Today on “Post Reports,” we talk about the end of a grand experiment: universal free school lunch. The program started to address childhood hunger early in the pandemic, but it's set to expire at the end of the summer.

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For many school administrators, providing universal free meals has been a no-brainer.

“The reason we like this program is that it takes all the shame out of all the kids that eat free lunch,” said Donna Martin, a school nutrition director in a rural county in Georgia where kids have had universal free lunch for years under a provision that allows districts with high concentrations of poverty to feed every child for free. “You try not to identify them, but everybody knows who eats free lunch. So, in my community, everybody eats lunch and there's no shame.”

Education reporter Moriah Balingit explains what this program did, and why it’s going away now, despite how popular it is among schools.

“The pandemic became sort-of this policy laboratory to try out things that a lot of progressives have wanted for a long time, like the Child Tax Credit and universal free lunches. And I think there was some hope, some optimism that these programs would continue. But, of course, as we saw with the Child Tax Credit and now we're seeing with the free lunches, they are being allowed to expire because there's not the political will to continue them.”

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The end of universal free school lunch