The Campaign for Universal Free Lunch in New York City: Lessons Learned

The NYC DOE is the largest public school system in the United States, with an enrollment of >1.1 million students (40.6% Hispanic, 25.5% Black, 16.2% Asian American, 15.1% white), of which 72.8% are economically disadvantaged.⁹  Its annual budget is $34 billion (57% from NYC, 36% from NY state, and 7% from the federal government and other sources).¹⁰  NYC’s SFA is the DOE’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS), which serves ∼900 000 meals daily¹¹ : breakfast, lunch, afterschool snacks, and supper to students during the school year¹²  and summer meals at hundreds of sites throughout the city.¹³  Although NYC DOE is large in size and budget, the structure of its operations, local decision-makers, and school community stakeholders and challenges are common to large and small school districts across the country.

Since 2002, the NYC DOE has had centralized accountability to the Mayor.¹⁴  The Chancellor of DOE, appointed by the Mayor, is responsible for day-to-day DOE operations.^15–17  Other key decision-makers included several parent leadership bodies, the NYC Public Advocate, the City Council as the city’s legislative body, and the presidents of the 5 NYC boroughs.^13,17–20 

CFA is a nonprofit organization, founded in 2010, to improve the health of low-income New Yorkers by advocating for the reform, expansion, and accessibility of publicly funded income and food support programs. With the equivalent of 3 full-time staff, and a modest annual operating budget funded primarily by foundation grants, CFA strategically began forming the L4L Coalition in 2013 to expand free lunch access for all NYC public school students. This broad-based coalition convened stakeholders who did not traditionally collaborate on school food advocacy, including school-based unions, parents, students, pediatricians, elected officials, academics, education advocacy, and antihunger, antipoverty, and children’s advocacy organizations.

School-based unions were instrumental by bringing political might and insights to the coalition. The unions included District Council 37, with its Local 372 that represents cafeteria workers, school aides, and school crossing guards; United Federation of Teachers, with members representing teachers and other nonsupervisory educators in NYC public schools; and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, representing principals, assistant principals, supervisors, and education administrators.

The L4L Coalition’s Parent Caucus was formed by parent leaders, many of whom also serve on the DOE’s parent leadership bodies. Parent Caucus members had been and continue to be influential on policy in their school communities and citywide. Students, including CFA’s Youth Food Advocates, engaged in essential L4L Coalition activities and shared their experiences through their unique perspectives about school meals and the role of stigma in the cafeteria.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) New York Chapter 3 Committee on Nutrition and Obesity,¹⁸  formed in 2015, provided a venue for pediatrician advocacy to improve child nutrition and well-being. The committee joined L4L in 2015 and provided compelling clinician expertise through written letters and in-person testimony to propel the campaign forward.

Because DOE and the Chancellor are directly accountable to the Mayor, L4L Coalition goals were to gain support from the Mayor and Chancellor of DOE for UFL and to include UFL in the City’s budget. To achieve these goals, the L4L Coalition used a number of strategies: (1) broad-reach coalition building by grassroots campaigning and hosting planning meetings; (2) building political support by writing petitions, sign-on letters, attending budget hearings and press conferences, and meeting with elected officials to galvanize the support of >200 organizations and elected officials; (3) media strategy incorporating press conferences, rallies, articles and op-eds, television coverage, and social media to reach a broad audience; and (4) evidence-based strategy to leverage school lunch participation and budget data and qualitative on-site observation and data collection to document the impact of UFL (Table 1). These strategies included a number of coordinated activities strategically positioned in the annual budget cycle to draw attention to the issue and compel the Chancellor of DOE, Mayor, and City Council members to enact change and allocate funds in the school budget for UFL. The timing of specific actions, the involvement of key stakeholders, and the strategic delivery of campaign messaging were as important as the volume of activities.

To support the magnitude of the advocacy and coordinating efforts, the 3-member CFA team organized all activities; established a clear delineation of CFA team and stakeholder roles, which was refined throughout the advocacy process; and led and participated in all activities. All coalition partner efforts were volunteer based. Only CFA staff salaries and supplies were supported through the CFA organizational budget (Table 1).

The L4L Coalition tracked and measured campaign progress in 4 main ways: key milestone achievements, school lunch participation data, school cafeteria observations, and City budget analysis. Key milestone achievements included political announcements, campaign events, and policy changes.

The OFNS provided the DOE’s anonymized school meal participation data to CFA monthly, including average daily school lunch participation. The number of schools that offered UFL over time was tracked to create realistic milestones to inform future policy recommendations and participation goals.

