One of the nation’s largest school districts will stop serving universally free breakfast and lunch to its more than 300,000 students after it said many of its schools no longer qualify for a federal program that helped it pay for those meals.
The Miami-Dade school district in Florida, the nation’s third largest, is one of several across the country that have announced the end of universal free meals for all students in recent months, following nationwide declines in the number of people enrolled in both federal food assistance and Medicaid.
Enrollment in those and other federal assistance programs determines whether schools and districts can qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows them to collect federal reimbursement for serving free meals to all students. At least 25% of students must be enrolled in one of those programs for a school to qualify.
“Today, changing demographics, fewer newcomer students enrolling in our schools, and other enrollment trends have altered the federal eligibility calculations used to determine participation in the program,” the district’s chief operating officer, Luis Diaz, wrote in a July 30 statement announcing the change.
Diaz said 121 of the district’s more than 500 schools remain eligible for the Community Eligibility Provision, so students at those schools will all qualify for free meals. At the remaining schools, students will have to fill out paperwork to qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on family income.
“Most importantly, no student will be expected to begin the school year without access to meals,” Diaz wrote.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act tightens SNAP, Medicaid eligibility
Last year, the federal budget reconciliation law that included a range of tax cuts also enacted cuts and tightened eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The stricter eligibility and paperwork requirements—which broaden the pool of recipients who must meet work requirements; make many immigrants, refugees, and asylees ineligible; and end a provision that automatically qualified households for SNAP if they received heating assistance—effectively reduce the number of families eligible for SNAP. About one-third of SNAP households have children, according to federal data.
The law also imposes work requirements for many Medicaid enrollees, including some parents, and requires this group to verify its eligibility more frequently, making it likely more will drop off the rolls due to the administrative requirements. Though these changes generally don’t take effect until after this year, Medicaid enrollment has still been declining over the past year.
Lower SNAP participation means fewer children are directly certified for free school meals, which means some schools are losing eligibility for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), said Erin Hysom, a senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, an anti-hunger nonprofit based in Washington.
“As SNAP rosters decrease, it’s inevitable that schools will no longer be eligible to participate in CEP,” Hysom said.
Districts that participate in CEP receive federal reimbursement for meals they give out for free, though the amount varies by school depending on the percentage of students enrolled in federal assistance programs.
Even when a district’s or school’s CEP eligibility ends, students from low-income households can still qualify for free meals based on family income, but they have to fill out paperwork so schools can determine their eligibility.
More than 49,000 public schools participated in the CEP in the 2024-25 school year—roughly half of all public schools—providing free meals to more than 25 million students, according to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. That report estimates that a family with two children in public school that loses access to free school meals would spend about $1,890 more per year on school meals.
Anti-hunger advocacy groups have warned for months that SNAP participation could drop due to the federal cuts. One recent FRAC analysis found that SNAP participation has declined by nearly 6 million people since January 2025.
Schools recertify for CEP on a four-year cycle
In addition to Miami-Dade, some schools in nearby Palm Beach County, Fla., Houston, the San Antonio area, and Hardin County, Ky., have also announced the end of universal free meals in recent months because they no longer qualify for CEP.
Hysom anticipates more districts will follow suit.
Schools use data about students’ food assistance enrollment as of April 1 to determine if they are is eligible for CEP for the next school year, if they are not already participating, Hysom said. If the school is eligible, leaders decide whether to adopt CEP for the next four years. At the end of the four-year cycle, the school uses the most recent April 1 data to determine if it still qualifies, and school leaders decide if they want to commit for another four years.
The schools dropping CEP now, Hysom said, are among the first to come up for recertification since SNAP cuts took effect.
“We’re going to see these impacts of these SNAP cuts for the next few years to come, as school districts have to go to recertify for CEP and relook at their numbers, and as more children drop off SNAP rosters,” Hysom said. “Schools’ ability to continue offering free school meals through community eligibility is going to decrease.”
Medicaid enrollment is also projected to continue to drop over the next decade due to the law’s tightened eligibility requirements—by about 10 million people over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Switching back to paid meals can be difficult
Even when districts qualify for CEP, some say the reimbursements don’t actually cover the costs to feed students.
Rappahannock County schools in Virginia decided in June to end participation in CEP because federal reimbursements weren’t enough to cover meal costs, according to local reporting. District leaders expected SNAP changes to further affect reimbursement in the coming years, as the amount schools recoup is based on the percentage of students enrolled in SNAP, Medicaid, and other federal assistance programs.
“A lot of schools are really grappling with this,” Jackie Tederick, the district’s nutrition director, said during a recent school board meeting. “The qualifications to become directly certified [for free meals], that eligibility has become tighter. We’re trying to look ahead at how many [qualifying students] we might lose because of these tightened rules, but it’s not very well articulated.”
Going back to paid meals after universal free breakfast and lunch can be difficult for families, as well as food service staff, Hysom said.
It can be difficult to get families to fill out the applications for free or reduced-price meals, whether because the process seems overwhelming or because families are hesitant to share financial information with the school district, Hysom said. For some, there is also a negative stigma attached to receiving free meals, she said.
Moving away from CEP can create additional administrative burdens for the nutrition team, too, Hysom said. Staff must spend more time encouraging families to fill out free meal application forms, then assessing those applications to determine eligibility.
“If a school district has to go from CEP back to that traditional model, it disrupts their whole operation,” Hysom said.
