When Brittany, a 41-year-old single mom in Tennessee, recently underwent a recertification process for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, she was told that because of her income she no longer qualified for the $500 a month she had been getting for herself and her two children. It didn’t make sense to Brittany, who asked to go by her first name because of privacy concerns: She makes $16 an hour as a medical assistant. Between the cost of rent, gas and groceries, she worries how she will manage Christmas for her kids. “If there wasn’t breakfast and lunch available at school, we probably would be hungry some of that time throughout the month,” she said.
Brittany’s children receive free school meals, which have always helped schools and families meet children’s nutritional needs and overall health. As the effects of H.R. 1, which included the largest cuts to SNAP in history, continue to hit households amid an affordability crisis, those school meals are increasingly a lifeline. And those vital programs are under threat as well.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than 1.5 million children have lost access to SNAP since H.R. 1 was signed into law. As the school year began, families were paying more for groceries on top of increased costs for school supplies, and schools, many facing cuts to resources, have been working to close gaps. But the effects of SNAP cuts are stretching beyond homes and into schools, where teachers are noticing hunger affecting students’ ability to learn.
Kolbe Ricks, a teacher and coach at a Texas school where more than 90% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, said every teacher she knows has a snack drawer, because if kids aren’t fed, they can’t learn.
“Cuts to SNAP hurt school meals,” said Erin Hysom, a senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center. “The cuts to SNAP will not only increase hunger in homes, but they’ll also increase hunger in the classroom.”
Ebony Webster, a mom and an educator in Colorado, doesn’t qualify for SNAP benefits. But, she said, “I don’t make enough to buy school food” for her three children. Colorado’s recent expansion of its school breakfast and lunch program, Healthy School Meals for All, could not come at a better time for her family. “I am grateful as a mom that my kids can get breakfast and lunch for free,” she said.
In the classroom, she has noticed students asking for more food, or for leftovers of a friend’s meal. Sometimes the free school meals are the only ones students get, she said. Webster is a board member of the Southeast Food Coalition, which partners with the nonprofit group Hunger Free Colorado. With SNAP access decreasing, she has seen an increase in community need for food pantries. “The lines are longer, the big groups are bigger, because there’s a need and it’s worse now than before,” she said.
Kolbe Ricks, a teacher and coach at a Texas school where more than 90% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, said every teacher she knows has a snack drawer, because if kids aren’t fed, they can’t learn. “So when kids come to class hungry, we have to feed them, if we want them, one, to just be taken care of as humans, but two, if we want them to actually be ready to learn,” she said.
Using an Amazon wish list, Ricks’ family, friends and wider community helped her supply snacks for her students this year. She never says no, but students have to ask, just to make sure it’s not a free-for-all where food ends up going to waste. The box, which she estimated had about $200 to $300 worth of snacks, was completely wiped out within the first nine weeks of school. The school and its parent-teacher association have partnered with a local organization to set up events offering to distribute free fruit and vegetables. At the first, people were lined up before it opened, and the food was gone in about 30 minutes.
“I just wish people realize how harmful it is to further marginalize people that are already struggling with resources,” Ricks said. “You don’t need to know the details of their story, like this kid that didn’t eat for two days because their family couldn’t buy groceries — you shouldn’t have to hear that in order to want to help people.”
When schools pass policies that provide healthy school meals for all, teachers report better classroom behavior, fewer visits to the school nurse, and improved attendance and math and reading scores.
In Baltimore, Cindy Camp cares for her 91-year-old mother and her 9-, 11- and 14-year-old grandchildren while their mother faces health challenges. The grandchildren get free lunch at school, and the family sometimes visits its food resource center. “They love to go there and they get the off-brand green beans,” Camp said. “Sometimes I use the dry milk. Sometimes the off-brand macaroni and cheese has come in handy.”
“Without SNAP, we would not make it at all,” Camp said.
For families with children in school, the cuts and increased barriers to accessing SNAP benefits create a twofold struggle: Losing SNAP benefits increases hunger at home, and the cuts can also affect a school’s ability to feed children. According to Hysom, children who live in households that receive SNAP benefits are automatically eligible for free school meals. A process known as “direct certification” links eligible children to free school meals without the need for a separate application. This removes the paperwork burden for both schools and families, Hysom explained, and lessens stigma and shame.
“So when children fall off SNAP rosters, first and foremost, their direct link to free school meals is severed,” Hysom said. “Eligible children will fall through the cracks.”
As more children lose SNAP access and aren’t directly certified, that in turn has an impact on a school’s overall ability to implement the Community Eligibility Provision, which lets schools serving families with low incomes offer free breakfast and lunch to all students at no charge. Offering all students free school meals is the most efficient way to operate a school nutrition program, Hysom said, and when a school adopts a CEP, or a state passes a school-meals-for-all policy, participation in school meals increases.
A report from the School Nutrition Association found that school districts that must charge for meals report increased school meal debt and more students going hungry. Loss of free school meals would also create a significant cost burden to families, according to the Center for American Progress, deepening an already existing crisis.
Amy Evans, a Title I reading intervention assistant in Illinois, said her school still qualifies under the Community Eligibility Provision. But her school is still seeing the impact of the reduction in SNAP benefits for families. “It just affects everything,” Evans said. “Because if you lose your eligibility for SNAP, then you lose your eligibility for school meals, then you lose eligibility for registration and sports fees and all of those other things that people could qualify for.”
It’s a crisis, but not one without solutions, according to experts. When schools pass policies that provide healthy school meals for all, teachers report better classroom behavior, fewer visits to the school nurse, and improved attendance and math and reading scores, said Hysom. “We know the solution to ending school day hunger,” she said. “It’s offering all children free school meals. The way they do that is repealing the SNAP cuts and passing the Universal School Meals Program Act.”
What’s perhaps most concerning is that this is only the “tip of the iceberg,” according to Hysom. There are already reports of schools losing the Community Eligibility Provision in Kentucky, Florida, Texas and other states. The fallout of this crisis is still unfolding, hurting schools and families alike. “The negative effects of these SNAP cuts are going to be felt by children and in schools for years to come,” Hysom said.
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