Established relationships between CFA, members of the L4L Coalition, and the schools and OFNS also facilitated CFA’s on-site observations of cafeterias, kitchens, serving lines, and dining areas. During these visits, CFA staff engaged in conversations with food service staff and school administrators. Coalition partners, parents, and students also contributed their personal experiences with school food. Photographs and documented conversations captured a richness of experiences that enhanced the quantitative data.

To maximize the federal reimbursement for school meals under the CEP, CFA estimated the percentage of students who were categorically eligible. The projected impact of UFL on the NYC DOE budget was based on available eligibility data and participation history by using the federal reimbursement rate from USDA plus the New York State reimbursement rate per meal per child. CFA also used data from the first year of the middle school pilot in 2014–2015 to project participation and meal reimbursements under UFL, factoring in federal and state reimbursement increases covering lunch costs.

The L4L Coalition efforts were marked by a number of milestones throughout L4L’s 4-year UFL campaign (Fig 1). During the 2013 mayoral election, most of the candidates included UFL in their mayoral platforms. In 2014, with the advocacy support from champions, including the Public Advocate, City Council Speaker, a State Senator, the Mayor announced free school lunch in all stand-alone middle schools beginning in the 2014–2015 school year. By February 2017, the Public Advocate, the City Council Speaker, the City Council’s Black, Latino, Asian Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, and all 5 borough presidents had included UFL as a top budget priority. In June 2017, NYC adopted a budget allocation to fund free lunch for an additional 475 000 students through CEP, covering most but not all students. In September 2017, the day before the school year started, the DOE Chancellor announced free school lunch for all, bringing the program to all 1.1 million students.

The citywide daily student participation in school lunch increased from 57.8% in the 2016–2017 school year to 60.7% participation after UFL implementation, with a daily average of 26 000 additional students eating school lunch. This translates to >4.6 million additional school meals served per school year. Overall, school lunch participation rates were trending downward in elementary, middle, and high school students from 2013 to 2017. The declines reversed after the implementation of UFL in the 2017–2018 school year.

During the campaign for UFL between 2014 and 2017, CFA conducted ∼20 school visits and on-site cafeteria observations annually. In the 2017–2018 school year, the first year of UFL, CFA conducted 50 site visits. Table 2 summarizes key findings and summary observations of CFA staff who conducted informal on-site school visits in >100 school buildings between 2014 and 2018. In addition to UFL, qualitative information gleaned from on-site school visits highlights how school administration support, a cafeteria environment, lunch schedules, open campuses, and access to alternative food sources may promote or deter the maximization of school lunch participation and may guide future advocacy.

Because of CEP’s meal reimbursement structure and the percentage of NYC students who were categorically eligible, NYC met the threshold for all meals to be reimbursed by the federal government at the highest level.¹⁹  CFA estimated NYC received $61.8 million more in federal and state lunch reimbursement for the 2017–2018 school year than the previous year by opting in to CEP and offering UFL.

By implementing UFL, NYC DOE has reversed decades of policy separating public school students by income in the cafeteria. The L4L Coalition’s success in ensuring the adoption of UFL eliminates the barrier of application, eligibility, and affordability and reduces food insecurity and stigma for students and their families. UFL is foundational to overcome decades of discriminatory policies that marked students by income.

The L4L Coalition faced many political, administrative, and procedural challenges that presented significant barriers to securing UFL. Efforts in NYC serve as a model for how a small, organized, and motivated group of advocates can build a broad-based coalition and galvanize its force to overcome competing political priorities and achieve UFL.

The challenges faced by the L4L Coalition were overcome through the application of a best-practices framework that could be readily applied by a highly motivated, existing advocacy group to any municipal setting, regardless of size, namely (1) strategic coalition building, (2) building targeted political support, (3) media strategy, and (4) evidence-based strategy underpinned by data analysis (Table 3).

Strategic coalition building formed the basis of the coalition’s power; a diverse group of established and new stakeholders with differing perspectives, expertise, and experiences were necessary to successfully advocate for and attain UFL. To foster buy-in and sustain campaign focus, common ground was established among all stakeholders by linking importance of nutritious food and student well-being with student ability to thrive academically. As leaders of citywide, borough-based, and community-based parent organizations, Parent Caucus members brought deep knowledge of the workings of the DOE to the campaign; built overwhelming citywide parent support; engaged policy makers, media outlets, and collected petitions; and efficiently disseminated information to families. Students played a powerful role informing policy makers about their experiences sitting out meals, despite being hungry at school; risking social ostracism for eating school lunch; or lacking funds to pay for lunch in school. The school-based unions brought political strength and direct member experience of witnessing the impact of stigma on student well-being and participation. The AAP New York Chapter 3 Committee on Nutrition and Obesity provided an organizational structure for pediatricians to leverage their skills and advocacy interests through (1) providing targeted opportunities to testify at key meetings, (2) writing powerful letters based on their experience with food insecurity and clinical impacts of inadequate nutrition, and (3) distributing advocacy findings across clinical and organizational networks. The L4L Coalition was empowered to persevere, generate momentum, and overcome many barriers to implementing UFL by the identification of leadership in each key stakeholder group and adoption of a stakeholder-centered approach. A stakeholder-centric approach enabled the coalition to accommodate competing priorities, limited resources, differing schedules, and variable communication preferences.

