during the first part of the last school year an appropriation of $77,000,000 would have been necessary. Approximately 3,000,000 additional children must be served each day, if our common objectives are to be reached. Many of these deprived children reside in large urban areas and are being educated in antiquated school buildings. Problems relating to building replacement, redistricting and the locating of central kitchen facilities contribute to an unavoidable slow rate of progress in the extension of essential food services in most of these areas. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, still has at least 600 public and parochial schools in 29 cities and towns in which school lunches are not available. Although authorities in these areas may be interested in installing necessary facilities they are unable to do so due to a lack of funds. Inflated general education costs appear to be exhausting available local tax dollars. An estimated $4,000,000 would be needed to install food service equipment in these schools. During the past school year Massachusetts received an allocation of $717,292 out of the $43,000,000 appropriated on an emergency basis. To reach all visible needy children during the present school year a minimum allocation of $1,800,000 will be needed. An increased allocation of equipment monies for distribution by the Commonwealth to needy cities and towns is also essential on an equitable matching basis. Although these statistics apply only to Massachusetts, I am confident that they reflect the situation as it exists, with slight variations, in all other States. It is only with this thought in mind that they have been presented. We have been invited here today, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, to express our views on the provisions of S. 2548 introduced by Senator Talmadge. This legislation in providing for increased appropriations and calling for greater contributions by the States basically represents an enlightened approach and, if enacted, would provide the nation temporarily with a most formidable weapon to use in its fight to eliminate malnutrition among children. My temporary qualification is premised on a conclusion that monies in addition to those called for in this bill will ultimately become necessary, if the Congress should decide to provide a full measure of assistance. Since 1946 a provision of the regulations issued under the National School Lunch Act has established a maximum reimbursement rate of .09 cents on a Type A lunch. In compliance with the intent of the matching provisions of the Act a few_States such as New York, Massachusetts, Utah, Louisiana, Vermont and New Jersey are presently appropriating monies for School Lunch Program purposes. New York and Massachusetts laws stipulate that monies appropriated may not exceed amounts needed to maintain reimbursement rates at the present maximum allowable rate of .09 cents per lunch. It is very difficult for many of us to understand why this maximum rate has not been periodically adjusted to compensate for the significant food cost increases which have taken place since 1946. To correct this inequity, I strongly recommend that the following amendment be inserted in Section 7 of S. 2548 as Item (b) and that the succeeding items in this section be re-lettered: (See Appendix) In my opinion failure to adopt this Amendment will result in hundreds of thousands of children being deprived of needed lunches unless they become an additional Section 11 responsibility. Approximately 16% of our needy children presently are being provided for under this program. It is evident that the indicated funding provisions of S. 2548 are not intended to assume this additional burden. In addition, if States continue to be restricted by this unrealistic maximum rate, many more worthy children may well be priced out of the program. It should be pointed out at this time that this suggested formula for establishing a realistic maximum rate would not in any way commit the Congress to an additional Section 4 appropriation. It would, however, permit the States to appropriate voluntarily additional monies to the program in conformity with the suggested matching provisions of S. 2548. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I urge you to recommend favorably the passage of S. 2548 subject to the Amendment which I have recommended. The enactment of this legislation by the Congress would contribute immensely to the future good health of millions of our nation's children. We cannot afford to gamble with the future for too soon it will be the past. Thank you very much. APPENDIX Section 8 of the National School Lunch Act is hereby amended by inserting the following sentences immediately after the first sentence in this Section. The Secretary in establishing the maximum rate of reimbursement which states may pay schools for meeting the prescribed minimum nutritional requirements shall take into consideration the actual national average purchase cost of food necessary to provide such meals. However, in no event shall the Secretary set the maximum rate of reimbursement at less than 50% of the current national average cost of food per meal in each fiscal year. Nor may the states or USDADO wherever applicable reimburse schools in an amount which is in excess of this rate times the number of meals served or the actual cost of food purchased whichever is the lesser. Except that in schools meeting the established criteria for need the Secretary may establish a rate in excess of 50% of the national average cost of obtaining food. Mr. PERRYMAN. Mr. Page. STATEMENT OF DAVID R. PAGE, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF FOOD SERVICES, BOARD OF EDUCATION, ST. LOUIS, MO. Mr. PAGE. I am David Page. I am director of the division of food services of the board of education of the city of St. Louis. I have a prepared text here. I would appreciate this being made a matter of record. I thought that in line with Dr. Perryman's suggestion and yours, Mr. Chairman, we would just highlight these things that are in our statement here. Our statement starts off by giving you some historical facts on the operation of school lunches in the city of St. Louis. We have had school food service programs in St. Louis since the turn of the century at the high school level. However, in the elementary schools, we only had food service in one-third of the schools in 1967, and about that time, we like to say, we invented a program of nutrition service to all schools. This is now installed in all