Proposed federal cuts could put free school meals at risk for nearly 150,000 Arizona kids

A federal budget-cutting proposal could put free school meals at risk for thousands of Arizona students.

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows high-need schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students. A potential change would make more than 24,000 schools across the country ineligible for the program.

According to the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), CEP reduces administrative work for schools by eliminating the need for school food service departments to process school meal forms, and to no longer deal with school meal debt. Rather than using individual student eligibility to determine the school meal reimbursements, CEP schools are reimbursed based on their percentage of poverty.

Currently, a school qualifies for the program if 25% of its students receive benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). However, some lawmakers want to change that threshold from 25% to 60%.

Kyrstyn Paulat is the director of early learning and education at Children’s Action Alliance, a nonprofit, non-partisan advocacy organization. She said 1 in 5 children in Arizona experience food insecurity and school meals help bridge the gap for many families.

“Obviously, if you are not well-fed and you don’t know when your next meal is going to be, that’s going to hinder your health and your academic performance,” Paulat said.

She added that the proposal would impact 366 schools and 148,062 students in Arizona.

“There’s so much in the way of rising costs for families right now,” Paulat said. “When we look at housing, when we look at groceries, when we look at childcare, all of these costs just keep adding up for our families and this would just be another additional expense to increase their grocery prices.”