By Steve Klamkin WPRO News
Saying Rhode Island needs to do more to ensure students don’t go without eating, Gov. Gina Raimondo is proposing to maximize federal funds to provide all eligible students have access to free or reduced price meals at school, in what she calls a “No Student Hungry” initiative.
“Right now, we’re leaving millions and millions of federal dollars on the table,” Raimondo told several hundred people at the annual Rhode Island Ministers Alliance Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship Breakfast in Cranston.
“Doctor King often said, what good does a man to have freedom if he doesn’t have money in his pocket to buy a burger at the lunch counter,” Raimondo told reporters at the event, pointing out that it was at the same ministers’ breakfast two years ago that she announced her free tuition program at the Community College of Rhode Island.
“The money’s there, the kids need and deserve it, they’ll do better in school, and so we just have to commit ourselves to doing it. No kid should be at school in the state of Rhode Island hungry. We have the money to take care of it, let’s do it.”
She did not know how many youngsters might benefit from the program, but said she included nearly $300,000 in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal she unveiled last week to support the program. In additional to helping feed K-12 students, she also proposed enabling low-income college students to access SNAP, or food stamp benefits.
