Free school meals debated as a win for families or wrong for North Dakota’s constitution

North Dakota voters will decide this fall whether to approve free school meals for K-12 students in a ballot measure proponents see as a way to ease costs for families while opponents view it as a wrong addition to the state constitution.

Measure 2 would provide free breakfast and lunch for North Dakota’s roughly 125,000 K-12 students, costing as much as $134 million every two years. Supporter Zac Ista, the Democratic House minority leader from Grand Forks, and opponent Bob Harms, a former state GOP chair and legal adviser to two past governors, debated the measure on the Plain Talk Podcast hosted by Rob Port and Chad Oban. 

Ista said the measure will ensure every student receives a nutritious breakfast and lunch and take as much as $1,000 per student off of families per school year. The economy is top of mind for voters, and the state government has few levers it can pull to quickly respond, “and here’s one that we can pull,” he said.

The measure also weds the state constitution’s requirement of a uniform system of free public education with a state law mandating no student be turned away from lunch because he or she can’t pay, he added.

“We know if our kids are well fed, they’re going to learn better and they’re going to be able to meet their God-given abilities in the classroom,” Ista said. 

Harms criticized the measure as a constitutional amendment, requiring a vote for potential future changes, and the wrong policy at a time when Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong is calling for budget cuts as high as 10% for some agencies.

The measure is “wasteful spending” in applying to all schoolchildren regardless of their family’s income, Harms said. The state already is spending $40 million a year to feed needy kids, nearly all of that in federal money, he said.

The measure also mandates the meals be covered by earnings of the state’s $15 billion oil tax savings fund if the Legislature can’t find the money in addition to required federal reimbursement. Harms said that backstop impedes on the purpose of the Legacy Fund to ensure the state’s financial future when oil tax revenue dries up.

“If we want to meet that value that Zac’s talking about, that we should have kids study in school and not go hungry, we’re doing that today, and we should modify that policy, adjust that policy in the Legislature, not mandate it in the constitution,” Harms said.

Voters have shown a willingness to make technical changes to the state constitution as recently as 2024 on a Legacy Fund measure, Ista said. Voters also have seen the Legislature defeat past bills to pass free school meals in state law, leading many to feel fed up, he said. 

“The Legislature has shown this is not a top priority for it, and the constitution provides a protection for that,” Ista said.

The Legislature also would have flexibility on its own terms for how to fund the meals under the measure, he said. The funding amount is a tiny fraction of the state’s overall $20 billion two-year budget, he added.

North Dakota’s constitution represents fundamental principles that manage state government, not day-to-day policies to adjust from time to time, Harms said.

Complexity around potentially losing federal funds is another reason the measure shouldn’t go into the constitution, he added. The measure does require school districts to “maximize federal reimbursement” for meals.

60% threshold for changing North Dakota’s constitution debated as a protection or a barrier

Oban, one of the moderators, wondered why school meals are treated differently than textbooks, classroom devices and transportation. Harms said that’s a question for the Legislature to address. Meals follow the same principle as those other services schools already provide, Ista said.

“Why not shoes and clothes as well? What’s the difference?” Harms responded.

Oban is executive director for North Dakota United, a public employees and teachers union that has given at least $210,000 to Together for School Meals, the group that brought Measure 2.

The measure group has raised more than $1.4 million in monetary donations, including $760,000 from the Fairness Project, a D.C.-based organization that has supported ballot measures in other states on topics such as reproductive rights and redistricting. The group also has spent more than $1.1 million to oppose Measure 1, which would require at least 60% voter support to amend the constitution.

Harms wondered why the Fairness Project is “trying to manipulate the people of North Dakota,” saying voters have been “duped” before by out-of-state groups on past constitutional amendments. Ista said voters vote for what they want, and called Measure 2 a genuine grassroots issue for North Dakotans, not just national donors.

Measure 2 needs a simple majority to pass. 

Reach North Dakota Monitor reporter Jack Dura at [email protected].