DENVER — On Tuesday, Colorado joined several other states filing a lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for suspending SNAP benefits during the government shutdown.
School districts like Denver Public Schools (DPS) are feeling the pressure. DPS said parents should not worry about their children being fed at school, but there is concern about how the district will meet the need.
That’s because SNAP feeds about 600,000 Coloradans every month, and half of them are children. In DPS, with more than 90,000 students, district leaders say they’re bracing for whatever comes next.
“I mean we will always have food. The food cost is definitely going up, so that is a challenge to still provide good quality meals within the reimbursement money we receive from the USDA. If we get more students participating in the school meal program, we will have the food for them,” DPS Director of Meal Operations Gosia Holthaus said.
DPS said most of its meals are made from scratch.
“75% of our menu items are either scratch-cooked or speed scratched cooked and our employees are really good at baking and preparing foods from scratch,” Holthaus said.
DPS leaders said there’s no clear answer right now on how many more students could turn to school meals if SNAP expires, but they’re preparing for a possible increase and pointing families to other options.
“There are also opportunities for them to go back and get extra food. They can go back to the fruit and veggie bar for no extra cost. That’s a way to load up on nutrient-dense food. We also have after-school snack programs at a lot of schools,” DPS Executive Director of Enterprise Management Theresa Hafner said.
DPS sees the most participation in school meals at lunch.
“That’s about 50,000 students who eat lunch every single day. About 24,000 students eat breakfast every single day and they might be the same students but they might be different students," Hafner said.
Just last week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis requested $10 million to help food banks fill the gap. A Joint Budget Committee is set to review that request at 9 a.m. on Thursday.
