Jessica Pelletier, a dietician at Meriden Public Schools in Meriden, C.T., remembers the day she saw a student with nothing for lunch but a family size bag of chips. 

“I said, ‘You can get lunch every day for free,’” she told the child. “And I took his hand and walked him over and got lunch with him. I think he’s been eating every day since then with us.”

But recently, school nutritionists like Pelletier worry about how they’ll keep their students fed. This is because school districts across the country are finding themselves caught in a vice. On one side, inflation is driving up the cost of food, labor, and other materials that schools rely on to prepare students’ meals. At the same time, proposed cuts to federal school lunch money could threaten funds for millions of students, including at many schools that offer free meals for all students.

A recent report from the School Nutrition Association highlights the worry many school districts have. Nearly 50% of school districts surveyed reported “serious concerns” about the financial stability of their school nutrition program, according to the report. Food and labor concerns ranked as the top concerns for respondents.

“We’re very concerned what the impact will be on food services,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association. 

Susan Maffe, Meridian Public Schools’s director of food and nutrition services, said she expects food costs to increase 6.5% this year. She’s also seen labor costs go up, including a 25% increase for kitchen workers in their newest contract.

“The federal reimbursements are insufficient, really, to cover the costs of a meal,” she said. “We do receive some state reimbursement as well, but it’s minimal.”

In RSU 23, a small school district that serves the coastal town of Old Orchard Beach, M.E., Caroline Trinder has seen her goals of providing quality lunches run up against high costs. As the district’s food and nutrition services director, she wants her food to be local-sourced, unprocessed, and tasty for students – a task that’s increasingly impossible on a budget of just $4.50 per meal.

“I like to describe it as a puzzle with a bunch of pieces that don’t fit,” she said. “If anyone stood back and tried to make bulk lunches for $4.50, that’s really hard to do while paying livable wages and benefits.”

Even as inflation squeezes districts, many are contending with possibly funding cuts. Last month, Republicans in the House of Representatives proposed changes to the federal meal program that would cut $12 billion over the next ten years.

In 2024, the USDA spent about $23.5 billion on school food plans. This was a drop from the over $30 billion the government spent in 2022, but still higher than before the pandemic when the program cost about $18 billion a year.

The proposal focuses on changes to the Community Eligibility Provision, a program that allows schools to provide federally-reimbursed free meals to all students. Under the rule, if a certain percentage of students in a given school are enrolled in federal aid programs like SNAP, all students in that school are eligible for free meals.

In 2023, the Department of Agriculture lowered the threshold from 40% to 25%, greatly expanding the number of school districts that could qualify and allowing millions of additional students to eat for free. But under the GOP proposal, that number would rise to 60%, even higher than before. This could result in as many as 12 million students losing access to free meals, according to an estimate from the Food Research and Action Council.

Trinder worries that the cost will fall hardest on students who can least afford it. While some families can still qualify for free or reduced meals, many on the borderline will be left out.

“Kids have this stress they’re carrying around. ‘Should I get lunch today or not?’,” she said. “Some families made 100 dollars too much a year. Now they have to come up with the money to buy 3 breakfasts and 3 lunches a day because they just missed the mark.”

In Prince William County, outside of Washington, DC, about two-thirds of district schools qualify for CEP, and the difference in meal uptake is striking. In CEP schools, 76% of students eat school lunch every day; in non-CEP schools, the rate is only 56%. According to Prince William County Public Schools, if the current passes, 32,000 students could lose access to free lunches.

As school districts search for ways to adapt to the one-two punch of higher prices and less money, many find few good options. Some are responding by charging students more and offering them less.

In Sarasota County, F.L., for instance, the school district raised their prices an average of 20% last August. According to Sara Dan, the Food Nutrition Services Director at Sarasota County Schools, the district saw food and labor costs rise around 18% in the past year or two.

“We have been forced to look at the cost of everything,” she said. “For example, the price of Plums went to $1.35 per serving at the beginning of the year – we had to switch to another fresh fruit.”

Some schools are cutting salad bars and made-to-order sandwiches from their menus. Others have had to switch from fresh food to frozen or pre-made items, a reversal of what had been a push for schools to make more items from scratch. Pratt-Heavner said recent spikes in egg prices have forced some schools to pull back on eggs for breakfast.

“Waffle House can choose to put a surcharge on their meals, but schools can’t do that,” she said. “Those higher-priced items have to come off the menu.”

In some cases, districts have had to roll back universal free lunch programs, something Stamford Public Schools, in Connecticut, announced it was doing for the 2025/26 school year. District officials said they won’t have the approximately $1 million it needs to continue the program. In Colorado, a statewide universal free meal program has cost tens of millions more than expected, forcing lawmakers to go back to voters to ask for more money and putting the program’s future in doubt. 

Back in Meriden, Susan Maffe continues working to make sure her own “puzzle” fits together by being more conscientious of what produce she buys and cutting down on waste. For her, feeding students’s stomachs is as important as feeding their minds.

“We pay for school buses, we pay for desks, we pay for teachers. But if a hungry child can’t learn, we’re not maximizing the value,” she said. “Food needs to be recognized as an integral part of the school day and an integral part of a student’s success.”