KIT Funds Improve School Meal Access and Quality

Supporting the strong foundation established by School Meals for All, California’s Kitchen Infrastructure and Training (KIT) program continues to increase student access to and the quality of school meals, especially as many families struggle with affording groceries. Before School Meals for All, 44% of California’s food insecure families did not qualify for federal school meal assistance because income limits are set nationally and do not take into account California’s high cost of living. California's investment in KIT has helped schools improve school kitchen infrastructure and staff training, rising to the challenge of serving students more high-quality meals with fresh, locally-sourced ingredients.

A survey of 245 school districts and charter schools conducted through collaboration by co-founders of the School Meals for All Coalition — the Office of Kat Taylor, the Center for Ecoliteracy, NextGen California, and the California Association of Food Banks — demonstrates the broad impact of KIT funds on schools, and the need for additional funding.

Key results include:

• Increased Meal Access + Quality: 90% of school districts report KIT increased student access to and/or quality of school meals [1]
• More Funds Needed: 77% of school districts need more KIT funds to improve access to quality school meals
• Current Funds Depleting: 86% of school districts have spent between 76-100% of their 2022 KIT funds [2]
• Workforce Enhanced: Additionally, many school nutrition leaders reported that KIT benefited their school nutrition workforce

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The 245 public school districts and charter schools that responded to the survey enroll 2.1 million students across 3,929 schools and served 362 million school meals last year, which amounts to 37% of all school meals served statewide. These school districts are from every region of the state and range from urban school districts with tens of thousands of students to suburban mid-size school districts to small rural school districts with fewer than 100 students.

[1] At the remaining 10% of school districts, many wrote in to say that they had projects underway that they anticipated would increase quality and/or access once complete. Others focused their investments on staff training and improving working conditions for the school nutrition workforce (e.g., by repairing broken equipment and improving the flow in cramped school kitchens). One charter school commented that the equipment they had purchased with KIT funds was lost in the LA fires.

[2] In CDE’s prior surveys with hundreds of school nutrition leaders, most of the pending expenditures centered around large-scale school kitchen remodels and included factors such as delays at the Department of State Architects, the need to schedule construction for the summer months, and coordination with school construction timelines.