State lawmakers renew push for free school meals

State lawmakers are reviving a push to fund free breakfast and lunch at schools across New York in the state budget. State Sen. Michelle Hinchey and Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas sent letters to Gov. Kathy Hochul this week, asking that the upcoming state budget include funding for free meals at schools that can’t already access them through a federal option.

At the end of the last school year, a pandemic-era federal waiver that allowed all schools to provide free breakfast and lunch expired. The lawmakers’ letters, which are signed by 71 state legislators, highlights a “discrepancy” between eligibility for a federal program called the Community Eligibility Provision that allows high-poverty schools to offer free meals and the living wage. Funding “universal school meals” in the state budget – free breakfast and lunch at all schools – would close that gap, the lawmakers said. “Nearly 2,000 additional schools, including many small rural schools that have high poverty rates but are unable to leverage federal options like CEP, would be able to provide free school meals to their students,” the letter stated.

González-Rojas and Hinchey sponsored a universal school meals bill last session, but the bill failed to advance. A spokesperson for González-Rojas said that the estimated cost of funding free school meals is $187 million to $201 million.