SCHOOLS: Requires the inclusion of questions pertaining to food insecurity on a residency questionnaire administered to public school students (EN NO IMPACT See Note)
HB 218 requires the Louisiana Department of Education, in consultation with the Louisiana Department of Health, to add questions about food insecurity to the residency questionnaire already used for purposes of the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Children and Youth Assistance Act. Public schools must distribute the questionnaire to students in grades K-12 at enrollment, when a student changes address, and when school personnel or school-based health clinics reasonably suspect food insecurity. Schools that do not offer free lunch or participate in the federal Community Eligibility Provision must also provide the questionnaire annually to economically disadvantaged students.
If responses suggest a student is at risk of food insecurity, the school must give the parent, guardian, or eligible student information about available federal, state, community, and school resources, including public assistance applications, social services, food banks, food pantries, and school meal programs. The bill also requires LDH to compile the resource information and provide it to schools at no cost, keeps responses confidential with limited exceptions, bars use of responses for instruction, academic opportunities, or discipline, and limits civil liability for school boards and employees absent willful or wanton misconduct.
The bill creates a new statutory section, R.S. 17:2113, and makes it applicable to all public schools, including charter schools by adding an exception in the charter school exemption statute, R.S. 17:3996(B)(24). It expands the duties of public schools and the state education and health agencies by embedding food insecurity screening questions into an existing school questionnaire process and by requiring resource referrals when risk is identified. It also affects school confidentiality practices, school response protocols, and liability exposure, while not creating a direct mandate for schools to provide services beyond information and referral.
The bill appears to have been generally well received, as reflected by its strong House final passage vote of 87-8 and its eventual enactment as Act 628. The amendments made in committee suggest a favorable but cautious approach: lawmakers shifted the bill from a more direct screening requirement to use of an existing questionnaire, added state agency coordination, and included liability protections. Overall, the discussion reflected support for identifying students facing food insecurity while minimizing administrative burden on schools.
The main points of concern appear to have been implementation burden, privacy, and legal exposure. The committee amendments indicate that legislators were attentive to reducing the operational impact on schools by tying the questions to the McKinney-Vento residency questionnaire rather than creating a separate screening process, and by having LDH compile resource lists at no cost. The addition of confidentiality language and a liability limitation also suggests concern about how student responses would be handled and whether schools could face lawsuits arising from the new process. No recorded committee transcript is available, so the specific arguments of supporters and opponents are not documented in the provided materials.