I Heart NY: 9th State to Guarantee Free School Meals for All Kids
Ending the week with a rare bit of good news.
New York is the 9th state to sign universal school meals for all students into law. On May 9, 2025, Governor Hochul signed on the dotted line, ensuring the state’s 2.7 million students receive free school meals at school. This goes into effect in the new school year. NY joins 8 other states that have adopted school meals for all students: California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont.
The Healthy School Meals for All NY campaign advocated for this and shared excellent resources on their website. Their motive for free school meals was rooted in the following:
Providing free meals for all students — regardless of income — is a proven strategy to reduce food insecurity, improve mental and physical health, support students’ ability to thrive academically, and bolster educational, health, and economic equity.
Free school meals for all kids comes at a critical moment in American history. Looming tariffs and recession, coupled with increased costs at the grocery store, are skyrocketing the cost of living while food insecurity has increased three years in a row. As of January 2025, this initiative is estimated to save families $165/month per child. That cost has likely since increased.
Who is eligible for free and reduced-price meals in general?
The Food Research & Action Center reports:
Children in households with incomes at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for free school meals.
Children in households with incomes between 130 to 185 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for reduced-price school meals and can be charged no more than 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch.
Those numbers could mean anything if you don’t know what the federal poverty level is.1 Let’s lay out the numbers:
130% of the federal poverty level for a family of 4 is $41,795/year. That means a family of 4 making $42,000 is not eligible for free school meals.
They would be eligible for reduced-price school meals. They would be cut off from reduced-price meals if they made $58,000.
That’s not the only issue. The cost of living varies nationwide, yet the federal poverty level remains the same. According to the campaign, a Long Island family of four needs $92,000 to meet basic needs, yet the cutoff for assistance is $58,000.
How can states afford to do this?
States are not fully funding this lift. It’s a fun math adventure that ties with a federal government program known as Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Through CEP, schools can take one school, a few schools in a division/district or the entire division/district and calculate a student poverty percentage rate. The higher the Identified Student Percentage (ISP), the more reimbursement the school/schools can receive from the federal government if they roll out school meals for everyone in the school.
Through adopting CEP even for schools with the minimal ISP, schools will not need to be on the hook for the entire funding costs of free school meals for all students.
Take Action
Want to see where your state is in this space? See the map below. Want to get involved? Comment your state’s name and I’ll connect you with the right advocates!
I’m burying the bad news in footnotes so it doesn’t take away from the good news. In April, Trump fired the team that set the poverty levels. https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/aspe-hhs-federal-poverty-guidelines-level-team-fired-medicaid-snap-wic/
I was in our state capitol (Olympia, WA) this year, advocating for our bill. It's likely that our ongoing budget deficit would have kept it from passing, but it's worth noting that the single person who heads the K-12 Education committee has the power to keep it from advancing, and did so again this year.
Yay!