The existence of poverty is a choice, not a fact of nature. We could end it any time we choose. In the darkest hour of the pandemic, we proved it:

In 2020, when schools across the country closed to slow the spread of Covid-19, federal lawmakers did something unprecedented: They decided to pay for free lunch for every public school student in America, every day, no questions asked.

The effect of the free meals was dramatic. Parents, many of them facing layoffs, illness, and grief, no longer had to worry about the cost of lunch for their kids… Instead, they could pick up a free, nutritious meal at their children’s school, or in some cases even have it delivered by school bus. As a result, food insecurity in at-risk households with children declined by about 7 percentage points between the beginning of the pandemic and summer 2021.

It’s a disgrace that it took a crisis of this magnitude to push Congress into acting. Even so, it was a valuable proof of concept. But COVID-19 is receding from people’s minds, and the clouds have rolled back in. The pandemic supports are gone, and America is returning to school lunch debt as a policy:

In a November 2022 survey by the School Nutrition Association, 96.3 percent of districts reported that the end of federal waivers have led to an increase in unpaid debt. At East Hampton Public Schools in central Connecticut, for example, debt is going up by $500 every week. At one district, the Washington Post reported, debt for the school year has already reached $1.7 million.

It’s obscene that there’s such a thing as school lunch debt. Only a mind so warped by capitalism that it’s lost all its morals could conceive of something so sick and cruel. The occasional feel-good stories about donors paying off lunch debt don’t disguise the fact that it shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Thankfully, the more sensible parts of America recognize this. Not every place has given up the pandemic-era gains. A host of blue states and cities, including my hometown of New York City, offer universal free meals to all students in public schools, and more are working toward this goal.

The best part of NYC’s free school meals is that they’re available to everyone, no exceptions. There are no hoops to jump through, no cumbersome bureaucracy, no intimidating eligibility checks. If kids are hungry, they can eat. That’s the way it should be. I have a son in public school, and while my family isn’t in distress, it’s reassuring to know they have this service if we ever need it.

Free school meals come from the logical recognition that, for schools to succeed in their mission, it’s not enough to have chalkboards and textbooks. They have to have all the things that make it possible to learn, not just a narrow-minded focus on academics. When students face poverty or homelessness or hunger, school can and should be a haven of stability for them. That’s both wise and compassionate.

For the same reason, it’s a great idea to have schools with washers and dryers. There should be more of this:

More than a decade ago, Principal Joseph Mattina noticed students at P.S. 23 Carter G. Woodson were consistently arriving at the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, elementary school without their uniforms.

Initially, Mattina grew frustrated with the students, asking why they couldn’t wear the clothes that had been supplied by the school.

“One day, one of the kids turned around and said to me, ‘Well, it’s dirty, and my mom can’t wash it,'” he said. “That really resonated with me, because it was something that I had never thought of before. It was an obstacle that I didn’t realize existed.”

This is a pain of poverty that privileged people never have to think about. Families who are homeless, living out of a car or in a shelter, don’t have access to laundry facilities. Even if there’s a laundromat nearby, they may not be able to afford to wash their clothes regularly. When kids’ clothes are dirty or smell bad, they get bullied or shunned by their peers and skip school out of shame.

Not only is this a problem, it’s a bigger problem than you might guess. Chronic absenteeism is shockingly common – as high as 36% of all public school students in NYC, and even higher in some other places. Schools that install laundry machines have found that rates of absenteeism go down dramatically:

At Gibson Elementary in St. Louis, after learning that many children were missing school due to a lack of clean clothing, the principal reached out to Whirlpool to ask if they would donate a washer/dryer. In turn, Whirlpool performed a study of 600 public school teachers around the country to see if they were facing similar issues. The study revealed that one in five students did not have access to clean clothing. As a result, Whirlpool decided to donate a washer/dryer not only to this school, but also to 11 other schools that were in need. After one year, 93% of students who utilized the washer/dryers reported an improvement in attendance. Similarly, in 2017, a Kansas City public school reported that only 46% of students were meeting the requirement to attend school 90% of the time. After installing a washing machine, this figure shot up to 84%.

It’s the same theory as hospitals helping people find housing. People with chronic conditions like diabetes or HIV can’t possibly manage them if they’re sleeping on the streets, with no refrigerator or safe place to store medicine. And it’s not just better for those people – it’s actually cheaper for hospitals to help people find housing, rather than repeatedly patching them up every time they land in the ER with a crisis.

However, making sure that kids have clean clothes is about more than just improving attendance numbers or balance sheets. The deeper purpose is restoring a sense of dignity to students and their families. It helps them feel that they deserve to be there, that they’re not lesser human beings. At that P.S. 23 school in Brooklyn, they’ve seen the effect firsthand:

Now, families can come during the school day to wash their students’ clothes, or drop off laundry for the school to clean. Mattina said he frequently throws loads of laundry into the washer in the morning. The school’s speech therapist also shares an office with the machines and often moves clothes over to the dryer, he added.

… “Often when we tell parents that we have this service for them, they break down and cry,” he said. “Because of the unspeakable things that they’ve gone through and the trauma that they’ve experienced. This is just one less thing that they have to worry about.”

This is the hallmark of a decent society. It’s one way to show we’re serious about breaking the cycle of poverty, treating people as equals in fact and not just in rhetoric.

But more has to be done. Even among the schools that have laundry machines, too many rely on donations to keep them running. This should be a permanent program, not dependent on volunteer goodwill. Like free school meals, it’s an investment in the future, and it will more than pay for itself in the long run.