
In early July, Congress passed a massive spending and tax bill, the so-called “big, beautiful bill,” which President Trump signed into law. What’s in this nearly 900-page bill, and how does it affect school food?
While the recently passed budget reconciliation bill did not directly alter school nutrition programs, it will have downstream effects on the ability of school food programs to serve and for students to access healthy meals.
Food insecurity does not exist in a vacuum. While our work focuses on school meals, we recognize that the school food professionals and students we support also rely on programs such as SNAP and Medicaid to ensure their families have access to healthy food.
If families lose access to SNAP and Medicaid due to program changes from this legislation, that will affect students’ ability to be directly certified for school meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). In other words, we’re adding more red tape for families and school food programs to get healthy meals to kids.
States will have to fill in for federal funding gaps, which has the potential to pit nutrition programs like SNAP and school meals against each other or cause states to pull out from nutrition programs altogether. Investing in healthy school meals and ensuring that programs like SNAP are adequately funded isn’t a binary choice—we can do both.
We stand ready to support school food programs and professionals across the country as they navigate any ripple effects from the budget reconciliation bill. The 30 million U.S. students who rely on these meals each day can’t afford for us to do otherwise.