Maine
What happened to Maine’s summer meal programs post pandemic-era waivers • Maine Morning Star
Although Maine made school meals free for all students during the school year, providing access to free lunch and breakfast over the summer for school-aged children remains a challenge. That challenge is compounded by declining participation in summer meals, after the expiration of pandemic-era waivers brought back some barriers to access.
A new report from the national nonprofit, Food Research and Action Center, analyzed participation in summer meal programs for each state, including the number of sites, sponsors and total meals served, based on United States Department of Agriculture data.
Experts said Maine’s summer meal program does better than most states in reaching children who need meals, but there continue to be significant barriers to access, predominantly due to the federal policies governing these programs. According to this report, released this month, participation in summer meals decreased nationally in 2023 as most programs returned to normal operations.
In Maine, both sponsors and sites offering meals to school-aged children over the summer saw small declines from 2022 to 2023.
“Maine is, in general, doing better than most other states at trying to feed the kids in the state who need it,” said Justin Strasburger, executive director of Full Plates, Full Potential, a statewide nonprofit organization working to address food insecurity.
“But essentially, what you’re looking at is a very, very low bar that’s connected to a summer meals program that needs massive overhauls in terms of structure and approach.”
From 2020 to 2022, any school district, government agency or nonprofit organization could sponsor a summer meals program, and get reimbursed by the federal government through USDA’s Summer Food Service Program. Sponsors also weren’t required to adhere to typical USDA rules of how to run their sites (for example, parents could pick up grab-and-go meals at any site, as opposed to requiring students to eat on site.)
During those years, participation in summer meals surged nationwide because of the waivers and ease of access. At the same time, breakfast and lunch were also free for all students during the year.
After the pandemic, Maine became one of a handful of states to pass legislation making school meals free, which retained increased participation in breakfast and lunch during the regular school year statewide. However, the summer meals program returned to its regular policies, and participation declined.
The number of sponsors — who can be school districts, or nonprofit and community organizations — decreased from 116 to 106, and the number of sites where families can access free meals over the summer also dropped from 446 to 410, according to the FRAC report. The drop in the number of sites serving summer meals from 2021 — when pandemic-era waivers were still in place – to 2022 is much more stark, with almost a 50 percent drop from 861 sites in summer 2021.
“My guess is that most of those stopped because they had been sort of operating through loopholes created by the pandemic,” Strasburger said.
Meanwhile, according to Feeding America, 1 in 5 children face hunger in Maine.
Corresponding to this decline in sites and sponsors, the average daily participation numbers in summer meals as captured in the FRAC report declined sharply from 2021 to 2022, going from more than 22,000 to just over 14,000 and continued to drop in 2023. Last year’s average daily participation in summer meals was about 12,600.
Despite the decline in access, summer meals still serve a large number of students that qualify for free and reduced meals during the school year, especially compared with other states, according to the report. Over last summer, Maine served more than 400,000 summer meals, based on federal data.
Maine is ranked third in the country in terms of access to free summer meals according to a metric FRAC developed, comparing what percentage of students that qualify for free and reduced meals during the school year participate in summer meal programs. The state is somewhat successful because of the focus of state agencies, communities and sponsors on expanding access to summer meals, which isn’t the case in every state, according to Crystal FitzSimons, FRAC’s interim president.
“The way they operate the program, the amount of outreach they do, the quality of the meals that they serve, those things all contribute to high participation,” she said.
The Maine Department of Education did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the summer meals program.
How federal policies limit Maine’s summer meal program
The way the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program is designed creates challenges in allowing all students to access summer meals, Strasburger said.
To qualify as a summer meals site, at least 50 percent of the children in the geographic area or participating in summer meals have to be eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.
However, since far fewer families are filling out free and reduced price meal applications ever since the state introduced universal free meals throughout the school year, this calculation is complicated in Maine. The rural nature of the state also adds to the issue of eligibility of free meal sites, according to FitzSimons.
“Maine is a really hard state for summer food. It’s really rural, and it also doesn’t have the same kind of concentration of poverty that you might see in other rural states with higher rates of child poverty,” FitzSimons said.
“So it’s harder to qualify sites because there’s plenty of kids who come from low income households in Maine, but the concentration of poverty is not as high.”
One of FRAC’s recommendations in its 2024 report includes lowering the federal eligibility threshold to 40 percent, so more sites are able to offer summer meals.
The other issue is also a federal program requirement that students must eat meals on-site, which a majority of Maine’s summer meals sites still have to follow. Sponsors are not required to provide educational or enrichment activities in conjunction with on-site meals, but it is best practice to do so, according to FitzSimons.
“If you have a site that doesn’t have activity or enrichment, and you’re in a rural area,
it’s not going to make sense financially for the family to drive to a meal site for one meal for their child,” she said.
