In Austin, Texas, bananas used to appear on the school lunch menu twice. Now they show up once. Ryan Mikolaycik, who feeds 66,000 children as food service director for the Austin Independent School District, described that cut to Harvest Public Media this week. It sounds small. It is not.
More than 5 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits since last year, and the ripple is now reaching school cafeterias. When fewer families are on SNAP, schools lose money under the federal Community Eligibility Provision, and some are losing the program altogether, according to reports.
How the safety net unravels
A school qualifies for CEP when more than 25 per cent of its students use federal food aid such as SNAP, with full federal reimbursement only when 62.5 per cent are directly certified, according to reports. Much of the SNAP drop follows new work rules and eligibility limits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last year.
School districts in Texas, Illinois and Kentucky have already stopped offering universal free meals because they can no longer afford it, according to reports. In Austin, 69 of 105 schools use CEP, but Mikolaycik expects 30 more could lose the program next year. In Florida, Miami-Dade County Public Schools ended free meals for everyone at all but 121 of its more than 500 schools, according to Stateline.
The cost lands on families
Researchers calculate that over 173,000 Miami-Dade students relied solely on CEP for free school meals last year, according to reports. Nationally, a family with two children can expect to spend an additional 1,890 dollars each school year on breakfast and lunch, rising to 2,412 dollars in high-cost districts.
Without automatic enrollment through SNAP, families must file income applications that advocates call a real barrier, citing language, literacy and stigma, according to the Food Research and Action Center. In Michigan, food service director Dan Gorman warned his district could eventually lose CEP too, leaving the state to cover costs it may not sustain.
