This school year, at least half of all meals served in public schools in New Mexico must be made from scratch using whole, fresh ingredients under a new state Public Education Department rule.
But an informal survey by the department suggests that most schools are not yet meeting the rule, according to an Aug. 6 report by the Legislative Finance Committee. Moving to scratch cooking often requires schools to completely overhaul their kitchens and hire enough staff to run them, the report states.
While New Mexico started offering free school meals to all public school students in fall 2023, those meals weren’t required to meet quality standards until the rule went into effect for this school year, LFC Program Evaluator Ryan Tolman told the interim Legislative Education Study Committee on Friday.
The state allocated $20 million in capital outlay funding for upgrading schools’ outdated kitchens in 2023, but only 14.6% of that money had been spent as of April, with only 10 of 87 projects completed, the report states.
Sen. Anthony Thornton (R-Sandia Park) asked Tolman why more projects haven’t been completed yet. Tolman said a large part of the problem is figuring out a district’s or school’s specific needs.
Meal service can come either from school-based kitchens; central or shared kitchens that deliver to multiple schools; or private food-service management contractors, Tolman said. The food itself can come from large suppliers, the USDA Foods program or local companies, he said.
If a school wasn’t originally built for scratch cooking, it can be difficult to retrofit it with new equipment because there may be a need for more space or other major renovations, Public Education Assistant Secretary Gregory Frostad told the committee.
The rule stems from New Mexico’s 2023 expansion of free, high-quality meals to all public K-12 and charter school students regardless of their families’ income. This year, New Mexico is one of eight states with universal school meal programs, along with California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and Vermont, the LFC report states.
The department’s survey found that 57% of schools are expanding their training for scratch cooking in response to the new law, according to the report. However, schools tell LFC staff that keeping qualified kitchen staff is a major challenge, especially in rural areas, LFC Program Evaluator Josh Chaffin told the committee.
Staffing in school kitchens dropped as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and remains a challenge, Laura Henry-Hand, deputy director of the department’s Student Success and Wellness Bureau, told the committee.
LFC recommends the department expand technical assistance and training in scratch cooking, food safety and compliance; and develop a statewide monitoring system to track spending, food waste, local food sourcing, scratch cooking, participation rates and students’ academic and health outcomes.
In the year since the law was passed, student participation in free breakfast has risen by 8.3% and free lunch by 8.5%, the report states, especially among students from higher-income families who wouldn’t have previously qualified. The report states there were increases in 68 out of the state’s 89 school districts, including all 10 of the largest ones.
Overall spending on school food programs in the state increased from $165 million in the 2018 school year to $248 million last year, the report states. Most of that comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program.
Almost every New Mexico school that is eligible for CEP is participating this school year because the new law requires schools to use as much federal money as possible before using state funding, according to the report.
However, the federal government’s changes to the program’s eligibility criteria could shift more costs to New Mexico, with 20 schools losing their status under the program and 60 additional schools losing the full federal reimbursement.
With those federal changes, even if participation rates stay the same, the state is facing a 4% increase in costs totaling $2 million, Henry-Hand said.
The department is asking the Legislature for $42.2 million in recurring funding for the universal school meals program in Fiscal Year 2027, the same amount that lawmakers budgeted this year, Frostad said.
However, the department is asking for $5 million in one-time funding for potential cost overruns, he said. The LFC report notes that Michigan, Colorado and Minnesota each encountered substantial gaps between their projected and actual costs in their first years offering universal school meals.
