Sen. Long and hunger advocates urge using Medicaid eligibility to better target school funding

Sen. Long (D., Manchester) and New Hampshire Hunger Solutions told the Senate Education Committee that the state school funding formula currently undercounts children living in poverty because it relies on free-and-reduced-price-meal enrollment rather than a Medicaid-based measure.

Sen. Long said a more precise measure "Medicaid eligibility" would ‘‘ensure our funds go where they are needed most while reducing bureaucracy for schools and families.’’ He told the committee that the present formula leaves an estimated 10,500 eligible children out of the count because families do not complete lunch forms for reasons that include paperwork complexity and privacy concerns.

The nut of the argument: New Hampshire’s differentiated adequacy aid is tied to a poverty count derived from free and reduced-price meal forms. When that count misses eligible children, schools with higher needs receive less state aid than their student population’s needs suggest, Sen. Long said.

Laura Milliken of New Hampshire Hunger Solutions told senators the current formula also creates a barrier to schools participating in the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Milliken described CEP as a federal program allowing high-poverty schools to offer free meals to all students and said the federal reimbursement rate for CEP is based on counts of children enrolled in qualifying programs such as SNAP and TANF. "Feeding every child at school ensures a child has an equal opportunity to succeed and beyond," Milliken said, adding that schools participating in CEP stop collecting free-and-reduced meal forms and therefore can lose state poverty counts and associated state funds under the current formula.

Milliken testified that 103 schools in New Hampshire are eligible for CEP but only two are using it; she argued a Medicaid-based poverty measure would remove the disincentive schools face when they opt into CEP. She urged the committee to advance SB 293 to change the poverty measurement methodology.

Committee members asked no substantive follow-up questions during this short presentation. Written testimony was accepted for later review.

The hearing moved on to other bills after the presenters finished; no committee action on SB 293 was recorded in the transcript excerpt provided.