A law to make school breakfast free for all Arkansas students has cleared its first hurdle in a Senate committee.
On Wednesday, Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Beebe, presented the bill which has bipartisan co-sponsors and support. The bill passed with unanimous approval after some discussion.
The free breakfast bill was brought up by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her State of the State address. She listed it as a policy she supported in combating food insecurity along with eliminating the grocery tax and giving EBT money to needy families over the summer.
The legislature is relying on revenue from medical marijuana sales, which was initially spent on hospital programs, to support the free breakfast initiative.
“If you start out your day with an empty stomach, you are expected to go through the day without a meal,” Dismang said. “None of us at this table have to go through that or even have to contemplate it.”
Right now, school districts in Arkansas offer free breakfast and lunch, and free or reduced meals to parents who fill out a form stating their income. Dismang echoed sentiments by district officials that, sometimes, families just don't fill out the form. He called the free breakfast plan a “stopgap.”
“I hear the pushback,” he said. “There are some folks that say obviously there are families that can afford this breakfast. I would agree there are.”
He said the state should be willing to pay for breakfast if they are willing to pay for books and computers.
“Our mandates only go so far,” he said. “And parental rights do have a place, and sometimes that means parents are negligent in places they should be that's not contrary to the law.”
Conway Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Collum spoke in favor of the bill.
“It's more than a worthy cause,” he said. “I just want to praise the efforts to even have a bill like this on the table.
Arkansas law says kids who can't pay for lunch are required by law to be given a meal anyway, but the unpaid lunch money accumulates into a pile of debt.
Conway Public Schools dietitian Maegan Brown says some students are in debt thousands of dollars.
“So we have money that is coming out of our district that could be used for safety for teachers, for other things,” she said.
The bill passed the committee unanimously and now goes to the full Senate for a vote.
