The first four months of a new meal program in Michigan schools are in the books and state officials say they're seeing exponential growth in students eating at school.
After seeing positive results, efforts to make the program permanent in public schools is underway.
Under the Michigan School Meals program, breakfast and lunch are free for all public school students this school year. But that program will end once school leaves for summer break in 2024. School officials hope it will continue for all students soon.
Diane Golzynski is with the Michigan Department of Education. She said the department wants to make the program permanent for public school students, and eventually expand to non-public school students as well.
"We served a lot of kids and we met the majority of the kids needs by doing what we did this year. But now we need to start looking at who's missed and how can we serve them?" she said.
At the moment, the Michigan legislature is considering bills to make the free meal program permanent for public school students and students at Michigan School for the Deaf.
Golzynski said the legislature could act after the holidays on the bills.
"It has been voted out of committee on the Senate side and its sitting at the Senate floor. But we're also being told that the House probably won't do any voting until April after they get past this period of special elections."
If the bills pass, working on ways to make free meals accessible to all students will be next on the work order for state school officials. Some privately owned pre-schools or community based schools are currently not eligible because they are covered by federal programs already.
Golzynski said it's going take them a long time to try to figure that out. The goal? Perhaps 10 to 15 years down the road.
