School breakfast and lunch participation drops following loss of universal free meals

School breakfast and lunch participation has dropped following the loss of offering universal free meals at school during COVID-19, a new report by the Food Research and Action Center reveals.

The report compared school meal participation between the 2022-23 school year and the 2021-22 school year.

During the 2021-22 school year, schools across the country were still feeding all students at no charge thanks to a series waivers issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Those waivers expired in June 2022, however, and many schools had to revert back to charging students for meals during the 2022-2023 school year.

The report’s authors credit the waivers’ expiration as the driving force behind the drop in meal participation.

During the 2022-23 school year, 28.1 million students participated in school lunch on an average day. This represents a 6% decrease compared to the number of students who participated in school lunch on an average day during the 2021-22 school year.

Breakfast participation fared worse. During the 2022-23 school year, just over 14.3 million students participated in school breakfast. This represents a 7.7% decrease in participation compared to the 2021-22 school year.

While a majority of states saw their lunch and breakfast participation drop when comparing the 2022-23 school year to the 2021-22 school year, a handful of states did see an increase in meal participation.

California, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont all saw participation go up in both breakfast and lunch, likely due to the fact that those states passed legislation to continue serving all students for free after the waivers’ expiration.

Pennsylvania also saw an increase in breakfast participation after the state government implemented universal free school breakfast.

Other states that also saw an increase in breakfast participation, lunch participation or both, include Kentucky, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Connecticut.

The report’s authors note these states likely saw an increase in meal participation due to a high number of schools in those states participating in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) or due to those states seeing a significant increase in the number of schools participating in CEP during the 2022-23 school year.

CEP is a federal program that allows schools who have a high number of students from low-income families to feed all students for free.

In order to once again see an increase in school meal participation nationwide, the report’s authors suggest that the federal government take action to pass legislation to allow all schools across the country to feed all students for free.

Currently, nine states offer universal free school meal programs. A handful of states also have active legislation that would either implement a universal free school meals program or expand free school meal access.

See what states currently offer universal free meals using the map below: