The bill stresses a major funding stream for schools, and could have ripple effects that make it harder for schools to offer free meals.
Students could face more difficulty accessing free school meals and school-based health services—and schools and states could have a harder time providing them—under Congress’ sweeping budget bill passed last week, experts say.
Congress’ sprawling, megabill that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4 slashes federal Medicaid spending by 15% over the next decade, affecting the fourth-largest federal funding stream for schools. It also shifts a greater share of the cost of providing food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to states.
About a third of the budget cuts to Medicaid and SNAP come from imposing work requirements on a greater portion of recipients, according to the Congressional Budget Office—including some parents of school-age children for the first time in the history of those programs.
States will have less funding available to support universal meal programs as they assume a greater share of the cost of providing food benefits, and lower participation in the Community Eligibility Provision would translate into less federal reimbursement for sustaining universal meal programs, she said.
Ultimately, the changes will result in fewer people receiving food assistance, said Anna Gassman-Pines, a professor of public policy at Duke University who has studied the effect of SNAP on education outcomes.
Her research found that students who took end-of-year exams closer to the beginning of their families’ SNAP benefit cycle, when their families had more money on hand to buy food, performed better in reading and math.
Read the full article in Education Week
July 9, 2025