L4L Coalition built political support through an awareness of NYC and SFA’s organizational structures and the evolving political landscape. The campaign launched before the 2013 NYC mayoral election, providing an opportunity to secure critical public commitment to UFL from mayoral candidates. Before key NYC budget decisions, the L4L Coalition was able to garner political and public support from strategically timed, targeted meetings with DOE leadership, the Mayor’s Office, and City Council and written and oral testimony at budget hearings. The L4L Coalition strategically developed campaign messages reflecting the importance of the issue, and CFA’s union partners prioritized UFL in the 2017 NYC budget process.

CFA’s media strategy emphasized the use of earned (free), influential partner perspectives that were disseminated with primary reliance on free media coverage, editorials, op-eds, social media, media stories, press conferences, and rallies. Leveraging networks to encourage local or influential community voices to donate their time to support public service announcements or impactful television ads also proved to be highly effective.

CFA’s deep knowledge of the school meals programs, data, and budget analysis was integral to the campaign’s success. The evidence-based strategy was grounded in an understanding of the CEP reimbursement structures^20–22  and a unifying message that well-fed children are better prepared to learn,^23–26  and the testimonies of all stakeholders reinforced the message. School lunch participation data and observations of UFL in stand-alone middle schools provided quantitative and qualitative evidence for increased participation rate. Increases in lunch participation, parents’ and administrators’ relief due to paperwork elimination, and lunch fees all served to highlight the benefits of UFL. School participation data are a readily available source of data that can be used to justify UFL implementation, regardless of municipality size.

Implementation of UFL in a single school or across a school district is the first step to provide access to nutritious food vital to achieving health equity for all youth.^27–29  After a 4-year advocacy campaign, the L4L Coalition successfully attained UFL across all NYC public schools in 2017. Many lessons from the advocacy campaign for UFL in NYC are broadly applicable to school districts of varying sizes: the strategic coalition building and campaign activities designed by a few, highly motivated individuals are not unique to a community of this scale. Other cities, suburbs, and small towns across the country can apply similar approaches toward achieving their advocacy goals by leveraging the power of committed leadership and an organized group of parents, students, education advocates, local politicians, and health professionals to advocate for policies and practices that increase school meal participation and address school food stigma.

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled a national UFL campaign to the forefront of national politics, given school food’s pronounced role in addressing hunger and food insecurity. As a result of UFL and the L4L Coalition’s continued advocacy during NYC’s COVID-19 emergency food response, all NYC public school students received the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer food benefit. The OFNS has also served free grab-and-go meals for children and adults at hundreds of school locations citywide since spring 2020. These ongoing activities demonstrate how the UFL implementation experience in NYC can inform similar local and national applications that contribute to public health solutions for youth.

We appreciate all of the L4L Coalition partners. By joining together to bring all of our strengths to this effort, we accomplished a historic change in NYC’s school meals program that will affect generations to come. We would like to recognize Agnes Molnar and Kathy Goldman, the founders of Community Food Advocates, for their decades of school food advocacy in NYC. Thank you also to Janet Poppendieck for writing Free for All, the groundbreaking book on why we should have free universal school lunch for all.

We acknowledge additional members of the AAP New York State Chapter 3 Committee on Nutrition and Obesity, including Janet Lee, MD, Judith Wylie-Rosett, EdD, RDN, Ava Satnick, MD, John Gaipa, MD, and Griselle de Frank, MD, for their contributions to the advocacy work. We also wish to acknowledge Lori Legano, MD, Heather Brumberg, MD, MPH, and Lisa Handworker, MD, from the AAP New York Chapter 3 for their advocacy and support of this work.

AAP

American Academy of Pediatrics

CEP

Community Eligibility Provision

CFA

Community Food Advocates

COVID-19

coronavirus disease 2019

DOE

Department of Education

L4L

Lunch 4 Learning

NYC

New York City

OFNS

Office of Food and Nutrition Services

SFA

school food authority

UFL

universal free lunch

USDA

US Department of Agriculture