Sponsors (20)
Official title: Amend the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 and the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to make breakfasts and lunches free for all children, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 13, 2026 by Bernard Sanders · Last progress May 13, 2026
The bill greatly expands free school meal access and strengthens protections and funding for school nutrition—improving child food security and program alignment—while increasing federal costs and imposing fiscal, administrative, and privacy challenges for states, districts, and some vulnerable localities.
All students in participating schools will receive free breakfasts and lunches (and expanded summer meal/EBT benefits), increasing access to daily nutrition and reducing hunger year-round.
Schools and school food authorities will receive higher, federally guaranteed per-meal reimbursements (including CPI adjustments), providing more funding to support school meal programs.
Students will be protected from meal-shaming and denial of meals (prohibitions on segregation, overt identification, and denying participation due to unpaid meal debt), preserving dignity and access.
Taxpayers and the federal budget will face materially higher costs from guaranteeing universal free breakfasts and lunches (plus CPI-indexed increases), increasing long-term federal spending obligations.
Local school districts may face budget strain because they can no longer collect unpaid meal debt and could be exposed to gaps between federal reimbursement and actual food-service costs, complicating local finance management.
States, LEAs, and school food authorities will incur administrative workload and compliance costs from new certification, reporting, disbursement, local-food certification, survey administration, and record-keeping requirements.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Sets statutory per-meal payments and CPI indexing, expands free meals to all students in participating schools, bans collecting meal debt, revises low‑income student measurement, and updates SNAP/Higher Ed definitions.
Makes major changes to school meal programs and related education and nutrition law: it sets statutory national per-meal payments for free school breakfasts and lunches (with annual CPI adjustments starting July 1, 2026), creates a local-food incentive payment for lunches, extends free meals to all students in participating schools (eliminating reduced-price categories), prohibits schools from collecting unpaid meal debt or publicly shaming students over meal charges, and changes how schools count and certify low‑income/economically disadvantaged students. It also updates SNAP program language and refines the federal definition of “high-need” schools for higher education grant programs. Most provisions take effect one year after enactment, with payment indexing rules effective July 1, 2026.