As millions of kids lose SNAP food benefits, free school meals are also at risk

Seventh-graders sit together in the cafeteria during their lunch break at a public school in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 10, 2023. Wong Maye-E/AP hide caption

When Republican lawmakers secured cuts to the United States' largest food assistance program last year, Paige Shoemaker DeMio wasn't worried about children going hungry just at home — but at school.

"Anytime we're hearing about cuts to SNAP or Medicaid, we're worried about what's going to be the domino effect of this," she says.

Shoemaker DeMio is a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. She usually focuses on K-12 education, but in recent months, she has been following the changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps.

That's because SNAP connects children with other critical resources, such as free breakfast and lunch at school. So when a family loses access to food assistance, the family's child may stop automatically receiving free food at school. And when scores of families fall off SNAP, universal free meal programs at tens of thousands of schools fall into jeopardy.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that over a million children have lost food benefits since July 2025, when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law. Among the changes, the legislation led to stricter work requirements to receive food assistance.

Going into this academic year, dozens of schools nationwide have ended their universal free meal programs — including schools in San Antonio, Houston and Miami-Dade County . School nutrition experts say it's unclear to what extent a decline in SNAP participation played a role. But Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, which represents about 50,000 school nutrition professionals in the U.S., says that the full impact on free school meals will emerge in the coming years as SNAP changes take effect.

"This moment in time could potentially be a tip-of-an-iceberg situation," she says "It could get much, much worse."