More than three in five Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port invest­ing $100 mil­lion in rev­enue per year to enable all stu­dents to have a healthy break­fast and lunch and school with­out fees, regard­less of fam­i­ly income sta­tus, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most recent statewide sur­vey has found.

64% of 874 like­ly 2024 vot­ers inter­viewed March 7th and 8th by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI said they strong­ly or some­what sup­port­ed uni­ver­sal no-cost school meals, while a total of 33% said they were strong­ly or some­what opposed.

Only 4% said they were not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s no-cost school meals poll find­ing (NPI graphic)

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­cus Ric­cel­li (D‑3rd Dis­trict: Spokane) pro­posed leg­is­la­tion ear­ly this ses­sion at the request of State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Reyk­dal to pro­vide for uni­ver­sal, no-cost school meals, but the bill was amend­ed and scaled back after leg­is­la­tors found out it would cost $100 mil­lion per year to implement.

The oper­at­ing bud­get pro­pos­al unveiled by House Democ­rats today would allo­cate $85 mil­lion to no-cost school meals, which isn’t enough to pro­vide no-cost school meals to all pupils. Our research shows that a huge major­i­ty of vot­ers want the full $100 mil­lion per year appro­pri­at­ed to ensure no kid goes hun­gry at school.

Oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run states have done this.

Min­neso­ta has done it:

Sur­round­ed by school chil­dren, teach­ers, advo­cates and pub­lic offi­cials, Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law Fri­day to pro­vide break­fasts and lunch­es at no charge to stu­dents at par­tic­i­pat­ing schools. It makes Min­neso­ta the fourth state in the coun­try to do so.

Dur­ing the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Walz told Min­neso­ta par­ents this will ease some of the stress on them.

“If you’re look­ing for good news, this was cer­tain­ly the place to be,” said Walz. “I’m hon­ored and I do think this is one piece of that puz­zle in reduc­ing both child­hood pover­ty and hunger insecurity.”

Lt. Gov. Peg­gy Flana­gan was also at the cer­e­mo­ny. She said this was the most impor­tant thing she’d ever worked on.

Con­necti­cut has done it, at least through the end of the school year:

A bill that would bring back free school lunch­es for stu­dents passed unan­i­mous­ly in both the state House and Sen­ate, and now heads to Gov­er­nor Ned Lam­on­t’s desk for a signature.

The fund­ing for free school lunch­es is part of a big­ger bill [No. 6671] to allo­cate funds to numer­ous state pro­grams for the remain­ing half of the fis­cal year, end­ing June 30, 2023.

New Mex­i­co is doing it:

New Mex­i­co Gov­er­nor Michelle Lujan Grisham is expect­ed today to sign into law Sen­ate Bill 4, which would expand free meals to all pub­lic and char­ter school stu­dents in New Mexico.

It would also allow sov­er­eign nations and pri­vate schools with­in the state to opt in to offer free, high qual­i­ty meals regard­less of income.

As of Mon­day, the free school meals bill was set to become the 25th pro­pos­al to get the governor’s go-ahead.

Law­mak­ers passed more than 200 bills dur­ing the 2023 reg­u­lar ses­sion, which end­ed ear­li­er this month.

But in Wash­ing­ton, cost con­cerns have got­ten in the way of get­ting the job done:

House Speak­er Lau­rie Jink­ins, D‑Tacoma, said last week that the uni­ver­sal pro­gram was like­ly to be a vic­tim of bud­getary constraints.

“They’re going to have to pare that down because I don’t think this is a year that we can afford to prob­a­bly go the whole way on that,” Jink­ins said. “How do we make progress on it even if we’re not able to go the whole way? And that’s going to be, well, it’s high­ly dis­ap­point­ing to me and lots of people.”

