Proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid during the budget reconciliation could have severe ripple effects for school nutrition operations in districts and states nationwide — particularly when it comes to expanding universal school meal policies, advocates warn.
In a narrow 215-214 vote on May 22, the Republican-led House passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which now sits with the Senate. Republicans are proposing to scale down funding for the two programs for low-income Americans as a cost-savings measure while also aiming to prioritize tax cuts.
The bill would cut $267 billion in federal funding to SNAP by 2034, according to a preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Additionally, CBO estimates there would be $698 billion less in federal subsidies to Medicaid.
Should those significant cuts to these federal programs move forward, millions of children and their families could lose access to SNAP benefits and Medicaid coverage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
That reduction in benefits would have “very significant downstream impacts on school meal programs,” said Alexis Bylander, interim child nutrition programs and policy director at the Food Research & Action Center.
For school districts, this means fewer children would be enrolled in SNAP and Medicaid — programs for which student and family participation are used as a metric for automatically opting students into free and reduced-price school meals.
This process, known as direct certification, helps high-poverty schools become eligible for participation in the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal program allowing access to free school meals for all students at the school or district level. The more students are identified for free or reduced-price meals, the higher federal reimbursement rate CEP schools will receive to cover food costs.
When students are no longer automatically certified to receive free school meals, Bylander said, there’s an additional burden put on families, because they will need to go through an application process instead.
“It creates additional paperwork for schools, and we just know from the past that students do fall through the cracks with that system, and then students who live in food-insecure homes and are in need of free meals lose access to them,” Bylander said.
With eight states currently implementing universal school meal policies, the proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would also increase the costs of running those fairly newer statewide programs, Bylander said. New York recently became the ninth state to enact a universal school meal program that will go into effect this fall.
Such cuts would hinder “the momentum and progress” to serve free meals to all students, said Clarissa Hayes, deputy director of child nutrition programs and policy at FRAC.
Bylander added that the cuts put funding for these statewide universal meal programs at risk. Still, it remains unclear exactly how much federal dollars going to states and districts will be impacted until the reconciliation bill is ironed out in the Senate.
The potential changes to Medicaid and SNAP come as schools have seen a booming participation rate in CEP nationwide. As of the 2023-24 school year, half of all National School Lunch Program schools use CEP to serve free meals to all of their students.
Earlier this year, House Republicans floated a plan during the reconciliation process to raise CEP eligibility requirements for schools and districts, but that measure was excluded in the final House proposal, according to FRAC.
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