the city schools in St. Louis. Prior to the installation, one of three elementary schools had no food service. We now have food service in all schools in the city. As a part of my testimony here today, I would like to present to you, Mr. Chairman, and other Members of the Senate here, a copy of our most recent publication called "St. Louis Score Card." If this looks to you like a baseball lineup, that is what it is. It is a box score of conditions in the St. Louis schools. This typifies the plight of the large cities and cites our activities in St. Louis. Score Card outlines in detail the activities going on in St. Louis in trying to solve some of our problems and our new elementary lunch programs outlined and depicted in section 6, pages 22 and 23. Our lunch is called, in order to have a name on it and to have good public acceptance in the city of St. Louis, Vit-A-Lunch. It is a cold lunch. It is completely nutritious and it is geared to type A lunch. Pictures are shown in the book of children eating the lunches, assembly lines producing lunch; lunches packed on racks to the roof of the kitchen; trucks making deliveries, volunteer mothers serving lunches, and some 400 or 500 volunteers in St. Louis help in this capacity every day. Two other points are made in Score Card that I want to call to your attention. They are both in section 1, page 5. One indicates that 70 percent of the children in St. Louis live in neighborhoods classed at the poverty level. The second point I make to you in the Score Card is indicated in section 1 on page 5. It says, "The poverty plight is emphasized as follows: In 1966"-and I am sure it has changed since then "St. Louis, with 15.5 percent of its State's total population, 25.5 percent of all Missouri recipients of public assistance, and 37.1 percent of the recipients of aid for dependent children." The special assistance funds provided by the Perkins amendment to the act, which incidentally were not available until December 1, 1965, helped us considerably in providing more lunches to children. Needy lunches in our system have increased from an average of 803 per day in 1966 to 11,000 per day in 1969, with a conservative estimate on my part of 15,000 to 18,000 free or reduced-price lunches in 1970. Free and reduced-price policy is indicated in our testimony. I would like to indicate to you that we do not feel that there is identification or discrimination. Everyone uses the same cards for their lunches; the buyer's full price, the buyer's reduced price, and the reduced-price lunches. Your legislation, we feel, provides and we need funds as early as possible in order to operate effective food service programs. Additional funds are needed for needy lunches. In addition to operating funds in needy areas-and this is excellent and certainly is neededand as Mr. Briggs said, up to 100 percent in some places in lieu of the 80 percent, because this is difficult when funds are short in a school system. Funds for nonfood assistance would help us to be more efficient and would add a variety to our menus. Nutrition expertise would be extremely helpful and would benefit all, the needy as well as the affluent. Affluence in itself does not assure good nutrition, as you know. The National Advisory Council-we certainly are in favor of this. However, in line with the baseball vernacular, I am not sure I agree with the full lineup of the organization there. Particularly I would like to have that food management specialist spelled out a little more in detail. As a matter of information and a matter of record on our poverty plight on free and reduced-price lunches, they have reduced from 4 percent of our lunches in 1963 to 61 percent of our lunches in 1969. The number of lunches served at the elementary school level in St. Louis have increased from 870,000 in the same period to 211⁄2 million lunches for the year. St. Louis' program was limited to a type A meal in the elementary schools last year and it is now in all schools. We served a type A lunch in two schools experimentally in 1969 for the last 2 months and 35,000 additional needy meals were distributed in 8 weeks, approximately 1,000 per day. We put a name on our lunch in the high schools. We called it the Gateway Special, kind of in keeping with the Gateway arch that is down on the riverfront in St. Louis. We like to say to parent groups it is a gateway to good nutrition, gateway to a good food bargain. And we hope that this name, Gateway Special, will catch on just as well as has Vit-A-Lunch in our community. I concluded my comment with this, Mr. Chairman: Sufficient funding to provide lunches for children in the hands of school lunch directors will mean more good sound programs for the benefit of all boys and girls at all levels. All of this will help us to narrow and, hopefully, close the gap between the 50 million eligible schoolchildren in the Nation and the 20 million now participating in school lunch. As this nutritional gap is narrowed and closed, we then will be assured 35-131-69-11 that effective steps are being taken so that all children of the Nation are given adequate nutrition. Thank you. (The prepared statement of Mr. Page follows:) Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, may I express my pleasure and appreciation to you for the opportunity to offer my viewpoint on Bill S2548 and how it will affect the lunch program in the Public Schools of the City of St. Louis. We have been offering food service in the St. Louis schools at the high school level since the turn of the Century. Food services in our elementary schools have been rather recent. The first few elementary schools to offer food service were opened during World War II. The number of elementary schools offering food service in the spring of 1967 was 55 of some 170 schools. This meant that only one in three schools at the elementary level were offering nutritiously adequate noonday lunches. Therefore, no matter how hungry a child might be, in two out of three schools, he had no chance for food service. Much has been written and discussed about the inability of the hungry child to learn. As our Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Kottmeyer, stated to the House Education and Labor Committee on January 28, 1969: "The schools cannot escape the problems of feeding hungry children, because hungry malnourished children are unable to learn and the best teaching will be wasted on them unless they are fed." A sense of justice prevails and, therefore, our desire in St. Louis to offer a uniform and nutritiously