Free school meal access has become increasingly intertwined with federal social safety net programs--including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)--to reduce duplicative paperwork for schools. The changes to SNAP that House Republicans have proposed would have downstream effects on free school meal access. The proposed changes to…

Free and reduced-price lunch status has long been used as a proxy measure for student poverty. This brief offers a short history of school lunch and its recent decline as a measure of economic disadvantage. It then provides a primer on "direct certification," the most promising alternative, which links student enrollment with public…

As this paper was being written, school systems across the country were increasingly announcing plans for full or partial distance learning to respond to COVID-19, and it seems likely that more school systems may implement these plans should the pandemic surge in the fall or winter. As a result, working parents with school-age children are faced…