A bill to provide elementary and secondary school students across Virginia with free breakfasts is heading back to the Virginia General Assembly.
The proposed bill by Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-5) was killed in the House Appropriation’s Elementary & Secondary Education subcommittee in January due largely to its $29.2 million price tag.
Bennett-Parker, flanked by Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-39) and Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-3), announced to City Council yesterday (Tuesday) that she plans to reintroduce the measure at the upcoming 60-day General Assembly session convening in Richmond in January.
“In the bucket of, sort of, cost of living and rising costs, I’m continuing to work on school breakfast for all with Sen. Danica Roem (D-30),” Bennett-Parker said.
The previous bill would have required each school board in Virginia to participate in the federal National School Lunch Program and the federal School Breakfast Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and provide one free breakfast per day to students.
Roem has filed a cognate bill for universal, free school breakfasts in the Virginia Senate.
In Alexandria, there are seven public schools that do not offer free meals and are not on the federal Community Eligibility Provision list:
- George Washington Middle School
- Charles Barrett Elementary School
- Douglas MacArthur Elementary School
- George Mason Elementary School
- Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy
- Mount Vernon Community School
- Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School
With an incoming Democratic governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as Democratic control of both chambers of the legislature, the upcoming session will be full of challenges and opportunities, Wendy Ginsberg, the city’s legislative director, told City Council yesterday.
“We’re going to have some financial and fiscal reality that we face, and that’s going to be true for this assembly session as well,” Ginsberg said. “But, we also have some opportunities, and that we’re going to have a new administration, and we’re going to have a newly constituted House of Delegates, so lots of opportunity to make innovative changes that will hopefully set the city of Alexandria up for great policies that make and continue the great resilience of our community.”
In April, outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, rejected 157 measures sent to his desk by the General Assembly.
“I feel like if you all just passed the bills that passed last couple of years and got vetoed and a couple of bills to address the conversations that we’re facing, right now, that pretty much fills the legislative window that you all have,” Councilman R. Kirk McPike said. “I think there’s a lot of efforts around various topics to look at regionalism as a counterweight to federal actions that aren’t necessarily conducive to our values or what we think is the best for our community.”
Ebbin said that he will reintroduce bills to ban the open carrying of assault rifles, as well as a sweeping LGBTQ+ non-discrimination bill and a bill to remove some of the remaining Confederate statues on Capital Square in Richmond.
He also said legislators will have to make hard decisions on funding health care.
“I think that we’re going to have to make a decision whether we want to try and spend, if we even have the money, up to $40 million to replace the Affordable Care Act subsidies that the federal government has bailed out on,” Ebbin said.
Lopez said he is working on dozens of bills and plans to focus on worker protections, workforce developments, overtime pay and gun violence legislation, notably reintroducing the gun safe storage tax credit.
“So, doing a great deal in terms of trying to tackle ways that we can address some of the ugliness from across the Potomac and address some of the really ugly things are happening across the commonwealth, and finding ways where we can be proactive where we haven’t been able to be under the current governor’s administration,” Lopez said.
