Full Plates Full Potential: Maine’s Path to Healthy School Meals for All

Photographer: Winky Lewis. 

In 2021, Maine passed landmark legislation guaranteeing universal school meals, but the work leading up to this began years before. Full Plates Full Potential was founded in 2014 out of what originally began as a legislative task force to address Maine’s high rate of student food insecurity. The task force quickly recognized the need for a nonprofit and non-governmental organization dedicated solely to childhood food insecurity and to leading the work, assembling coalition partners, and investigating best practices and sensible solutions related to existing, underutilized Federal Child Nutrition Programs. Between 2014 and 2021, Full Plates Full Potential worked on smaller child nutrition policy changes while laying the groundwork with key partners such as the Department of Education, Maine School Nutrition Association, Good Shepherd Food Bank, Maine Farm to School, and many others. Conversations with early partners led to collaborative policy changes that expanded Summer Food Service Programs, Breakfast After the Bell, and afterschool meals in high-need schools and communities, as well as eliminating the reduced price copay category for both breakfast and lunch. With steady support from key stakeholders, Full Plates Full Potential began working on School Meals for All. Prior to drafting legislation we recruited even more partners to the table, including the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, and disseminated a living document of talking points and data links.

As the lead organization working on this issue we drafted the language of the bill while working closely with two key legislative champions - Maine Senate President Troy Jackson and Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau. Although Maine had a Democratic majority in both chambers of the legislature as well as a Democratic governor, the state is historically a purple state. In our early meetings, Governor Mills stressed the importance of strong bipartisan support to securing the funding necessary for the successful implementation of School Meals for All. Our extensive outreach efforts paid off when we connected with a lead Republican senator who had personal experience with food insecurity as a child. He was able to garner support amongst fellow Republicans through his own testimony, and an op-ed. As a fiscal conservative, this Republican senator was able to communicate to his caucus that childhood food insecurity comes at a great cost to society, and that investment in School Meals for All was a prudent financial decision especially within the context of broader spending on education.

Ultimately, School Meals for All passed with overwhelming bipartisan support with unanimous vote in the State Senate and a 151 to 26 vote in the State House. The Appropriations and Financial Affairs committee was able to secure $10,000,000 to start a seed fund, and we then successfully worked to secure the rest of the funding in the Governor’s supplemental budget package the following year.

The 2022-2023 school year is the first year in which school meals are free for all Maine students via the School Meals for All legislation. We are hearing anecdotal evidence that it is having an enormous impact in schools, and we look forward to sharing more substantial data as the school year progresses. We continue to leverage bipartisan support in our conversations with Maine’s federal delegation which spans the full range of progressive to conservative. We’re hopeful that Maine’s success with School Meals for All will eventually inspire the federal government to enact Healthy School Meals for All across the nation.