KINGSTON – The recently adopted state budget is providing $135 million in new funding to expand access to free school meals, making 88.7 percent of schools in Senator Michelle Hinchey’s (D, Saugerties) district eligible to provide students with free breakfast and lunch.
As a result, more students, families, and schools will have an opportunity to benefit from access to meals at no cost, minimizing stigma, eliminating unpaid meal charges, and reducing paperwork and meal service operations for school staff and families, she said.
“This year, we took an unprecedented stand on the urgent need to combat child hunger in New York and built a movement that resulted in the significant expansion of free school meals,” Hinchey said. “Because of our fight, over 30,000 students in SD-41 alone will have access to free breakfast and lunch, setting them up for success while saving local families money each week in grocery costs. We will continue to build on this transformative progress and fight for more support, more resources, and more solutions until every student in New York has access to free, healthy meals at school.”
For nearly two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, federal funding ensured students universal access to free school meals. When the benefit expired in June of 2022, more than 726,000 students across New York lost access to free meals, and school meal debt skyrocketed. As the sponsor of legislation (S1678A) to fund free school meals, Hinchey led a coalition of over 280 education, health, labor, and anti-hunger advocates and won a significant expansion of the initiative.
Starting in the 2023-24 school year, the state will reimburse schools participating in the federal Community Eligibility Program (CEP), covering the costs of all meals not currently supported by the federal government. Currently, schools in which 40 percent of students qualify for free meals qualify for CEP. The federal government is dropping that qualification to 25 percent, which will help expand eligibility to many more schools in New York State.
