State education official says federal rules and direct certification cut projected cost of universal school meals; committee votes to keep program in budget

Rosie Krueger, state director of child nutrition programs at the Vermont Agency of Education, told the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry that higher direct-certification rates and a recent USDA rule change have reduced the state’s projected cost for its universal school meals policy this school year.

Krueger said the agency’s Medicaid direct-certification demonstration project and a USDA change to the Community Eligibility Provision helped raise the share of meals the federal government fully reimburses, lowering the state appropriation needed to fund universal meals. “Once we participate, we get to keep participating,” Krueger said of the Medicaid direct-cert pilot, which uses Department of Vermont Health Access data to identify additional students eligible for free meals.

The committee’s interest centered on how those federal changes interact with the state education fund and how the child nutrition programs could expand summer and after‑school meal sites.

AOE program funding and enrollment details

Krueger said that before statewide universal meals, Vermont participating schools collectively enrolled about 84,000 students in 2018–19 (that figure was later corrected to about 80,000 for the most recent year) and served roughly 7.5 million school meals annually. At that time the agency reported average daily participation of about 51 percent for lunch and about 28 percent for breakfast. Federal reimbursements to schools were about $21.8 million and the federal USDA Foods allotment about $2.4 million in the referenced baseline period. Krueger said local transfers from school general funds to cover nonprofit school food service deficits…