SARANAC LAKE — Saranac Lake Central School District Board Member Tori Thurston has been advocating for universal free school meals ever since she got on the board in 2022.

Every year for the last three years, the possibility of the state offering universal free school meals has received bipartisan support from the legislature, but it’s never been passed because Gov. Kathy Hochul shot it down. Thurston was excited this year when Hochul announced her support for the initiative.

But planned cuts to federal funding threatens that advancement. So Thurston went down to Washington D.C. with school officials and child nutrition experts from 18 states this week to advocate to the region’s representatives.

“It’s great that the state wants to do it, but it’s dependent on federal funding,” Thurston said.

The state budget signed on Friday includes $340 million for universal free school meals. But Thurston said it’s unclear if the state will be able to continue to afford this. If the federal government cuts social programs which determine the school meal reimbursement rate it pays districts, it will lower that reimbursement and the state will have to contribute more to keep meals free for the lowest-income students. This might mean the state cannot afford free meals for the rest of the students.

SLCSD offers universal free school meals currently. It’s ability to do that is based on having 25% of its students who are in families using public benefit programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Medicaid. Thurston said the cuts being proposed to these programs would be catastrophic for school meals.

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The potential cuts

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SLCSD’s current ability to offer universal free school meals is based on the Community Eligibility Provision of the School Lunch Program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

CEP is based on automatic enrollment programs — if someone uses programs like SNAP, WIC, HEAP or Medicaid, they are “direct certified” and the district doesn’t have to chase down paperwork to register people for free school meals.

If these programs are cut, it means many families will not receive their benefits anymore. Further, they won’t be direct certified in free school meals, endangering the district’s CEP eligibility.

Currently, at least 25% of a district’s students must be enrolled in one of these programs to qualify for CEP. This threshold was lowered from 40% by the Biden administration in 2023.

Currently, 35% of SLCSD students are direct certified, according to SLCSD Food Service Director Ruth Pino.

Thurston said it’s feasible the proposed cuts to social programs could push SLCSD below the 25% needed for CEP eligibility.

Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee are pushing to cut $230 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years.

Republicans are heatedly debating cuts to Medicaid as the House budget plan calls for $880 billion to be cut from the committee overseeing the program.

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would eliminate the $4 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The program’s entire staff was laid off in April.

Though House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, had proposed to raise the CEP threshhold up to 60% earlier this year, Thurston said the percentage is expected to stay at 25% for now. Initially, the House Ways and Means Committee was also proposing a $12 billion cut to school meal funding. These cuts and changes are all still on the table in later appropriations budgets, though.

The Republicans’ plan is to cut more than $2 trillion in spending to offset a planned extension of tax cuts they initially passed in 2017, as well as new tax cuts. These 2017 tax cuts increased post-tax income for people across the economic spectrum, but did so more for the wealthy and corporations.

The Tax Policy Center found that in 2025, these cuts translate to an average $61,090 tax savings for the top 1% wealthiest, and less than $2,000 for everyone outside of the top 20%. According to a 2019 report from the Congressional Research Service, “the individual income tax cut largely went to higher-income individuals” and “ordinary workers had very little growth in wage rates.”

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Reimbursement

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The process of providing students with free meals at school is complicated. Pino said she needs a whiteboard to explain it properly.

The current federal reimbursement rate per free meal is $4.43, according to Pino, and the state kicks in $0.06. For CEP-qualified districts like SLCSD, the federal reimbursement rate for “full-pay” students who are not in families using public benefit programs is $0.42. Since 2023, New York has contributed $4.07 to make these full-pay meals free for CEP-qualified districts.

If the district lost its CEP eligibility, it would only get $0.49 total reimbursement for full-pay students. Students not on free and reduced meals would then have to pay around $3.70 for their meals.

Federal reimbursement is set by the percentage of direct qualified students in a district. The smaller percentage of direct certified students, the smaller the federal reimbursement. Thurston said if students lose their direct certification through SNAP or Medicaid cuts, that means the federal reimbursement will drop and the state will need to pay more to reimburse students from low-income families for their meals. This would leave less money for the state to fund universal free school meals.

The USDA has cut its $660 million Local Food for Schools program, which gave schools subsidies for buying from local farms. At least 30% of SLCSD’s lunch costs are local products, Pino said, so they’ve been getting a $0.19 subsidy towards meals for direct certified students. But that program is ended now.

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Meeting politicians

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Thurston said staff with the American Heart Association who she met at a previous school meal advocacy day in D.C. in January invited her to join this trip with AHA, the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They paid for her to go and got her appointments with Republican North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik and Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s offices.

Thurston said Legislative Aide Savannah Shaw from Schumer’s office was great and knowledgeable about the topic, asking for stories.

She’d been trying to meet with Stefanik’s office for three years and finally got a meeting this time. Thurston said the meeting was “disappointing” because the staffer was noncommittal. She said the staffer had only been on the childhood nutrition topic for two weeks and met them in the hallway.

She said the staffer couldn’t believe people would oppose offering free school meals for kids.

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Why she does it

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Thurston said every dollar spent on providing healthy school meals gets multiplied several times in savings over the long term in reduced health care costs.

She’s been stopped in public by people thanking her and the board for pushing for universal free school meals. One couple was a carpenter and a nurse. They make good money, they told her, but too much to qualify for free meals under the previous system. They have three kids and were struggling to afford for them to have breakfast and lunch every day.

Food is expensive nowadays. Thurston estimated that feeding three kids breakfast and lunch every day comes to around $300 a month.

“That’s a car payment,” she said.

Thurston also said having free meals at school saves parents the time and stress of making lunches at home, feeding their kids breakfast in the morning and buying groceries at night.

Thurston said she’s also been yelled at in public by people who disagree with her, who say that people should feed their own children and that if they can’t pay their own way they’re lazy.

She doesn’t understand this at all. Feeding children is inherently good, she said.

The district provides textbooks, transportation and desks for every child — regardless of their family income. Thurston said the same should go for food. It’s the most fundamental human need next to water and air.

“It’s just another school supply,” she said. “It is the most basic school supply.”

She always asks people, “If you didn’t eat breakfast today, could you pass a math test?” Nourishment is important for focus.

Research shows universal school meals benefits students of all economic backgrounds. Thurston said it actually impacts middle income students most. Even for families that can afford breakfast and lunch for their children, their students see the largest jump in test scores and the biggest improvements in mental health and discipline.

“Cutting school meals will take food out of children’s mouths,” Thurston said. “For some kids, it’s the only healthy meal they get in a day.”

Thurston is encouraging everyone who cares about universal free school meals to call their representatives and ask for them to oppose cuts to programs like SNAP, WIC, Medicaid or HEAP which would endanger the district’s ability to offer them. She provided resources for making these calls or writing letters at tinyurl.com/23w9k99b and tinyurl.com/3kecstkv.