Our research is clear: Vot­ers want the Leg­is­la­ture to fig­ure out how to “go the whole way on that” this year. It’s impor­tant. As the food and nutri­tion direc­tor for the Edmonds School Dis­trict, Megan de Vries, told The Seat­tle Times: “What we see is, because of the stig­ma around that one-third of stu­dents who need access to meals, they would rather hang out with the two-thirds that do not require school meals… So we are see­ing kids skip­ping out on school meals.”

Here’s the ques­tion we asked and the answers we received:

QUESTION: The Wash­ing­ton State Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion has pro­posed that school meals be pro­vid­ed at no charge to all Wash­ing­ton stu­dents as part of their basic edu­ca­tion. Dur­ing the first two years of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, waivers from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment allowed all stu­dents to eat free of charge, but those waivers have now expired, which means 330,000 Wash­ing­ton stu­dents and their fam­i­lies must pay for school meals again. The cost to tax­pay­ers to pro­vide meals at no charge to every stu­dent is esti­mat­ed to be near­ly $100 mil­lion per year. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose uni­ver­sal K‑12 meals, enabling all stu­dents to have a healthy break­fast and lunch at school with­out fees, regard­less of fam­i­ly income status?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 64% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 42%
  • Some­what sup­port: 22%
• Oppose: 33%
  • Some­what oppose: 12%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 21%
• Not sure: 4%

Our sur­vey of 874 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, March 7th through Wednes­day, March 8th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and online answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

Vot­ers of dif­fer­ent ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tions are in favor. More than eight in ten (81%) Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton sup­port uni­ver­sal school meals, along with 57% of inde­pen­dents. Repub­li­can vot­ers are split: 45% of them favor invest­ing $100 mil­lion to fund uni­ver­sal school meals while 52% are opposed.

All age groups are sup­port­ive. The youngest vot­ers — on whose shoul­ders the fate of our repub­lic ulti­mate­ly rests — are the most enthu­si­as­tic, with 78% sup­port­ive (58% strong­ly sup­port­ive). Vot­ers ages thir­ty to forty-five, the age group who are most like­ly to have young chil­dren, are sup­port­ive by a 2:1 mar­gin, with 67% sup­port­ive (51% strong­ly sup­port­ive). 65% of vot­ers ages forty-six to six­ty-five are sup­port­ive as well. 57% of the old­est vot­ers (65+) are supportive.

All regions of the state are sup­port­ive, too. Urban, sub­ur­ban, and rur­al vot­ers all agree this is a good idea. Here are the num­bers by region:

• King Coun­ty
  • Sup­port: 75% overall
  • Oppose: 20% overall
  • Not sure: 6%
• North Puget Sound 
  • Sup­port: 64% overall
  • Oppose: 34% overall
  • Not sure: 2%
• South Sound
  • Sup­port: 60% overall
  • Oppose: 36% overall
  • Not sure: 4%
• Olympic Penin­su­la / South­west Washington 
  • Sup­port: 59% overall
  • Oppose: 38% overall
  • Not sure: 3%
• East­ern and Cen­tral Washington 
  • Sup­port: 56% overall
  • Oppose: 41% overall
  • Not sure: 3%

Wash­ing­ton is a wealthy state and unques­tion­ably has the resources to pro­vide no-cost school meals to every child. If leg­is­la­tors don’t want to fund this pri­or­i­ty with sales tax rev­enue or prop­er­ty tax rev­enue, they can pass a wealth tax — which our research shows two-thirds of vot­ers sup­port — and include uni­ver­sal school meals as one of the ser­vices to even­tu­al­ly be fund­ed with that revenue.

As our ques­tion explained, we already pro­vid­ed no-cost school meals to all kids and fam­i­lies dur­ing an ear­li­er stretch of the pan­dem­ic. We must make that per­ma­nent. Kids strug­gle to learn when they’re hun­gry. Get­ting rid of meal fees will make it eas­i­er for schools to serve nutri­tious break­fasts and lunch­es to their entire stu­dent pop­u­la­tions. It’s the right thing to do and we should get it done this year.