More Alabama schools, tired of hounding parents for meal money and racking up thousands of dollars in unpaid debt, will offer free lunch and breakfast next year.

Meals were free to every student in every school from 2020 to 2022 because of the pandemic. But when schools began charging again in 2022-23, many families didn’t know they would have to pay for meals or didn’t file the required forms for free and reduced price meals.

Jefferson County, one of the largest districts in Alabama, ended the school year with about $40,000 in unpaid meal debt, and had to ask local organizations to help pay off the costs so the burden wouldn’t fall on families.

“That’s much higher than we’ve seen in previous years,” said Amanda Bridges-Dunn, Child Nutrition Program supervisor in Jefferson County and president of the Alabama School Nutrition Association. “It’s really hard to take something back once you’ve given it.”

Nationwide, the School Nutrition Association reported there was $19.2 million in unpaid school meal debt this year, with individual districts reporting as much as $1.7 million in debt.

Districts where at least 40% of students qualify for free and reduced price meals or are enrolled in SNAP or Medicaid can implement a program, called Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), that allows every student to receive free school meals. Districts can also adopt CEP on a school by school basis so long as each school meets the 40% threshold.

Experts say the program reduces the stigma of receiving free breakfasts and lunches and increases participation in school meal programs, which enables districts to hire more child nutrition staff. Studies have shown that schools currently offering free meals have increased attendance rates, reduced student suspensions, better student health outcomes and improved test scores among marginalized student groups.

The program also means less work for parents and staff who no longer have to fill out and process free and reduced-price meal applications.

“CEP will allow [child nutrition] staff to focus on their primary role, which is to feed kids,” said Tonya Grier, the CNP director at Dothan City, a district that recently decided to adopt CEP for all of its schools. “The time used dealing with money and tracking students who owe funds will be significantly reduced.”

Other districts also recently joined the program, including Haleyville City Schools, Lamar County, Lauderdale County, Scottsboro City, Attalla City and Winfield City. Jefferson County offers free meals in 37 schools.

According to Grier, Dothan City’s low income population has increased since the pandemic. She said her department saw families struggle to pay for school meals and accrue negative balances in their child’s meal accounts.

“We are encouraged that this program will help keep the children of Dothan fed, healthy and ready to learn,” she said.

Feeding Alabama, an organization that operates a network of food banks throughout the state, said more people are looking for help putting food on the table.

“As pandemic-related programs are phasing out, we have definitely seen an increase in the rise of need for food at our network of pantries and agencies,” Jessica Callahan, a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement to AL.com.

About 250,000 children in the state experience food insecurity, meaning one in five kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from. School meals can sometimes be the only stable source of food for many students facing insecurity.

Statewide, 812 schools are eligible to implement CEP, but only 536 schools are enrolled, according to the Food Research and Action Center.

The Alabama State Department of Education stated that the number of students enrolled in Medicaid increased by 40% this past school year – representing a large jump in the number of children and schools who qualify for the federal free meals program. In Alabama, children enrolled in Medicaid are directly enrolled in their school’s free and reduced-price meal program.

Officials from the state department of education have been conducting trainings with local districts on how to enroll in CEP and are trying to raise awareness about the program.

But many holdouts have hesitations about how the program will impact their federal funding. When districts enroll in CEP, they must spread Title I funding out to all schools that have the program instead of focusing the money on high needs schools.

“We’re slowly but surely getting there. We’ve provided a lot of resources and really worked closely with schools this year to help them understand more of how CEP and federal funding work and how they can allocate their funding per student for federal programs,” said Julie Autrey, a child nutrition specialist at ALSDE. “They have to look at things kind of from a different angle and so we’ve been having those conversations.”

Six states – Vermont, California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico – provide universal free meals to all students.

“There’s a lot of energy and momentum around school meals right now, particularly healthy school meals for all and offering them to all kids at no charge because we know kids can’t learn when they’re hungry,” said Crystal FitzSimmons, director of School and Out-of-School Time Programs at the Food Research and Action Center.

There has been pushback – earlier this month the Republican Study Committee, of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members, said it wanted to eliminate CEP from the federal school lunch program because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

But advocates in Alabama say they haven’t seen the same opposition here.

“I have not heard a word of opposition against CEP from anyone at the legislature,” said Carol Gundlach, senior policy analyst at Alabama Arise. “You even see in some very Republican areas of the state, they’ve fully implemented CEP and every major city in Alabama has implemented it in every school they possibly could, so I think it’s widely popular.”

Bridges-Dunn said she hopes Alabama will one day adopt free school meals on a state level. The Alabama School Nutrition Association even asked the state department of education to sponsor a bill to provide free meals to all students this year, which they declined to do.

“It’s a big ask,” she said. “We wanted something, some sort of a way to get our foot in the door and maybe begin to phase in programs like free breakfast. They said no because of budgets but they are open to hearing us, and more open to change.”

Schools who wish to enroll in CEP have until Friday to do so.

A full list of participating schools can be found here.