A free school lunch program instituted as a pandemic provision expired at the end of 2022 – with big impacts for local school districts, and families as school lunch debt mounts.
The program eliminated various kinds of problems for American families: Parents wondering how they were going to pay for school lunches, students have access to meals during the school day, and districts trying to figure out where they would make up the shortfall on unpaid meal costs.
Though the original plan was passed under a Republican president, the party seems to have changed their minds. In GOP’s 2025 proposed budget plan, “Fiscal Sanity to Save America,” signed by 170 House Republicans, the plan calls for “reforms to school lunch subsidies to ensure that they go to needy families by eliminating the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the School Lunch Program.” The proposed elimination cites that “school lunch and breakfast programs are subject to widespread fraud and abuse.”
The CEP allows schools and districts in underserved communities to provide no-cost meals to every student, regardless of income.
For context, millions of students were already eligible for free or reduced-cost meals prior to the Keep Kids Fed Act of 2020. But millions of others were paying at least a nominal fee to eat lunch. That led to a lot of paperwork and labor hours trying to account for lunch money and inventory.
Some states have a larger proportion of food-insecure students. Texas, for example has the the highest proportion with more than 1.6 million youth. Arkansas has the largest percentage of food insecure students at around 23%. The Dakotas see some of the lowest meal debt rates.
The school lunch debt per student is around $180 annually. Debt per district ranges from approximately $1.7 million to $15 million.
Nearly all school districts across the country reported an increase in unpaid meal charges after federal funding ended.
Part of the problem, according to school officials, is complications with applications for free meal status. Economists also cite inflation, housing market pressures, and low wages as contributing factors to families’ financial difficulties in paying for school lunches.
Every district handles these issues differently. Without federal standardization, school districts are faced with a lot of paperwork and limited resources to process it.
In fact, the administrative process eats up some of the funding that districts get from meal payment revenues.
The School Nutrition Association issued a report this year, outlining challenges including finding supply of foods that meet federal school nutrition standards, increased costs, and district staff shortages.
Meanwhile, some states aren’t waiting around for the federal government to act. California and Maine have both made universal free student meals permanent themselves. Schools can offer free meals to all students if a percentage of their total enrollment is under certain income thresholds.