Some potential solutions to boost participation
This summer, due to an updated definition of rural areas, Maine was able to expand grab-and-go meal sites, although they still can’t operate in densely populated centers. USDA also released a map of all summer meal sites, including grab-and-go locations.
This year, Maine also introduced a grocery credit of $120 per child for all qualifying children to supplement summer meals. The program, called SUN bucks, is not new at the federal level, but many states have implemented it this school year, as a way to continue serving students meals after pandemic-era waivers expired, FitzSimons said.
Nearly 100,000 students were automatically enrolled in SUN bucks this summer because they qualify for other programs, such as SNAP or TANF, according to the Maine Department of Education website.
School-aged children can also qualify for the grocery credit if they are eligible for free and reduced meals during the school year.
The lack of accurate data in Maine
After Maine made all school meals free, the state has been struggling to accurately calculate how many students qualify for free and reduced meals, which is an important economic metric which then allows families to qualify for other benefits, including summer meals and grocery credits.
Since far fewer families are filling out free and reduced price meal applications ever since the state introduced universal free meals throughout the school year, the state department of education is working on alternative models to determine eligibility, for example, partnering with other state agencies to directly qualify students who are eligible for MaineCare.
Meanwhile, the FRAC report relies on free and reduced eligibility data to determine how well a state is doing with summer meals. According to the report, states should be reaching 40 students with summer meals for every 100 who received a school lunch during the 2022–2023 regular school year.
In 2023, the report said Maine reached 31.8 children with summer lunch for every 100 children, which is the third highest in the country. However, since this calculation used free and reduced lunch data, which is undercounted, the actual ratio may be lower.
TOPSFIELD, Maine — Jenna Stoddard is not sure where her son will spend his days when he starts preschool next fall.
Sending him to East Range II School would be convenient and continue a legacy. Stoddard lives just down the street and her husband graduated eighth grade there in 2007, one in a class of three. Topsfield’s population has dropped since then. The school now has five students, two teachers, few extracurricular activities and nobody trained to teach music, art, gym or health.
Stoddard’s son is too young for her to worry about that now. But the school may not be open by the time he is ready to go. Topsfield, a town of just 175 residents, will vote on whether to close the school on April 30. If it closes, the boy would likely be sent to preschool up to 30 minutes away in Princeton or Baileyville.
“That’s a pretty fair distance for a kid, a 4-year-old, who is now on a bus all by himself,” she said. “[If] school starts at [7:45 a.m.], what time is the bus picking 4-year-olds up here? And what time is he going to get home at?”
Topsfield is an extreme example of how an aging, shrinking population and rising property taxes are forcing Maine towns to make difficult choices about their community institutions. Just over a dozen people came to a Wednesday hearing on the idea of closing the school. The crowd was mostly in favor of it.
“It is emotional to close the school in a town,” Superintendent Amanda Belanger of the sprawling Eastern Maine Area School System said then. “But we do feel it’s in the best interest of the students in the town.”
Teacher Paula Johnson walked a reporter through the building, which is small by Maine standards but cavernous for its five students. It has four classrooms, a small library, and a gymnasium. There is also a cook and a custodian for the tiny school.
A hallway trophy case serves as a reminder of when the school was big enough to field basketball teams. Topsfield’s student population has never been large, but the school’s population has dropped dramatically over the past few years. It had 25 students in 2023, with many coming from nearby Vanceboro, which closed its own school in 2015.
As the student population dwindled, the cost of sending students to Topsfield climbed. With fewer students to defray the costs, Vanceboro officials realized they would be paying $23,000 per student by the last school year. So they opted to direct students to nearby Danforth, where tuition was only $11,000 per student.
East Range lost seven students from Vanceboro, bringing its enrollment below 10. Under Maine law, that means the district may offer students the option to go elsewhere. Parents of the remaining students in grades 5 through 8 took the option and sent their kids to Baileyville. This school began the year with eight students; three have since pulled out.
In Topsfield, Johnson teaches four of the remaining five, holding lessons for pre-K through second grade in one classroom. Another one down the short hallway is home base for the other teacher. She focuses on the school’s lone fourth grader and occasionally teaches one of Johnson’s first graders, who is learning at an advanced level.
The other teacher, who holds a special education certificate despite having no students with those needs, plans to leave at the end of the school year. If the school stays open, that will leave Johnson responsible for educating Topsfield’s youngest students, though the school will need to budget for a part-time special education teacher just in case.
After 11 years at the school, Johnson is not sure what she will do if voters shut it down.
“We’ll see what happens here,” she said.
Topsfield’s school board, which operates as a part of the Eastern Maine Area School System, is offering its residents a choice: continue funding the school only for students between preschool and second grade at an estimated cost of $434,000 next year or send all students elsewhere, which would cost less than $200,000.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the attendees leaned heavily toward the latter option. Deborah Mello said she moved from Rhode Island to Topsfield years ago to escape high taxes.
