Massachusetts has joined a rising variety of states in passing laws to grant free meals to all public faculty children.
The brand new program was signed into regulation Wednesday by Gov. Maura Healey (D) as a part of an overdue price range of practically $56 billion, which additionally included spending on baby care, workforce improvement, housing, public transit and different areas.
From that price range, roughly $172 million in everlasting funding shall be put towards free faculty meals for college kids in kindergarten by means of highschool.
Rebecca Wooden, who has an 11-year-old, advised WBZ-TV in Boston that there have been occasions prior to now when she wasn’t positive if she may afford faculty lunch for her child.
“It’s terrible,” Wooden mentioned. “She’d come dwelling and say, ‘Mother, it’s important to give cash to the cafeteria once more.’ I didn’t need her to know we have been struggling, and he or she had strangers telling her that we have been.”
Wooden added that the excessive value of housing and medical payments made it harder to save cash. However the brand new meals program will save households about $1,200 per scholar annually, in keeping with state Senate President Karen Spilka.
Massachusetts is now the eighth state to undertake a everlasting common meals program. The opposite states are California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, Vermont, Michigan and New Mexico.
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