Frustrated districts, ‘blindsided’ lawmakers: Inside the ending of an Oklahoma school supper program

OKLAHOMA CITY — For eight years, Hartshorne Public Schools has designed its bus schedules, personnel contracts, lunch times and school hours around serving a late-afternoon supper to students. 

The southeast Oklahoma district stretched its school day to seven hours instead of the typical six, adding academic enrichment and homework help time after 2 p.m. to qualify for a federal program that pays for the third meal, Superintendent Jason Lindley said. 

Two weeks into Hartshorne’s school year, the Oklahoma State Department of Education shocked districts statewide when it announced it would discontinue the extended-day third meal option on Oct. 1, when the next federal fiscal year begins. The agency cited a lack of compliance with federal rules as the reason the program, known as Expanded Learning Time, must come to an end.

The timing of the Aug. 18 announcement — after the start of school and only weeks before the program’s cancellation — has prompted frustration from district leaders, state lawmakers and anti-hunger advocates. State records show 132 school sites, all in rural areas, were approved for the Expanded Learning Time option for the 2025-26 year.

Hundreds of pages of emails and documents Oklahoma Voice obtained through an open records request with the Education Department laid bare the confusion and disappointment directed at the state agency. The correspondence also details the agency’s ongoing dispute and legal concerns with a nonprofit involved in the supper initiative.

Multiple district leaders, including Lindley, emailed the head of the agency with complaints about the program’s cancellation, records show.

“To lose the program, especially in an email at the end of August, you basically have less than 45 days to end your program,” Lindley told Oklahoma Voice. “That’s a very short time frame in education. With schedules written, with contracts signed, with everything set up for the rest of the school year to have a third meal, we’re really going to have to work to find some solutions to this new problem.”

Hunger Free Oklahoma, which advocates for food access, publicly voiced its disappointment in the decision, which it said comes at a time when Oklahoma families are facing growing pressure on their grocery budgets and when other food assistance programs are experiencing cuts. 

Administrative complexity is not a good reason to end the program, the organization wrote in a public statement.

State Superintendent Lindel Fields encouraged districts to continue feeding students by switching to a similar federal program that provides snacks during after-school activities. 

He said his administration decided to discontinue the Expanded Learning Time option at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendation. USDA regulates school meal programs.

The question now shouldn’t be how to preserve the extended-day meal option, Education Department spokesperson Tara Thompson said.

“It should be how we work together to lawfully and sustainably meet the needs of the children and communities in Oklahoma,” she said. “That is why our work cannot end with identifying a compliance problem.”

Thirteen districts have begun the application process to transition from Expanded Learning Time to the after-school snack program, Thompson said. Meanwhile, school breakfasts and lunches remain unaffected.

The agency said it has no documents reflecting the total amount of federal funds the program encompassed.

Why is Oklahoma’s school supper program being canceled?

In an Aug. 20 video call with district leaders, which Oklahoma Voice has viewed, an Education Department official overseeing the program said state and federal authorities had discovered multiple cases of noncompliance with Expanded Learning Time rules.

“There was no identifiable academic or enrichment activity beyond the meal in many of those cases,” Kassi Reddell, the state director for the Child and Adult Care Food Program, said during the call. “If we were to remove that meal, effectively it would mean there was no program remaining.”

State officials had been warning since January that the program was in question and have been encouraging new applicants to pursue after-school snack funding instead, Reddell said.

That’s “just completely untrue,” Haworth Public Schools Superintendent Jerrod Lundry said during the call.

The state agency sent emails as recently as July 30 recommending districts sign up for the Expanded Learning Time option, he said. Lundry said there was no advance warning the program would be abruptly cut off.

Haworth, a district of 400 students in the far southeast corner of the state, doesn’t have the funds to set up an after-school program in the middle of the academic year, he said. Even if it did, that option likely would feed fewer students.

“We are a large geographical district,” Lundry told Oklahoma Voice. “We would not be able to run two different sets of buses. So even if we did run an after-school program, it would be for kids who have working parents who could come pick them up, and those are not necessarily the kids who need that third meal.”

