My 9 year old gets free breakfast and lunch every school day. No questions asked.

That fact may come as a surprise to Nevadans who recently watched mean old Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo veto a bill that would have funded free lunch for all students. Democrats are apparently so intent on making the governor look bad that they’re emphasizing the veto without providing some caveats that are vital to parents and caregivers.

Yes, Lombardo vetoed a Democratic-backed bill last session that would have funded free school meals for the 2024-25 school year. But it’s also true that the majority of students in the state are already guaranteed access to free breakfast and lunch — a fact that’s conveniently omitted.

Clark County School District, which enrolls 63 percent of Nevada’s public K-12 students, participates in the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows schools and districts with high poverty levels to serve free breakfast and lunch to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. CEP uses data from other income-based programs, such as the Additional nutritional support Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — to determine eligibility for a district or school.

CCSD can be hard to love, but on this particular issue it has delivered. And so have other districts in the Silver State. Every school within the Churchill, Clark, Esmeralda, Humboldt, Lyon, Mineral, Nye and Pershing County school districts are CEP designatedaccording to the Nevada Department of Agriculture. More than two dozen charter schools are, too.

CEP makes sure that no one slips through the cracks. It doesn’t deny kids free food because their parents didn’t fill out the application. It helps families whose incomes can fluctuate and sometimes get them in trouble, but other weeks they don’t. It helps families whose incomes are too high to qualify for free or reduced lunch but still feel like their wallets are empty. And it helps parents, like me, who sometimes are too busy or stressed to spread SunButter on a loaf of bread and throw it in a Ziplock.

(SunButter, if you’re not familiar with it, is the best peanut butter alternative in nut-free schools. But I digress.)

Democrats can — and probably should — criticize the governor for vetoing their free lunch bill. But not including important information about the status quo for most children in the state is irresponsible. When the Nevada Assembly Democratic Caucus promoted A Daily Beast opinion piece They blasted Lombardo for the veto, saying the Southern Nevada candidate who authored the bill was running “to get this bill passed so kids across the valley can get what he didn’t get.”

Maybe he was referring to children from private schools?

The message of “hey, we’re doing a lot of good things here, but we want to do better” isn’t complicated. Democrats like to remind us, for example, that Nevada currently protects abortion rights through a statute, but wants to better protect those rights through a state constitutional amendment.

Lombardo has rightly called the Democrats “misinformation.” I’ve seen countless social media posts from parents asking how to get free lunches at school, and the comment sections are filled with confusion and people falsely telling people who need food assistance that it’s not available because of Lombardo.

Since Governor Lombveto publicly called them out, Democrats have switched to “EVEN ONE CHILD NOT HAVING A MEAL IS BAD, BRUH” and “80% covered still means 20% not covered.” Both are true. But that’s not the weeks-long campaign we’ve seen on this issue.

There is much to criticize the governor about — literal life-and-death issues. Even on the narrow issue of free school meals, Lombardo’s argument that “anyone who needs it can get it” ignores the reality that some parents will forget, or be too proud, or too afraid to fill out an application. It is well known that many people who qualify for safety net programs don’t apply.

Even worse, Lombardo has suggested his veto was justified because 73% of free lunch food is wasted, a figure that has been taken out of context. The Nevada Independent Facts checked made that claim months ago and the researchers themselves told him that the 73% figure “should not be taken out of context to generalize these findings to schools everywhere.”

Furthermore, the figure specifically looked at vegetables.

Kids don’t eat vegetables. As a parent of three young children, I could have told you that. I can say with certainty that at least 73% of the vegetables I pack for my kids are thrown away, but I still pack them because 25% is better than 0% and I have no choice but to try to feed my kids just because they can be picky gnomes about carrots.

That same article, by the way, found that 19% of entrees, 47% of fruit, and 25% of milk were thrown away. I guess the Dems aren’t the only ones who like to leave out the inconvenient stuff.

It’s absurd that of his dozens of vetoes, this one has become the lynchpin for Democrats. Kids do better in school when they’re not hungry, yes, but they also do better when they’re not forced to move every year because of rising rents. Kids do better when their parents can support themselves with one full-time job and have the time and energy to be active and involved at home. Kids do better when they have access to extracurricular activities, good teachers, and appropriate class sizes.

If we’re going to talk about school breakfasts and lunches, we can certainly talk about their nutritional value and quality. But perhaps the real question to ask is: Why does so much of Nevada so easily meet the federal standards for community-wide free and reduced lunch? Why are so many households struggling?

The answer to that question, of course, is complicated and leaves no room for cute slogans like “the governor stole our lunch money.” Maybe Nevada will get it someday.