Proposed School Meal Cuts Prompt Nationwide Advocacy

Proposed School Meal Cuts Prompt Nationwide Advocacy

Cuts loom as schools anticipate a $660 million loss in funds for local food purchases

ARLINGTON, VA – The nonprofit School Nutrition Association (SNA) is rallying supporters in urging Congress to reject proposed cuts that threaten school meal programs and severely limit student access to healthy meals. As thousands of concerned constituents across the country advocate with letters and calls to their Members of Congress, 850 school nutrition professionals participating in SNA’s Legislative Action Conference will head to Capitol Hill tomorrow (March 11) to plead with Congress to oppose these cuts and invest in school meal programs.

“With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health,” said SNA President Shannon Gleave, RDN, SNS. “These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.”

Congress is weighing these cuts just as multiple states were recently notified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) of the termination of federal funding agreements to purchase healthy, local and regional foods for school meals. An estimated $660 million in funds through the Local Food for Schools (LFS) program for 2025 will no longer be available to support local producers and assist schools and child care facilities in expanding fresh, local menu options.

As efforts to continue menu improvements are undermined, access to school meals is increasingly threatened:

• One proposal would cut an estimated 24,000 schools, serving 12 million students, off of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows high poverty schools to offer free meals to all students without an application.
• A proposal to end Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility would result in one million students losing automatic eligibility for free school meals.
• Congress also proposes requiring income verification with every free and reduced-price meal application, making the process much more complex and prohibitively delaying benefits for eligible families.

Short-staffed school nutrition teams lack resources to manage these additional time-consuming and costly mandates. SNA’s SY 2024/25 School Nutrition Trends Survey reveals school meal programs are already burdened by high costs, staff shortages and insufficient federal funding, making them ill-equipped to absorb the substantial administrative costs resulting from these proposals.

LAC participants and supporters nationwide will share SNA’s 2025 Position Paper, urging Congress to protect CEP, expand access to healthy school meals for all students and address unpaid meal debt. The Paper also calls for increased federal reimbursements to help schools cover costs and meet upcoming nutrition standards.

About School Nutrition Association:
The School Nutrition Association (SNA) is a national, non-profit professional organization representing 50,000 school nutrition professionals across the country. Founded in 1946, SNA and its members are dedicated to making healthy school meals and nutrition education available to all students.  For more information on school meals, visit www.SchoolNutrition.org/SchoolMeals.