Vicki B. Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America, has a post at Huffington Post about why the House Child Nutrition Bill is Better for Children.
She said:
The House Education and Labor Committee approved a strong bill in July, the Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act of 2010 (H.R.5504). This bill includes many of the same improvements to nutritional quality as the Senate bill but does far more to invest in increased program access. The House bill would significantly increase access to food at breakfast, after-school, on weekends, and during the summer. Children need access to food every day, before, during, and after school, and the House provides much-needed improvements to address these gap periods.
The Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010 pays particular attention to increasing access because hunger doesn't take a summer vacation or stop at the end of the school day.
Specifically, the Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act improves access to school meal programs by:- Increasing the number of eligible children enrolled in the school lunch programs by using Medicaid/SCHIP data to directly certify children who meet income requirements without requiring individual applications and requiring states to establish and execute a plan to increase rates of direct certification.
- Providing enhanced universal meal access for eligible children in high poverty communities by eliminating paper applications and using census data to determine school wide income eligibility.
- Increasing children’s access to healthy school breakfasts by providing competitive grants to school districts to start up or improve their program.
- Ensuring fewer children go hungry year round by providing meals for over 225,000 children through seamless meal service for children in school based and community based summer and after-school programs, and in low income rural areas.
- Improving access for children in home-based child care by reducing administrative costs for sponsors of child care meal programs.