“It’s not feasible for the town of Topsfield,” she said. “We cannot afford it and it’s not like the children don’t have a school to go to.”
Others bemoaned the burden of legal requirements for the small district, including the need to provide special education teachers even if they don’t need one. Board members also mentioned that in 2028, the district will become responsible for educating 3-year-olds under a new state law. That adds another layer of uncertainty to future budgeting.
“It sounds like we’ve been burdened something severely by this program and that program by the Department of Education, to the point where a small school can’t even exist,” resident Alan Harriman said.
“And that’s been happening for a long time,” East Range board chair Peggy White responded.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Good morning and Happy Sunday everyone. Skies are cloudy with fog across much of Maine this morning. Rain has entered locations along the interstate and to the northwest. Temperatures vary from the upper 30s to mid 40s. Winds are out of the SE between about 5-15 mph.
Today will be a wet and impactful day with rain and even snow anticipated as a large cold front passes through Maine. Skies will be cloudy with plenty of fog lasting through the morning. Rain will expand across the interstate by the late morning hours, reaching Downeast locations by midday/the early afternoon.
By the early to midafternoon, temperatures will start to drop across northwestern locations as the cold front passes through Maine. This will result in rain turning over to mixed precipitation and eventually snow across the Western Mountains, Moosehead region, and Northern Maine. Rain will continue steadily and at times heavily across the foothills, Interstate, Coast, and Downeast. A few thunderstorms are even possible closer to the coast.
Snow will expand across areas to the northwest of the interstate this evening, reaching all the way down to Interior Midcoast communities, the Bangor region, and Interior Downeast areas by sunset and into the start of the night. Precipitation will taper off across Western Maine shortly after sunset, before exiting the entire state around midnight tonight. High temps today will vary from the low 40s to low 50s with SSE to NW gusts reaching 20-25 mph.
Snowfall totals will vary under 2 inches across Western, Northern, and Interior Downeast locations. However, a few pockets of 2-4 inches are possible, mostly in higher elevations across the mountains. Rainfall totals will accumulate around a half inch to three quarters of an inch when all is said and done.
Precipitation will be out of Maine by midnight tonight, with cloudy conditions giving way to mostly clear skies by sunrise. Lows overnight will dip back below freezing across much of the state, from the low 20s to mid 30s tonight, so cover up any plants or flowers outside. WNW gusts will reach 20-25 mph. A Small Craft Advisory is expected offshore.
Skies will be partly to mostly sunny across the interstate and coast on Monday morning. However, by the late morning to midday hours, clouds will build with a few scattered rain and snow showers in spots. Conditions will remain on the cloudier side in the afternoon before clearing up around sunset into the start of Monday night. Highs will be chilly on Monday, from the low 30s to upper 40s. WNW to SW gusts will be a bit breezy, reaching 20-25 mph, which will add to the wind chill factor.
High pressure will build on Monday night, remaining overhead on Tuesday. Skies will be sunny in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. Highs will remain cool, in the 40s across the board with North to SW gusts only reaching 15-20 mph.
A weaker low-pressure system could bring showers across Maine on Wednesday and Thursday. There is a bit of model uncertainty on exactly when it will impact Maine. The GFS has impacts on Wednesday, while the EURO, GRAF, and GDPS models have most of the impacts on Thursday. We will continue to monitor this system and potential impacts. All it looks to provide as of now are cloudier skies and rain showers, with some snow shower chances farther to the North.
By Friday and Saturday, conditions are trending on the drier side with sunshine and average temperatures returning to the forecast.
SUNDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Cloudy with AM fog. Rain becoming widespread throughout the day, turning over to snow to the north & west during PM. SSE to NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
MONDAY: Highs from low 30s to upper 40s. Partly to mostly sunny early. Developing clouds with scattered rain/snow showers by midday/afternoon. WNW to SW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
TUESDAY: Highs throughout the 40s. Sunnier AM. Partly to mostly sunny PM. North to SW gusts reach 15-20 mph.
WEDNESDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Mostly cloudy with a few rain showers. Few AM snow showers possible North. SSE to SSW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
THURSDAY: Highs from mid 40s to mid 50s. Cloudier skies with rain showers possible. Some AM snow showers possible North. NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
FRIDAY: Highs from upper 40s to mid 50s. Partly cloudy. NNW gusts reach 20 mph.
Copyright 2026 WABI. All rights reserved.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in September 2022.
When it comes to Maine hiking, summiting Katahdin is the ultimate achievement.
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But the views are incredible.
Whether it’s the rugged terrain of the Knife Edge or the vast landscape of the 200,000 acres that compose Baxter State Park below, here’s a look at what it’s like to climb Katahdin.
Hunt Trail
Abol Trail
Chimney Pond Trail
Cathedral Trail
Saddle Trail
Northwest Basin Trail
Knife Edge
Tablelands
South Peak
Hamlin Peak
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