By Erica C. Barnett
After weeks of debate that revealed widespread public opposition to the proposal, the city council’s Families, Education, Preschool and Promise (FEPP) Levy approved a levy spending plan that delays funding for universal free school breakfasts and lunches for at least a year, until the fate of a statewide tax on income above a million dollars becomes clear. Instead, much of the money for the first year of the program—$3 million—will be distributed across all six years of the levy to pay for a voucher program to provide groceries to low-income parents.
According to a memo on the amendment, the $500,000 annual program will serve “up to 5,000 families annually.” At that level, the program would be able to provide $100 a year to each family.
The idea behind the substitution, according to its sponsors, was twofold. First, the city doesn’t know if voters will uphold the millionaires’ tax, which is supposed to fund universal school meals statewide starting in 2029, in November. Because the money for universal meals may not materialize, it’s risky to fund it locally on a short-term basis.
The second argument, and the subject of the greatest public outcry, was that the poorest students should get priority over those whose parents can afford to pay for meals at school—that is, those who qualify through an annual income verification and application process. Universal school meals might provide food for all children, but the poorest kids are going hungry at home, too, proponents argued, so that need should take priority—at least until we know whether state funding for universal school meals is secure.
“Equity does not mean providing the exact same investment for every student regardless of need,” the amendment’s lead sponsor, Council President Joy Hollingsworth, said. “It means directing resources where barriers remain the greatest, and that was my goal with this amendment.”
Both Hollingsworth and her cosponsor, Dionne Foster, complained from the dais about the way their proposal has been portrayed by opponents and members of the media, zeroing in on the term “means testing.”
“‘Means testing—I don’t know where that came from,” Hollingsworth said. “That was not something we ever put out.”
Foster echoed Hollingsworth’s criticism, saying, “It has been very difficult to have these conversations and to listen to some of the narrative out there.” Fresh Bucks, an unrelated voucher program that helps low-income people buy produce at farmers’ markets, is also targeted at low-income people, but no one describes that program as means-tested, Foster said. “And I wonder why that is.”
Means-testing is a term that means, simply, requiring people to prove their income is lower than a specified threshold in order to qualify for benefits. Put another way, it is what happens when the government sets income thresholds that define “need,” and makes people prove that they lack the means, or income, to fulfill that need themselves.
To qualify for reduced-price or free school meals in Seattle, a single parent with one kid has to make less than $39,000 in gross (not take-home) income a year, or $757 a week—approximately Seattle’s minimum wage. For a two-parent family with two kids, that goes up to $59,000, or a total gross income of $1,114 a week. About 50 Seattle schools offer free lunches to all kids because more than 40 percent of parents have qualified for the program. But anyone who makes more than the cutoff is ineligible for help—and to as many public commenters pointed out, there are plenty of people who make more than the bare minimum who struggle to pay their monthly bills in Seattle.
PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.
Although Hollingsworth suggested there would be little to no administrative burden for low-income parents to apply for and get accepted into the new low-income food voucher program, Rob Saka disagreed. Saka spent years in and out of foster care and was raised by a single dad who worked hourly warehouse jobs. From age 9 to 18, Saka said, he only went to the doctor a handful of times and never went to the dentist, because his dad’s hourly warehouse jobs didn’t provide health insurance.
“We qualified for free and reduced lunch, which means we would have also likely qualified for Medicaid,” Saka said. “But I never went to the dentist, and only went to the doctor a handful of times in nine years, because of the severe, significant, nontrivial, and substantial administrative paperwork burden imposed on people that need these valuable resources.”
In a statement, Wilson said, “While I am disappointed with the decision to delay universal meals for a full school year, I respect the Council’s process and know we share a commitment to addressing food insecurity. I am proud that the amendment passed by Council commits the City to universal school meals in 2027. That means up to 6,800 students who currently fall through the cracks will have access to free breakfast and lunch, families will save roughly $1,200 a year, and there is a path to end the stigma around food insecurity in our schools.”
The Hollingsworth-Foster amendment pushes universal school lunches off until 2027. But it also, importantly, still assumes that the millionaires’ tax will be implemented in the future and will start paying for the program in 2029. If voters reject the millionaires’ tax, or a court overturns it, it’s unclear what will happen next year, which would have been Year 2 of Wilson’s universal school lunch program. If the statewide tax tax fails, the current plan would fund universal school meals for just one year, unless the city decided to make universal meals a local funding priority in the future.
Had the universal meals program passed, kids would have been able to get breakfast and lunch at school every day without having to demonstrate that they truly “need” it, at a cost of a few million dollars a year. That’s real money, but it also pales in comparison to what the city spends on other priorities, including $80 million in salary increases for police this year alone.