{"id":21351,"date":"2025-11-01T01:12:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T01:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/21351\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T01:12:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T01:12:06","slug":"snap-funding-limbo-challenges-pa-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/21351\/","title":{"rendered":"SNAP funding limbo challenges PA schools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                    \u2018Uncertainty\u2019 hangs over Upper Darby\u2019s free lunch program<\/p>\n<p>Pennsylvania\u2019s budget is four months late. The stalemate in Harrisburg has created <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/william-penn-school-district-funding-pennsylvania-budget\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a dual crisis for chronically underfunded school districts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>About 12,500 kids are enrolled in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upperdarbysd.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Upper Darby School District<\/a> in Delaware County.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N12clf0SJp0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">video message<\/a> to families, Superintendent Dan McGarry said Tuesday that the district is at a crossroads. It costs $25 million a month to operate its schools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there is not a budget passed soon, we are going to have to go out and borrow money and pay interest on that money \u2014 in a school community that already cannot afford to have even more funding passed on to our local taxpayers,\u201d McGarry said.<\/p>\n<p>Upper Darby <a href=\"https:\/\/upperdarbysd.schooldish.com\/en\/mealprices\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">operates a free breakfast and lunch program<\/a> for all enrolled students, regardless of economic background.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is uncertainty about how that program will continue to function in the near future without a federal budget,\u201d McGarry said. \u201cAt this point in time, we have received information that we are OK through the month of October. We do not yet know what will happen as we move forward. But I want to let you know that we\u2019re going to continue to do our best to make sure that we are providing breakfast and lunch to all of the students here in the Upper Darby School District.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy Elgart, the district\u2019s director of federal programs, grants and food service, sent a notice to families Friday afternoon about its Community Eligibility Provision program, the free breakfast and lunch service, which is funded in partnership with the federal and state government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt this time, the state has no budget passed, and the funds that allow for that reimbursement are in question,\u201d Elgart said. \u201cThe district is committed to doing everything in its power to continue to serve all of our students two meals a day. At this time, we have sufficient district food service funds to continue to feed our students breakfast and lunch through December, 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Uncertainty\u2019 hangs over Upper Darby\u2019s free lunch program Pennsylvania\u2019s budget is four months late. The stalemate in Harrisburg&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[223,69,71,70,1384,5767],"class_list":{"0":"post-21351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-pennsylvania-education","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-philly-suburbs","13":"tag-snap-benefits"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}