Will New York become the next state to offer free school meals to all students?
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday announced an ambitious proposal to provide free breakfast and lunch to each of the state’s 2.7 million students. Hochul plans to ask lawmakers to approve the initiative in her 2025 State of State address on Tuesday.
Announcing the measure Friday afternoon, the governor cited academic, health and economic benefits from providing free meals to all students. She further said universal school meals are part of a broader agenda focused on making New York a more affordable place to live.
“Children who do not have proper food, they have food insecurity. It affects them later in life. They're more likely to suffer from heart disease as adults. They score lower on standardized tests. The correlation is so obvious to us as adults,” Hochul said during an appearance at Westbury Middle School on Long Island. “And I'll say this, in the wealthiest country in the world, this can no longer be tolerated — not in America and definitely not in the great state of New York. No more.”
The effort is expected to save New York families an estimated $165 per child each month in grocery expenses. Estimates have previously placed the cost of universal school meals in the state at around $250 million, according to Spectrum News.
The state’s FY 2025 budget included $180 million to incentivize qualifying schools to participate in the federal Community Eligibility Provision, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that allows high-poverty schools and districts to serve free breakfast and lunch to students without requiring families to apply for the benefit. A final rule published in September 2023 expanded access to the program by lowering the minimum threshold from 40% of identified students to 25%.
New York City Public Schools, the state's as well as the nation’s largest school system, already offers free breakfast, lunch and after-school meals to all public school students. According to Hochul's announcement, the new initiative would mean almost 300,000 more students across the state would get free lunch and breakfast.
Nationwide, eight states — California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont — have universal school meals policies, according to the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit focused on reducing hunger in the U.S.
