With classes starting soon, Nevada Democrats still lament Lombardo’s veto of universal school meals bill

This academic year will mark the first that breakfasts and lunches won’t be provided for free to kids since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, though free and reduced-price meal programs will still exist for Nevada families who meet income eligibility requirements.

When Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law last March providing free daily school meals for students, the state made waves for becoming just the third nationwide to create a program providing schoolchildren with no-cost breakfasts and lunches regardless of their family’s income level. 

At the same time, thousands of miles away, Nevada state lawmakers were crafting similar legislation that sought to make a COVID-19 pandemic-era federal program permanent. The US Department of Agriculture in March 2020 waived eligibility requirements for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), but as federal relief dollars tied to the pandemic dried up, so did funding to expand the program to all students. 

The bill signed by Walz, who on Tuesday was named as the running mate to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, is one of the reported reasons Harris considered the Minnesota governor for the job in the first place. Meanwhile, the bill Nevada lawmakers passed last year, Assembly Bill 319, was ultimately vetoed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. 

The proposal, which had bipartisan support, would have allocated $43 million from the state general fund to continue the initiative.

Now, as public schools are scheduled to begin the new academic calendar next week, state Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday said they plan to re-introduce the bill once the next legislative session begins in January, with the hope that Lombardo will change his mind. But even if he doesn’t, if Democrats flip one seat in the state senate in the November election, the party would have a supermajority in both chambers of the legislature and could override any of Lombardo’s vetoes for the remainder of his first term. 

“We want students to come to school knowing that they only have one thing to focus on, and that is learning,” Assemblywoman Shea Backus, D-Las Vegas, told reporters. “This isn’t only a fight to feed the kids, it is a fight to feed the marginalized populations of Nevada.”

This academic year will mark the first that breakfasts and lunches won’t be provided for free to all kids since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, though free and reduced-price meal programs will still exist for Nevada families who meet income eligibility requirements, or are already in households that receive federal benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Children who are migrants, in foster care, or who are considered a runaway or homeless may also qualify for free meal programs.

But Lombardo’s veto does not mean the school meal programs are ending, but rather that the state is reverting to its pre-pandemic policy, said Elizabeth Ray, communications director for Lombardo’s office. In March, the Nevada Department of Agriculture began urging families to submit forms so that families in need could continue to receive free meals, and the agency in May announced it was offering free meals to children 18 and younger under the Summer Food Service Program.

“The Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDA) has worked diligently to ensure that eligible students continue to receive free or reduced-cost meals following the end of the federal waiver program,” Ray told The Nevadan in a statement.

Additionally, Lombardo told lawmakers when he vetoed the bill it was well-intentioned, but worried it would increase the amount of food purchased, and, ultimately thrown away, by schools.

“This is also a responsibility that should be determined at a district level to properly recognize the differences amongst the school districts throughout the state,” Lombardo wrote. “Universal free lunch programs were subsidized while responding to the impacts of COVID-19, and were always paid through federal funding sources. These funding sources are no longer available, and district officials should build programs appropriate to their needs. With COVID-19 behind us, it is time to return to the normalcy of pre-pandemic operations.”

Supporters of universal meal programs say that providing nutritious meals for all not only helps students from all backgrounds excel academically, but can also provide financial relief for households with incomes just outside the eligibility requirements. Juliana Cohen, a nutrition professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told the publication Civil Eats in September that while schools will usually feed children even if they can’t pay for a meal that day, parents are still on the hook. 

That can result in outstanding balances sometimes worth thousands of dollars, Cohen said. Other times, when a kid can’t pay for a meal, schools will provide “obviously cheaper” food that can evoke a stigma that makes kids feel different from their peers.  

“The idea of turning away a hungry child — we did it this summer, and we’re going to do it again in the school year — troubles me deeply,” said state Sen. Roberta Lange, D-Las Vegas. “We can’t say we want our children to get the highest test scores, we want them to be able to do all their work and sit in their chair at school and perform when they don’t have the nourishment that they need and they have empty stomachs.”

Approximately 283,022 students in Nevada public schools were enrolled in the state’s free and reduced meal program last year, according to figures published in October by the Nevada Department of Agriculture. An additional 28,344 children in charter schools and 148 enrolled in tribal schools also received benefits. 

Certain school districts will be able to continue providing free meals under the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision, which Ray said would cover children facing the highest risk of food insecurity. All public schools in the Clark County, Churchill County, Mineral County, and Nye County school districts are eligible, as well as most of the schools in the Washoe County School District.

But that still means many Nevada families will still be left to pay full price for meals, Lange said. 

Backus said the bill she and colleagues are working on will largely resemble the one Lombardo vetoed last year. And while it made it to the governor’s desk once, Backus said she hopes the governor will come around if it makes it there again. 

“I hope after this last legislative session and just hearing from constituents in our community about how important this is,” the governor will want to sign it, Backus said. 

“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”