013, my elementary school received a letter from the Texas Department of Agriculture informing administration that because of the Federal government shutdown, schools could not be guaranteed funding through the Federal Child Nutrition Program (School Lunch Program/School Breakfast Program/Child and Adult Care Food Program) for school meals served after October 4th.
In our earlier communication, we informed you that all meals served in the month of September would not be impacted by the federal shutdown and that USDA was in the process of identifying whether or not there would be any funds available for reimbursement of meals served after September 30. We also informed you that early indications were that funds would be available for some of October, if not the entire month.
The long and short of this for my school is, as we were told today, we won't be getting reimbursed retroactively for meals served after October 4.
full text of the letter after the jump
Click to enlarge.
This is a serious problem for my school. USDA funds this program on a net 30 account, so schools are reimbursed for the prior month's expenditures based on school reports of the numbers of meals served. In our case, we budget ahead of time and not having the money flow in is bad enough. Knowing that we will almost certainly not be reimbursed after the shutdown is resolved is the school equivalent of the furlough on the second paycheck of the month. If the shutdown continues, which it likely will not (considering the abysmal and stunning results of the newest polling for GOP), we will really be in trouble.
We are very small and do not have a school district to absorb and spread the impact. We are one school standing alone against this problem and it is not an option for us to tell kids to bring food from home. The money has to come from somewhere, which means some part of our general budget just got cut by $10,000, at least.
Why is this so crucial? 89% of our students are free lunch. Not free and reduced, but free. We serve the poorest of east Austin, mainly immigrant families from Mexico. The meals we provide our students are two meals struggling families don't have to worry about paying for 5 day a week during the school year. As it is, when vacations roll around we have programs set up to help the most desperate families feed the kids while away from campus. Not providing breakfast and lunch is out of the question. Administrators and teachers would forgo paychecks first.
And we are also unique in that our food is prepared from fresh ingredients, on campus, every day. We serve no processed foods, nothing is catered or brought in. Friday is pizza day. They make the dough and let it rise. Nutritionally, the food we serve is the very best food many of our students eat each day. It is balanced, low fat, low sugar and scratch made. For some kids this means breakfast is a yoghurt parfait with berries, or whole oatmeal with fruit and fresh juice instead of Eggo waffles at best and a candy bar (or nothing at all) at worst.
This is a micro example of just how dramatically the shutdown can affect real people, and our kids are fortunate! Head Start kids were kicked to the curb. Other programs that provide direct services were turned off at the spigot. At least our students have options. In fact, they have no idea this is even happening to their school, and they will never know. It is what we do, providing the least among us a top notch and progressive educational environment.
I just hope this doesn't drag on any longer. For all of our sakes.
-bastrop
Sat Oct 12, 2013 at 9:49 AM PT: Question/concern from comments about the language if the letter. To clarify, we called the state. They said payments would NOT be retroactive. Clearly that could change and may. But right now what we were told by the body that administrates the program in Texas is it will not happen. If vers crossed. Thanks rugbymom for pointing out the discrepancy in my text.