 Thank you all so much for turning out for Universal Lunch on the Lawn! The Universal School Meals Act makes it over the finish line this year so kids all over Vermont in every public school and independent schools too can have universal breakfast and lunch every student, every meal, every school next year. So if you think S-100 is a must-pass bill, raise your voices really loud! Champions for S-100 here with us and we are going to get you kicked right off with them right now. So first of all, I'm excited to hear from him. This issue S-100 started in the Ag Committee, a food for our children starting in the Ag Committee. Well, it's been a great run but the people that work for you folks that come and see us like Anor and Bay and the people from Hunger Free Vermont, pushers behind us. I don't know how many years we've been working on getting free lunches into the schoolhouse but it's been quite a few and we settled one year for free breakfast but we got the bill through and now this last year we got the Universal Meals bill through the house and it's back over with us and we aren't about to drop the ball quite yet. But a quick story way back served on a local school board for 21 years and in here at the same time during a lot of those years and we always as a school board chair and member, we had problems with the hot lunch program early on. Kids not being able to pay their bills, parents complaining, hot lunch agent running away with some of the money. And I said you know to the other school board members, the thing that we should do is just let the kids eat. A kid with a full stomach and we found this out 25 years ago. A kid that's well fed, is better behaved, learns better, just does better all the way through the school system and if we can afford to buy them the right book, set up the best library and do all these things have good athletic programs, we can have a good hot lunch program. So we had a free hot lunch program many years ago and it worked great and I think this will be a great improvement for all the public schools and our school systems throughout the state. So I'm glad to be here, glad to be part of this and glad that you better call your reps and your senators because we're going to need your help to get this all done. So thank you and have a good day. Thank you Senator Starr and next up is Senator Chris Pearson. Thank you everybody, nice to see you, finally we got a little rally here. I think before I offer a few thoughts everybody should know this doesn't happen without leadership, right? And in the Senate that's been a consistent wrangling and pushing us along and moving us forward with the pro tem Senator Becca Ballant. Thank you Becca. I served as a vice-chair of Senate AG, we had a busy morning, Bobby keeps us moving and I got out a piece of paper early on and I thought I got to think of some thoughts to offer this crowd. I didn't get very far. I wrote one word down, dignity. That's what we're talking about, right? This is a state we're told all the time. People want to come here, come visit our beautiful landscape, hike in our mountains, see our open fields. We're very proud of agriculture, very proud of the food that our producers make. And we should be proud of that. And our communities do not function if our schools are not strong and our schools do not function if we don't have a sense of community when kids walk through the door and you don't have a sense of community unless you eat together. And it's kind of maybe that simple, right? This is a grandmother moment. Grandmother doesn't have you over and serve you a drink. She has a meal. She has a meal to take care of her family. That's what we're talking about. In the building, the struggle sometimes is about money. And nobody argues that this is a good idea. It's about the money. And then it comes down to this. Why would taxpayers pay for universal meals so some rich people can have free lunch? Rich kids can have free lunch. Now of course we don't ask for your parents' income when we hand out math textbooks. Not at all. That would be ridiculous. Nobody says, well, you don't get to get on the bus because your parents have nice cars in the driveway. That would be ridiculous. If the cost of universal meals, of delivering dignity and providing community, a stronger sense of community in our schools, is free lunch for a few rich kids, that's well worth the price. Well worth the price. This is, we are still in the midst of some of the most challenging times our state and our world has faced. If we can come out of this with a slightly stronger sense of community and a cultural shift around protecting all sorts of kids and making sure that nobody falls through the cracks when they walk into the school building in the morning, that will be a success. And we will not be able to do it without leadership or without the strong voices of you all telling lawmakers the stories. Tell us what this means. Tell us about the drawer full of rich peanut butter crackers for those kids or the two dollars so that you know little Johnny doesn't go hungry at lunch. Tell us those stories because that's what makes the difference. Those stories move big dollar amounts and even modest dollar amounts like we're talking about here. So thank you everybody who being involved in this. It's great to have played a small role and I look forward to getting this across the finish line with you all. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Pearson. And I'm looking around. We have so many members of the House Education Committee here and this session, the House Education Committee has really grappled with this bill and made it so much better and we've got two members of the House Education Committee who are going to talk to us now and first up is Representative Erin Brady. My rep. Thanks. I want to really thank Chair Webb of the House Education Committee who was instrumental in helping us through this process. I'm a new member and she's been a wonderful mentor in the legislative process. And I know that my book, The House Education Committee has so many high-end, and I've read a lot of your social media and I love you guys so much, but then I just wanted to thank you for joining me and the two black people on this panel with you. I'm very proud of this new Web leadership has meant a lot on this. In addition to being a representative, I'm a high school teacher. I've been a high school teacher for 15 years and I'm also a school board member. nutrition staff was busy cooking actual food and loading coolers with packages of meals. Those giant coolers were loaded on school buses that drove around the community to distribute food to students and families. I still get chills when I remember looking out the window with other teachers that day, one of my last days in the building of the year, and tears streamed down our faces. We didn't know when we would see our beloved students again, but that carefully prepared food was not only critical to feed hungry kids, it was a tangible gesture of our school's love and care for our students and our families, despite an unprecedented crisis. As a state, we now have an important opportunity to continue providing universal breakfast and lunch to all students. For the past two years, we know the federal government has provided funding so that schools can offer meals to all students, and school nutrition staff and often bus drivers have gone to extraordinary lengths to have meals ready for families to pick up during school closures, packaging