Federal cuts threaten free school lunch provision that serves 145,000 Arizona kids

School is back in session … and our next guest this morning is warning that, as kids are back in the classroom, hundreds of Arizona schools could lose the ability to give them free lunches.

Right now, nearly 300 schools in our state qualify for a federal program that allows schools that serve low income households to give free lunches to every student without making them apply for it. If 25% of a school’s students qualify for food assistance programs like SNAP, they’re in.

But as a result of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Arizona has seen record numbers of people removed from the SNAP rolls. And there has been pressure from Congressional Republicans to raise the threshold for schools to qualify for those universal free lunches.

David Lujan is executive director of Children's Action Alliance and the Arizona Center for Economic Progress, which crunched the numbers on this.

The Show spoke with him more about it.

Full conversation

DAVID LUJAN: Overall, Arizona has lost about 406,000 Arizonans on the SNAP rolls; 406,000 Arizonans have lost their food benefits. And now we’re seeing this impact in the schools, too.

And where our concern is, is there’s a provision in the federal school meals program called the Community Eligibility (Provision). And essentially what that does is it says that schools that have 25% or more of their students that are certified as low income are able to offer free meals to all of their students. And how they are certified as low income, typically, is they are automatically certified when their household is receiving SNAP or Medicaid or TANF benefits.

And so, because we are seeing so many Arizonans fall off the SNAP rolls, that means fewer students are being eligible to qualify for this Community Eligibility category in the schools.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so many fewer students individually being able to qualify for that. But there’s also then this proposal from congressional Republicans, right? They want to raise the threshold for this program, for the CEP program provision. And that would also mean many, many fewer kids would qualify for free lunches, and entire schools might be taken off, right?

DAVID LUJAN: That’s right. It’s a proposal that could come back again in the future. Our concern is that if this federal proposal comes back, what it would do is it would raise the certification level to 60%.

But the bottom line is about 297 participating schools in Arizona would lose their eligibility, and that means about 145,000 students would no longer be automatically certified for free lunches. And so when you combine that with the number of families that are already losing their SNAP benefits, it’s just a really bad situation.

Students in schools that are hungry — a good meal, a good breakfast, good lunch is going to be what be the fuel that helps our students stay focused, engaged and ready to learn. And I just can’t think of a more disruptive policy than to take food out of children’s stomachs.

LAUREN GILGER: Can’t families fill out a separate application for free lunches if they meet a certain income threshold, David? Is there another way to do this?

DAVID LUJAN: There is. And I’ve been a school administrator, I’ve worked in schools, and I can tell you that is more difficult than what it appears. First of all, the application can be a little bit cumbersome, but particularly, there’s all sorts of ways where — we’re at the beginning of the school year, and if you’re a parent, you know how much paperwork you get at the beginning of the school year, and how many things you’re asked to fill out.

And this particular paperwork asks a lot of questions about the number of people in the household and who’s making what income, and it can be confusing. So people sometimes just get frustrated and don’t fill it out, or maybe it gets lost in the slew of forms that you get at the beginning of the school year. And it’s just really difficult to administer.

So what happens, though, is the students who are relying on those free meals, the certification doesn’t get completed, and you have a lot of students in the schools that should be getting free meals that aren’t because the paperwork just didn’t get completed for whatever reason.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so what does this mean in reality? How does this play out? You mentioned you’ve worked in school administration before. There are a lot of kids who will end up getting a free lunch but never paying for it, right? School nutrition data shows that schools have mounting unpaid meal debt, right? Like one estimate showed it was more than $25 million of lunches given out, breakfasts given out that are not going to be paid.

DAVID LUJAN: Yes, so often times how schools handle this, I think, is on a school-by-school basis, but often, schools want their students to have meals, and so they will provide the meals, and they will eat the cost. And even though they have students that are entitled and would qualify for federal free meals, it’s the schools that are taking it out of their budgets to pay for those.

And often times, the alternative is you also hear the stories of students who are going through the cafeteria line, and they haven’t gotten their paperwork filled out, or there’s something missing, and they’re denied a lunch. And think about the stigma then when you’re a student, and you’re told you’re not able to get a lunch, or they give them a different lunch than all the other students receive. It’s really horrible, and it shouldn’t be that way — particularly when we have a federal program that is supposed to be able to provide these students with meals when they need it.

So what can happen as a result of what’s being proposed here is either the schools are going to have to pick up the tab, or you’re going to have that stigma of students being treated differently in the cafeteria, and either not getting meals or getting a different meal or being treated differently than other students when all they want to do is just put food in their stomach so that they can learn.

LAUREN GILGER: How much do school lunches cost a family over the course of a year, David? I mean, they’re pretty cheap, right?

DAVID LUJAN: They’re cheap, but when you’re talking about everything else is more expensive these days, when groceries are more expensive, when gas is more expensive, when we’re going through an affordability crisis, we estimate that for a family with two children, it could cost about $1,900 a year to pay out of pocket for school meals. And so, that can be significant when everything else is going up as well.

LAUREN GILGER: So what’s next on this front, David? Obviously, the proposal from congressional Republicans that would exacerbate this issue has not gone through yet, but you’re watching that. What is the practical impact on the ground right now in Arizona schools as the school year is getting underway here?

DAVID LUJAN: Well, we want to just stay vigilant and make sure that Congress does not bring this proposal back to consideration. But then the other thing is just the issue that’s been in the news for several months now, and that is we really need to make sure that families in Arizona that are struggling and that would have received SNAP benefits in the past, that we’re able to be able to provide them and their children with the food assistance that they need, and particularly students in our schools.

As I said, having worked in a school, having seen many situations where students come to school hungry, it really makes it that much more difficult to learn, to focus, and to engage. And so it should be a no-brainer policy that in a country like ours that we can provide children who are hungry with food, and we’ve had that, and it’s just I think a shame that we’re trying to develop policies that will make it more difficult for children in these situations to be able to get the food assistance that they need.

LAUREN GILGER: David Lujan, executive director of Children’s Action Alliance as well as the Arizona Center for Economic Progress. David, thank you so much for coming on The Show, appreciate it.

DAVID LUJAN: Thank you.