Oklahoma lawmakers object to third meal discontinuation

The sudden cancellation has drawn bipartisan opposition from the state Legislature. Fifty Oklahoma lawmakers from both parties and chambers co-signed a scathing letter penned by Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant.

Bullard urged the state agency to suspend the changes until after the current school year. He questioned whether the Education Department had the authority to discontinue the program in the first place. 

“This policy appears to solve no demonstrated problem while creating a very real one,” Bullard wrote. “Schools that planned responsibly are being forced to change course after the school year has begun. Employees have already been hired. Food has already been purchased. Taxpayer dollars have already been committed. And at the end of all of it, children who were being fed may now go without a meal.”

He did not return a request for further comment.

The head of the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Adam Pugh, said he and other lawmakers were “blindsided” by the agency’s announcement.

Pugh, R-Edmond, said he directed a member of Senate staff to send an email to Fields to object to the lack of forewarning and consultation of lawmakers. 

The message, which the open records request revealed, warned the state Senate has developed a “​​growing frustration with (the Education Department) acting outside the scope of their authority.”

In an interview with Oklahoma Voice, Pugh said those frustrations started bubbling with the agency’s unexpected interpretation of a new law that doubled elementary recess time. 

Lawmakers and district leaders were caught off guard when the Education Department announced over the summer that it would no longer permit schools to count recess minutes toward instructional hours, causing a logistical headache with limited time to react, he said. 

Pugh said he believes the agency “acted rashly” with its latest decision. Although there is merit to scrutinizing the third meal program, he said the federal government did not require the state to cancel it immediately.

“Delayed implementation, it’s really that simple,” Pugh said. “Let’s give schools runways to implement these big things as opposed to pulling the rug from underneath them when school has already started.”

Feed the Kids denies fraud allegations in federal nutrition program

As concerns over the extended-day meals grew, a dispute has been brewing for several months between Fields’ administration and a nonprofit that many districts hired to help administer the program.

The conflict finally spilled into public view in May when Fields publicly called for an investigation into Feed the Kids, which oversaw Expanded Learning Time and after-school snack programs at more than 50 school sites. 

In exchange for a 15% fee, the nonprofit helped schools enroll more quickly in the programs and handle the administrative burden. 

The Education Department accused the organization of fraudulent practices, overinflating federal reimbursement claims and failing to address compliance issues in schools, according to a letter of “serious deficiency” sent in January.

The agency demanded nearly $345,000 in repayment and attempted to suspend the nonprofit from participating in federal child nutrition programs. Without recouping the funds and addressing noncompliance, the “USDA may take adverse action against (the state Education Department),” according to an internal state agency memo, which Oklahoma Voice obtained in its records request.

Feed the Kids executive director Dana Parker said she was “appalled” at the state’s accusations. 

“There was never, ever a meal served or a meal claimed that wasn’t served that we know of,” Parker told Oklahoma Voice.

A review officer from the Attorney General’s Office overturned the suspension in February, finding the Education Department uncovered concerning compliance issues with Feed the Kids but didn’t prove all its claims of fraud, according to records Oklahoma Voice reviewed.

The Oklahoma State Board of Education, though, voted in July to deny Feed the Kids’ application to continue working with districts’ child nutrition programs.

A legal battle over the $345,000 repayment is still ongoing.

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office is still reviewing the matter, a spokesperson said.

The USDA Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are going to investigate the organization, according to a June 11 email that Fields wrote to Gov. Kevin Stitt. 

The USDA’s investigative office didn’t return a request for comment, and the Oklahoma City-based U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. 

Parker and Feed the Kids co-founder David Lassiter said they’re unaware of any ongoing investigations.

Although Parker and Lassiter said they believe the Expanded Learning Time shutdown is a direct result of the dispute with their nonprofit, Education Department general counsel Jacki Phelps said the decision “was independent of any administrative action concerning Feed the Kids.”