Dive Brief:
- When free school meals are no longer available to all students, teachers report an increase in student hunger and behavior issues that impact the ability to focus on learning, according to a study published this month by the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
- The study analyzed teacher interviews conducted after the end of a nationwide, pandemic-era universal free school meal policy in June 2022. The findings come as school nutrition and anti-hunger advocates fear more students will lose access to universal school meal programs in 2026-27 due to Trump administration-led policy changes.
- One of those policy changes is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “public charge” final rule that puts noncitizens’ green card applications at risk if an applicant — including their U.S.-born children — uses federal public benefits, such as Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The DHS regulation went into effect Sept. 18.
Dive Insight:
Concerns are rising over the DHS rule’s potential impact on the Community Eligibility Provision, which is a federal program that helps high-poverty schools and districts provide free meals to all students without requiring individual families to apply.
CEP relies on student participation in benefits programs like SNAP and Medicaid to automatically identify those who are eligible for free school meals. Schools and districts can enroll in CEP if at least 25% of their students are certified as eligible for free meals.
In the final rule issued in July, DHS projected that the public charge regulation would save $13 billion in federal and state funds as a result of noncitizens disenrolling from public benefit programs.
Public comments published in the final rule expressed concern that the new regulation would cause immigrant families to disenroll from SNAP, which would limit children’s access to food and make it more difficult to participate in learning. DHS responded in its final rule that it’s possible families might disenroll their children in federal benefit programs “to avoid negative immigration consequences.”
But DHS said the rule “restores broad discretion to evaluate all pertinent facts and aligns with long-standing policy that aliens in the United States should be self-reliant and government benefits should not incentivize immigration.”
The DHS public charge guidance and policy includes child nutrition and school meal programs, which is “deliberately creating confusion,” said Clarissa Hayes, deputy director of child nutrition programs and policy at the Food Research & Action Center, in a Wednesday statement.
“No parent should ever have to choose between feeding their children and keeping their family together,” Hayes said. “We cannot allow fear to determine whether or not a child will have enough to eat during the school day and at home.”
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, also warned in a July blog post that the DHS rule would have a “chilling effect” on schools, particularly on school meal programs like CEP.
Other federal changes, such as historic cuts made last year to SNAP through the Republican-led One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are also beginning to have some ripple effects on the ability of schools and districts to serve free meals. FRAC estimates that over 5 million people have already lost their SNAP benefits since OBBBA went into effect in July 2025.
Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County Public Schools announced in July that it will no longer be able to serve free school meals to every student districtwide for the 2026-27 school year. The district — Florida’s largest and the third largest in the U.S. overall — said it couldn’t participate in districtwide CEP for the first time in four years after it failed to reach the federal threshold to qualify for the program.
