CHILDHOOD NUTRITION PROGRAMS

Urges Congress to protect, strengthen, and improve the child nutrition programs through a Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act that builds on the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. Urges Congress to streamline and simplify provisions governing the summer meals program in order to reduce administrative burdens, bureaucracies, and duplications in program administration and operation during the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. Urges Congress to allow for more flexibility around where children are able to access and eat summer meals, by allowing for non-congregate models in communities where summer meals sites are not available and by lowering the threshold required to operate sites open to all children. Urges Congress to permanently authorize the operation of the SEBTC program, make program funding mandatory, and expand the reach of the program to kids eligible for free or reduced-price school meals in all states, tribal nations, and localities in order to close the summer meals gap. Urges Congress to permanently authorize the PEBT system beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing authorities to quickly deliver increased nutritional aid during times of crisis. Urges Congress to expand the well-documented benefits of CEP, which allows schools to serve meals at no charge to all students if enough are identified as qualifying for other assistance programs, by lowering the minimum identified student percentage (ISP), increasing the ISP multiplier, expanding direct certification with Medicaid data nationwide, and supporting the improvement of direct certification systems. Urges Congress to increase the flexibility of WIC appointments through increased access to remote appointments and extended certification periods as well as to support equitable access to the WIC food package through modernization efforts that increase access to online ordering, online purchasing, and delivery. Expresses support for the enactment of a Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act that ensures low-income children's improved and equitable access to and participation in the child nutrition programs.