More students are getting free- and reduced-price meals in school, according to a recently released report. It’s a rise driven, in large part, by states passing universal school meal laws.
New York is the latest state to do so, joining nine others when its universal meal program was signed into law as part of the state’s budget in May. Several other state legislatures, such as those in Oregon and Nevada, considered bills this year to make school meals free for all students, but those measures did not pass.
But even as participation in federally subsidized school meal programs increased, it remains below where it was before the pandemic, said Clarissa Hayes, the deputy director of child nutrition programs and policy at the Food Research and Action Center. FRAC, an advocacy and research nonprofit, produced the report that analyzes national school meal participation trends.
Lower participation levels do not necessarily mean that families are now better off than they were before the pandemic, Hayes said.
“Any drop in participation is bad because we know how critical school breakfast and school lunch are for the health and education outcomes of all children,” Hayes said. “We know from data that food insecurity hasn’t really gotten better in most states. We know that families are still struggling. The socioeconomic environment has not improved, but we know that we are not back to pre-pandemic participation in school meals.”
Proponents of universal free school meals say that these policies reduce administrative burdens on school nutrition departments, zero out student school meal debt, and lessen the stigma around school meals that can lead students and families to opt out of a benefit that improves students’ learning and health.
Critics say that basically there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Such programs can become costly, they say, and they subsidize many families who are more than able to pay for meals—potentially at the cost of other important initiatives or programs.
Federal aid for school meals and nutrition programs are facing some headwinds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled $660 million in funding for schools when it cut a program this spring that helped schools buy food from local farms. President Trump’s proposed budget calls for keeping funding for the National School Lunch Program at roughly the same level. However, Congress is considering proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as it hammers out the federal budget bill. That could affect how many schools can participate in the community eligibility program—a separate initiative that lowers barriers to offering kids free meals.
Why more kids are eating federally subsidized meals
Data from the 2023-24 school year shows that 12.2 million children received free or reduced-price breakfast, and 21.1 million children received free or reduced-price lunch, according to the FRAC report. Those numbers represent, respectively, 8% and 6.8% increases from the 2022-23 school year.
But the number of students eating free and reduced-price meals is still lower than it was before the pandemic. As schools closed in 2020, the federal government waived several restrictions for participating in its school meal programs, including those on income eligibility. Schools could offer free meals to all students regardless of how much income their families earned and without requiring them to apply for the program.
But those waivers expired in 2022. Since then, schools have struggled to get many eligible families to sign up for free school meals. Participation dropped below pre-pandemic levels and school meal debt rose.
Following the expiration of those federal waivers, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Vermont passed laws that now allow all kids regardless of income to eat school meals for free in their states.
That has been a major factor driving participation rates back up again, said Hayes. The other factor is the growing number of schools and districts participating in the federal community eligibility program, or CEP.
The CEP allows schools that serve large numbers of students who are living in poverty to give free school meals to all students without requiring individual families to submit additional income verification. Instead, schools can use other federal assistance programs like SNAP to calculate if they have enough students living in poverty to meet the threshold to give all students free meals. This helps districts lower administrative costs and makes it easier for families to participate. Schools still have to pick up the additional costs, but there is a lot less paperwork.
Will universal meal programs face headwinds?
Finally, the increase in participation in federal school meal programs may be a sign that school nutrition departments are finally finding their footing after pandemic-related disruptions, said Hayes. The pandemic created a lot of turmoil for school nutrition departments.
“We’re seeing a leveling out of that environment,” she said. “School nutrition directors have been able to increase their staffing again. Some of the supply chain issues that were facing them are alleviated. We are seeing things return back to normal a little bit.”
That has allowed school nutrition departments to focus again on strategies that improve participation in federal meal programs, such as serving breakfast in classrooms, the FRAC report said.
While the number of states offering universal free school meals is slowly expanding, the policy idea has hit some road bumps. For example, in Colorado, a law passed through a ballot measure in 2022 did not end up allocating nearly enough funding for the program. There was a $56 million shortfall this year, in part because of inflation and rising food costs and because more students have participated than originally estimated, according to Denver7, an ABC affiliate station.
Lawmakers this session passed a bill that will add two more measures to the upcoming November 2025 ballot that would help fill that funding gap.
Despite setbacks, Hayes believes that the movement to make school meals free for all students will come from the states.
“Where we’re really seeing the most opportunity [to expand access to free school meals] is with more uptake of community eligibility and as more states move towards adopting healthy school-meals-for-all policies,” Hayes said. “Ideally, the best option here would be for the federal government to make [school meals] universal and allow all states to do this. But we are just seeing so much progress and so much excitement behind this on the state level.”