GOVERNMENT

Child nutrition waivers set to end as COVID continues and many classes resume remotely

Rita Price
rprice@dispatch.com
Children's Hunger Alliance and AmeriCorps Hunger Free America staffer Sara Mohamednour offers bagels to Janae Johnson outside St. Stephens Community House in South Linden during a recent Friday food giveaway. Johnson was securing food for her seven children and a neighbor's family. Groups that have been providing meals and food via the U.S. Department of Agricultures summer food service program are trying to get special pandemic waiver rules extended so they can keep offering the same level of help while many school buildings remain closed, many classes like those in Columbus Public Schools will be operating online only, and unemployment is high.

Janae Johnson pushed a cart across the hot parking lot at St. Stephen’s Community House in South Linden and filled it with nutritious, kid-friendly meals.

“This does help,” said Johnson, an unemployed mother of seven whose car had, most inconveniently, stopped running. “My kids eat me out of house and home.”

Since the COVID-19 outbreak closed schools earlier this year, Johnson, who lives in the Linden area, has relied on the free, federally funded meals distributed at St. Stephen’s by the Children’s Hunger Alliance.

But now the federal government is preparing to lighten the load in her cart.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has so far declined to extend the child nutrition waivers that allowed for early and modified operation of summer food-service programs, despite pleas from more than 1,300 national, state and local organizations to continue them.

Advocates for low-income families also are urging Congress to continue the effort — known as Pandemic EBT — which provided money to families whose children qualified for free meals at school. About 850,000 Ohio children were eligible for $5.70 each day that school was closed due to the coronavirus.

The Pandemic EBT program is authorized through Congress until the end of the current federal fiscal year on Sept. 30.

“We set up all these super-innovative approaches; we jumped through flaming hoops to make sure poor kids have access to food,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Assocation of Foodbanks.

“Now we’re being told by bureaucrats that we just have to get back to normal,” she said. “We are still fully in the grips of a pandemic. What are we supposed to tell the people whose lives and jobs have not resumed?”

Judy Mobley, president and CEO of the Columbus-based Children’s Hunger Alliance, said the waivers have allowed the nonprofit to distribute more meals and with fewer restrictions (kids don’t have to eat the food in a congregate setting) at a time of soaring need.

Her organization has partnered with libraries, neighborhood agencies such as St. Stephen’s and also Columbus schools, providing an extra take-home meal at the district’s 15 grab-and-go locations where students could receive free breakfast and lunch.

“People aren’t going to stop their day and come if they really didn’t need the food,” Mobley said. “We’ve provided over a million meals across the state since the pandemic started at about 180 different sites.”

Without an extension of the summer waivers, the Alliance likely will shift to the traditional after-school program, providing one meal per child with limited flexibility.

“We know that food insecurity has increased significantly as families have lost jobs and wages,” said Crystal FitzSimons, director of school and out-of-school time programs at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) in Washington, D.C. “We feel like we are in unprecedented times.”

Luis Guardia, FRAC president, said advocates are “on the same page in urging the Trump administration to ensure our nation’s children don’t experience hunger during this pandemic.”

Food banks, pantries and social-service groups say they continue to face record requests, with demand increasing again after the $600 pandemic unemployment payments stopped.

“We’re also getting a lot of rental assistance requests,” said Marilyn Mehaffie, president and CEO of St. Stephen’s. “When we ask the reason, 90% are COVID-related.”

The Salvation Army in Central Ohio has seen a 193% increase in pantry services since March, prompting it to open a new satellite drive-thru pantry this week with New Birth Christian Ministries at 3475 Refugee Road on the Southeast Side.

Hamler-Fugitt of the Foodbanks Association called it “sad” that advocates have to fight to continue providing supplemental food during the coronavirus pandemic.

“The poorest of the poor have been the lowest priority for this administration,” she said.

Johnson, 41, said she tries to keep up hope. “We have never experienced anything like this,” she said. “I wish we could just erase this whole year.”

rprice@dispatch.com

@RitaPrice