adequate noonday lunch in the 115 schools without service and to offer the same service in all 170 schools. With this in mind we created a packaged lunch called Vit-A-Lunch and applied this lunch universally in all St. Louis Public Elementary Schools-the lunch meets Type A meal standards. The program started in September 1967 and the whole city was covered by the spring of 1969. As a separate part of my testimony, I would like to present to you Mr. Chairman, with the compliments of our Superintendent the most recent publication of our St. Louis School District "St. Louis-Score Card”—a report on the condition of the schools-typical of the plight of the large cities of America. This cites the activities in trying to solve the problems confronting an urban school system. This publication outlines in detail many problems of a typical large city and in Section VI, pages 22 and 23, pictures of our Vit-A-Lunches are displayed, i.e., children eating the lunches; assembly lines producing lunches; lunches packed on racks almost to the roof of the kitchen; trucks making deliveries and volunteer mothers helping children to eat lunches. St. Louis, like many large cities, have many old school buildings in areas where there are many poor families a quotation or two from "Score Card" is as follows: "Some 70 percent of the children in the St. Louis Public Schools live in neighborhood classed as poverty areas by the federal government. The few remaining areas of affluence in the city have exceptionally small public school enrollments". (See Section I, page 5) "St. Louis poverty plight is further emphasized in the Gladstone Report to the City Plan Commission. In 1966, the city with 15.5% of the total population of the State of Missouri, had 25.5% of all Missouri recipients of public assistance and 37.1% of the recipients of Aid for Dependent Children". (See Section I, page 5) Vit-A-Lunch assures us of sound basic nutritious lunches being available to all of these children in all of these schools on an equal basis. Special assistance funds received last school year have helped us in the expansion and development of our needy lunch program. These funds were not available until December 1, 1968, and until that time Title I funds, sorely needed for the improvement of literacy skills in our poverty schools, were hesitantly and reluctantly used for this purpose. The availability of "special assistance" has helped us to reduce our Title I bill for needy lunches. Needy lunches in our system have risen steadily over the past several years as indicated in the following chart: 1966, 803 per day average. Our policy on needy lunches is as follows: Children on ADC or Food Stamp Program, or equally as poor; in elementary schools free if three or fewer are enrolled in one school; four-$1.00 per month for the family; five-$2.00 per month for the family; six-$3.00 per month for the family; and so forth for each child above three determining the family rates. In high schools the needy lunch is 10¢ per child. In all schools the principal has the privilege of issuing free lunches to any child in dire circumstances. There is no identification or discrimination between those who pay full prices, 25¢ in elementary schools and 40¢ in high schools, and those who eat at the needy rates. All students use the same meal cards, those who pay and those who eat free or at reduced prices. Your legislation $2548 would provide additional funds for operating expenses in needy schools and this would be helpful. At present, funds are limited to food purchases and non-food assistance (equipment cost). Operating funds to pay salaries of attendants for distributing lunches, in our opinion would be helpful. As of now a very limited number of teachers aids in Title I schools provide this distribution service and additional help is needed. At the same time this would relieve Title I funds of this financial burden. Additional funds for equipment would be useful in making our preparation and serving more efficiently and to add variety to our menus, thereby increasing participation. Employment of experts, specially trained in child nutrition, for assistance at the state and local level would be meaningful in the dissemination of nutrition information to principals, teachers, parents and the general public-making all aware of the importance of good sound basic nutrition and how important it is to the childs ability to learn. This would be extremely helpful as it would be beneficial to all children. The needy as well as the affluent would benefit from good nutrition education. As a matter of information to the committee, listed below is the number of elementary meals served in the St. Louis Public Schools for the last five years and along with this is a listing of the number of free and/or reduced priced meals served: The total number of nutritious meals has increased from less than 900,000 in 1963-64 to 2,435,648 in 1968-69 and will further increase in 1969-70 with expected increased participation. With the adoption of "Special Assistance" the nutritiously adequate meal has now been extended this September to all high schools which traditionally served all foods a la carte. This will now further increase the figures shown above for 1969-70 assuring us that all children who are in need are receiving a sound nutritious noonday lunch. (In two experimental high schools, 35,000 additional needy lunches were distributed between March 17th and June 10th, 1969-this in addition to the number listed above for elementary schools.) Any help that can be extended is needed, financial help of any kind will permit us to extend services to more and more children. All large city school systems in the nation are suffering from lack of tax revenue to support schools. The cost of operating large school food services programs in any city is a drain on the already short tax funds. We, therefore, have no choice other than to seek federal help, this being the area where the majority of our tax dollars are routed. Additional special food service assistance to feed needy children will assure us of adequately caring for the "child too hungry to learn". Sufficient funding to provide lunches for children in the hands of school lunch directors will mean more good sound programs for the benefit of all boys and girls at all levels. All of this will help us to narrow, and hopefully close, the gap between the 50 million eligible school children in the nation and the 20 million now participating in school lunch. As this nutritional gap is narrowed and |