lunches to be eaten in the classroom while maintaining social distancing and responding nimbly to constant changes. But this federal program is set to expire in June, and we know that many Vermont students will once again know what it feels like to go hungry at school if we do not. We know there's unmet need in our schools. The thresholds to qualify for free and reduced price lunch are low and the stigma is real. I know as a teacher that the stigma is real. But the benefits of universal benefits extend beyond the financial benefit. In schools, we use a principle called universal design for learning. When we design ways to make learning accessible to certain students with tools like audio recording of books or graphic organizers to take notes, these tools often benefit far more students than just those they were targeted for. They're like curb cuts on sidewalks. They may have been put in place to help those with physical handicaps, but they end up providing benefits to many more. Parents pushing a stroller, someone with a temporary injury, someone hauling a heavy load. Universal meals are like these curb cuts. There's a ripple effect of benefits for all of us. Students may come to school hungry for many reasons beyond economic need. Family stress is high now more than ever. Parents working multiple jobs. I know my high school students start so early in the morning that the last thing that they think about is breakfast before they leave for school. I'm a teacher and a legislator because I'm hopeful about our future. I am hopeful that a universal school meals program in Vermont, where we have a strong culture of local foods, will help create a culture shift in our schools. It's an opportunity to bring students together to eat healthy, nutritious meals. Food isn't just nutrition. It's about community. It's about identity. And we have a wonderful opportunity here with S-100. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Brady. And now we have Representative Jay Hooper. How's everybody doing this afternoon? Thank you all for making the time today to come to this state's fine capital to help encourage our colleagues to simply support universal school meals. And if we can, and let me tell you we can, doggone it, we should see to it that both lunch and breakfast stay in the underlying bill. Thank you, Hungry Free Vermont and to all the advocates, especially Teddy was Azek, Fay Mack, Inora Horton, Amy Sholenberger, Betsy Rosenbluth for putting this together today. I must say it's been a peculiar legislative session for a myriad of reasons. But one of the oddest observations I've made around here over the past several weeks is how creative my friends in the legislature, particularly in the house, have been in considering and therefore suggesting alternative ways to spend the money that we've supposedly carved out in earnest to bridge fund universal school meals for a third calendar school year. While there are unwavering, there is unwavering consensus amongst those of us enthralled by this specific policy discussion as to how disappointing, unjust and downright inconvenient it would be to signal to school districts this coming fiscal year that in fact those that must will have to reconstruct their old ways of serving food and school cafeterias that they must indeed go back to pre-pandemic infrastructure or lack thereof because we lawmakers were unable to foster the political will to provide resources which are available at this moment in this budget to keep in place a system that has thus far proven itself more efficient and more equitable for all Vermont children, most importantly food insecure Vermont children. Another year of data will iron out our understanding of how best to permanently implement universal school meals. I stand before you today feeling optimistic. It's not a matter of whether or not it's a matter of when now and only now will the state of Vermont be in an optimal position to have an optimal opportunity to deliver on a concept we all claim to support full heartedly. Onward and upward. Thank you. Talking about students, but now we're actually going to get to hear from a student who would be impacted by this policy. So Emma Renaud from Essex High School got involved with the Universal School Meal Bill by connections through our student government. Me and another student graced to hear from the student body and taken their needs, wants and experiences involving school meals. We also personally interviewed fellow classmates and faculty while continuing to spread awareness about the subject. No one had any idea that our free meals could be taken away. When finding out about the bill myself, I was shocked at how a topic this relevant to everyday school life wasn't being discussed. It was unheard of that the plates we pick up might soon be weighed down by financial and social anxiety of buying food. As a student myself, I've seen tremendous improvement in our cafeteria atmosphere with the implementation of free meals. The stigma around eating school food is gone. No one feels judged and everyone has access to healthy meals. That is equality. To countless voices on this lawn fight for improvement. I am proud to be a part of real change. I also urge other young students like myself to fight for what you believe in because there's a good chance you'll make a difference in something bigger than yourself. Lastly, I just wanted to thank everyone for being here in support of USM and let's keep this bill moving forward. Thank you. It's going to be in good hands going forward, I think. But absolutely not least one of the heroes who got that food to our students all around Vermont when schools were shut down and keeps on doing it every single day. Carol Kent representing the School Nutrition Association of Vermont. This formation of a broken unfair system into a culture of equity where no child needs to experience hunger, nourished and prepared to know what stressors family bear the shame and stigma for lunch accounts that go unfunded. This is a choice between ensuring access to education for all kids education. They always have been and it's time we include them in the cost of educating every student. Administrators, teachers and school nurses have all seen the benefits and agree that universal school meals must continue. In Vermont, we educate the whole child. We provide for the social emotional wellness of every student. How can we say that we provide equal access to education if we allow barriers to remain that impede that access? All students deserve to achieve success and that starts with a basic need of food. Our children know this and they're asking us to do something about it. I have a letter here from a Virginia's elementary student named Henry. Henry isn't here by chance, is he? Henry wrote this letter to the Vermont legislators. A copy of it here. This is Henry's handwriting. Dear Vermont State, I think the next year and all the years after lunch should be free. I think this because some families don't have enough money to pay for breakfast and lunch for their family. Also, having good meals makes kids focus better. Henry. Henry is in third grade. Students understand why this is so important. Administrators and teachers understand what is at stake here. We cannot go back. We must act now. Every meal, every student, every day. This is how Vermont cares for kids and this is how we will feed the future. Thank you very, very much. So much for being here. Let's raise one more huge cheer for Universal School Mail.