Seattle mayor loses battle over universal school meals program

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(The Center Square) - Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson was handed a major defeat Wednesday when a City Council Committee delayed her plan to provide universal taxpayer-funded school breakfast and lunch for public school students.

Instead, the plan, approved 6-3 by a special City Council committee after a more than four-hour debate, delays the breakfast and lunch program from September 2026 to September 2027.

The year-long delay will allow for taxpayer funding to be shifted to a voucher program aimed at providing meals for primarily Black and minority school students during holiday breaks and in the summer, when schools are not in session and low-income families lose access to the meals they provide.

The voucher program, which would give gift cards to parents of school children, shows the growing power of City Council President Joy Hollingsworth, who has been able to stop or alter several of the new mayor’s initiatives in Wilson's seven months in office.

Hollingsworth introduced her amendment to the Wilson plan earlier this month and succeeded in pushing the change through, even as hundreds of members of the public called for sticking with Wilson's original plan during council meetings.

Wilson issued a statement after the vote, emphasizing that the taxpayer-funded breakfast and lunch program would still be implemented.

“While I am disappointed with the decision to delay universal meals for a full school year, I respect the Council’s process and know we share a commitment to addressing food insecurity,” she said. “I am proud that the amendment passed by Council commits the City to universal school meals in 2027." 

She said families will save roughly $1,200 a year in a "path to ending the stigma around food insecurity in our schools".

Wilson’s taxpayer-funded school meals proposal is part of the larger $1.3 billion Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy approved by the voters last November, before Wilson was elected mayor. 

The program also offers funding for preschool programs for children in Seattle and other educational initiatives as well as the meals in exchange for higher property taxes of $0.72 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

Universal taxpayer-funded school meals were not part of the original FEPP levy, but Wilson announced in late April that the program would pay for it, part of her plan to make Seattle more affordable for families. 

Wilson’s plan was projected to cost $3 million per year over the six-year levy. It would expand taxpayer-funded breakfasts and lunches to all 104 public schools in Seattle, up from about the current 50%. 

But Hollingsworth and Councilwoman Dionne Foster amended the plan by diverting $3 million, the first year’s universal breakfast and lunch funding, to meet what they said was food security in minority areas of Seattle. 

Hollingsworth, speaking at a City Council committee meeting on July 8, said her amendment was a matter of racial justice for Southeast Seattle, where food insecurity is highest in the city.

Hollingsworth said that food insecurity was contributing to the fact that around 51% of Black children are not reading at their grade level. 

She said other issues, such as the fact that half the gun violence murder victims in Seattle are Black, in a city with a Black population of only 4%, all stem from food insecurity.

On Wednesday, Hollingsworth said her plan is about ensuring that resources reach the children and families with the greatest need while also building a strong, sustainable foundation for a citywide universal school meals program. 

“This is a both/and approach that we believe closes the food equity gap in Seattle," she said. “Our proposal simply postpones the tentative universal meal launch to the 2027–28 school year, which is still one year ahead of the state’s universal meals program.”

Councilman Rob Saka was one of the council members who broke rank with Hollingsworth and supported Wilson’s original plans for the taxpayer-funded universal meals in schools starting this September. 

Saka, who grew up in a low-income family in Minnesota, said he never went to the dentist as a child and only saw a doctor a few times.

Saka said he went hungry because he was embarrassed for the other kids to see he was only paying 75 cents for a subsidized lunch instead of the full cost of a meal. 

Saka said immigrant families in Seattle are entitled to school lunch aid, but won’t fill out the form because of concern of federal immigration enforcement action.

He said the only equitable solution is to provide taxpayer-funded meals to all students.

“We know today, colleagues, that there are families that qualify for free and reduced lunch that are not being served,” he said.

Also voting against the Hollingsworth amendment were Alexis Mercedes Rincik and Eddie Lin.

Ultimately, the full levy plan was approved by an 8-to-1 margin Wednesday, with Councilman Saka dissenting.

The full levy goes to the City Council on July 28.

But even with the plan going forward, there is still a question of whether there will be funds for the taxpayer-supported meals for all six years.

Hollingsworth said funding for the meals is also dependent, beginning in 2029, on funds from the state’s millionaire's tax, which was approved by the state legislature earlier this year.

But voters will be deciding in November whether to repeal the tax, and a legal challenge on the constitutionality of the measure is expected to come before the state Supreme Court next session.