Just two years ago, students in Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools had racked up nearly a quarter of a million dollars in lunch debt. Now, every student is able to eat breakfast and lunch completely for free — no matter which school they attend.
That’s because the school district began participating in the Community Eligibility Provision program, which allows schools with a certain percentage of families that participate in federal assistance programs — like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP — to offer free meals.
Ruchi Favreau, the district’s school nutrition director, said the number of students who ate at school skyrocketed when they made the change.
“We've noticed students not disrupting classes as often, learning longer hours, being able to sit still for longer,” Favreau said, “which is also a holistic win for the district.”
But school nutrition advocates worry budget cuts could jeopardize free meals for millions of children as Republican lawmakers work to slash billions in federal spending.
The House Ways and Means Committee included the Community Eligibility Provision on a list of potential cuts, according to Politico. The congressional committee proposed raising the threshold to qualify for free meals, cutting an estimated 12 million students out of the program.
Another proposal would require schools to verify 100% of the students who apply for free and reduced-price lunches — a daunting task for already understaffed classrooms.
And school nutrition departments already have a slate of challenges, including the rising cost of food, labor and equipment.
“We're being hit by all sides, and everything has a ripple effect and a domino effect that's going to impact,” Favreau said. “The school nutritional landscape is definitely changing — we acknowledge that. We just want to work together to put our kids first.”
In Kansas, 76 schools and 27,711 students could lose free meals under the proposed cuts. Up to 80,124 students in 247 schools in Missouri would also be affected.
If the cuts happen, some students in Kansas City, Kansas, would no longer meet the threshold to qualify for free meals, Favreau said. If the school district reaches that point, she said it could become an equity issue where kids at some schools could eat free and others couldn’t.
“Hopefully we don't ever because students are thriving, and I think school food is as important as textbooks and transportation for kids, so it should be a right,” Favreau said.
Whether that will happen is part of the uncertainty hanging over school nutrition programs and education institutions right now as the Trump administration floats more grant cuts, program changes and tariffs that could drive up the price of already-costly food and equipment.
Some school districts are already feeling the end of federally funded programs.
The Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program awarded $200 million for schools to buy local food and produce from local farmers. In October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would extend the program over the next three years.
But the federal agency ended the program in early March.
Favreau said her district was going to receive about $500,000 to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. That money also would have allowed the school nutrition program to be financially sustainable as the amount the federal government reimburses schools for meals lags.
In Kansas, schools would have received $7,982,630 this fiscal year to buy local food. Schools in Missouri would have received $13,291,509.
Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, said locally grown produce can be more expensive for schools to purchase, so they rely on grants to invest in those menu options for students.
“School meal programs are struggling with the high cost of food and labor, and to have any funding source cut right now is a real blow to the program,” Pratt-Heavner said.
School nutrition advocates have been pushing to increase federal reimbursement for school meals. Of the school meal program directors who responded to a School Nutrition Association survey, only 20.5% said the reimbursement rate, up to $4.43 per meal, is enough to cover the cost of producing a lunch.
If meal programs are underfunded, Pratt-Heavner said schools will have to limit food options for students.
Lori Danella, the Lee's Summit School District nutrition director, said without the additional reimbursement, her team is considering raising breakfast and lunch prices next year — a move she said they always try to avoid.
“Last year was the first year I ever operated in the red, and that devastated me,” Danella said. “I've been doing this for over 25 years and my budgets have always been good, but we just couldn't do it.”
Danella said the school’s nutrition department has raised wages to recruit more staff — an issue many districts are coping with. Food, supply and equipment costs have also seen a steep increase; she said replacing one of the high school’s dishwashers cost $100,000.
She’s received letters from manufacturers in recent months about how tariffs would impact their prices. Items such as canned fruits, veggies and marinara sauce could be impacted by rising aluminum prices, she said.
She said families are also feeling the higher prices in their own kitchens. Student lunch debt skyrocketed after pandemic-era free meals ended, and Danella said her district's families still owed $70,000 last school year in meal debt even after community and church donations.
“It's not because our parents are lazy, and it's not because our parents think we should support the kids,” Danella said. “It's because they just can't afford it, and it's never been that way before.”
Pratt-Heavner said school nutrition teams spend a lot of time following up with families to collect unpaid meal debt — and it’s federally required for them to do so. Meal debt can’t be paid off using federal reimbursements, so school districts have to pay it off out of their own budget.
“That's music programs… it can even mean teachers in the classroom,” Pratt-Heavner said. “That's a huge price to pay.”
Some state legislation could provide needed relief to families, Danella said. A bill in the Missouri Legislature would make lunch free for students who qualify for reduced-price lunches. Another would offer all students lunch for free, regardless of their family’s income.
Danella said the school nutrition landscape has been difficult to navigate since the pandemic began —and the hardest in her career. But she said the challenge has fueled her even more to advocate on behalf of her students.
She’s asking legislators to eat lunch at schools in Lee’s Summit because if they saw their food and equipment, they would better understand what they’d be cutting.
Pratt-Heavner said other legislation that isn’t directly aimed at school lunches could still impact nutrition departments’ ability to feed students for free, including potential cuts to a program that allows low-income families that qualify for other aid to easily qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Students whose families participate in SNAP can then automatically receive free school meals without completing an application. If fewer students are eligible for SNAP, then fewer schools will be eligible for the Community Eligibility Provision.
“All of these proposed cuts are layering on top of each other to really reduce access to school meals at a time when families are really struggling to afford to feed their families,” Pratt-Heavner said.
Favreau said she doesn’t want to think about potentially losing the ability to feed her students free lunch. Not only would it bring back a load of paperwork to her department’s office, but it also would harm student learning, she said.
She said everyone in school nutrition believes feeding students is as important as providing them with textbooks or transportation — and she just wants legislators to acknowledge that.
“We want to keep our children fed,” Favreau said. “We're feeding our future, and we can't cut costs with that.”
