Free school lunches expanding on Long Island; expected to save families $165 a month per kid

The Port Washington Union Free School District's preparations for its incoming students include new picnic tables outside all its schools. 

When school starts next week, the students will be able to go to the cafeterias, pick up grab-and-go foods, and take them outside to eat breakfast before their classes, said Kathleen Manuel, assistant superintendent for business in the school district.

The district's seven schools, along with more than 250 other schools on Long Island, will begin offering free breakfast and lunch this school year to all students, regardless of their household incomes, under the 2026 state budget adopted in May. The expansion of the program statewide will mostly affect Long Island and the Hudson Valley, where student poverty is often hidden and household expenses are high, education and nutrition advocates say. The program can save families an estimated $165 per month per child in food costs, experts said.

“With having every student eat every day for free, we believe it’s going to help to celebrate wellness and have access to the food," Manuel said. "We think if we’re lowering the stigma associated with free meals, we can really reach those students.” 

But 90% of the students in the state already had access to free school meals by fall 2024 after New York moved to provide more funding to school districts to offset the cost, and the federal government had relaxed the poverty limits for participation in 2023, said Krista Hesdorfer, spokeswoman for Hunger Solutions New York, an Albany-based anti-hunger nonprofit.

The 10% who were left out were mostly on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley due to the high incomes in those regions skewing — and sometimes hiding — the need for food assistance in some communities, she said.

Last school year, about 600 schools across the state did not participate in universal free school meal programs, Hesdorfer said. About 43% of those schools, where about 135,000 students were enrolled, were on Long Island. 

Schools providing free meals to students will have a significant impact on some household budgets, particularly for families that are struggling financially but have household incomes that would be too high to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch under the previous application process, experts said.

New York is the ninth state to provide universal free school meals statewide.

A hidden need on Long Island

Port Washington has a low poverty rate, based on federal standards — 13% of students received free or reduced-price lunch on average over the last three years, Manuel said.

But poverty can sometimes be hidden, she said.

“You could have a big, beautiful house. But if you’ve lost your job, or someone is sick or anything, we don’t know everyone’s situation,” she said.

More people are challenged by the cost of living on Long Island, experts said.

In the first quarter of 2025, Long Island’s housing affordability index was 80, which means that a family earning the median income had 20% less income than was needed to qualify for a typical mortgage on a median-price, single-family home, said Adam Kamins, senior regional economist at Moody’s Analytics, an economic research provider whose parent company is headquartered in Manhattan.

Six years earlier, Long Island’s housing affordability index was 137, which means the typical household earned 37% more than needed to qualify for a mortgage.

In July, about 13 households per 1,000 were in foreclosure on Long Island, compared to fewer than 2 per 1,000 nationwide, according to RealtyTrac data analyzed by Moody’s.

“This means that many homeowners are stretched on Long Island,” Kamins said.

'Hungry kids can’t learn'

Last year, more than 400 schools on Long Island were already offering free meals because at least 25% of their students were disadvantaged, allowing the districts to qualify for state and federal reimbursements for food costs.

They’re seeing growing need among students, officials said.

The Middle Country School District, which has 14 schools, began offering universal free school meals to all students in the 2023-24 school year after meeting eligibility requirements, since more than 40% of its students were economically disadvantaged, said Sharon Dyke, food service supervisor.

“The demand from students since we became eligible and are participating in a free meal program has grown dramatically. ... And there’s a need there, just what I hear from parents and community members due to cost factors, and outside cost factors significantly rising all over,” she said.

Before universal free school meals, an average of 8% of the more than 9,000 students in the school district ate breakfast at schools. Now, the rate is 25%, she said.

South Huntington School District, which has about 5,700 students in seven schools, has been offering universal free school meals since the 2023-24 school year, said Sheila Buhse, school nutrition director.

While 41% of students qualified as being from economically disadvantaged households, about 70% participated in the free lunch program last year, she said.

"Hungry kids can't learn," she said. "You can give all the tests in the world, but if they're hungry, they're not going to pay attention."

The Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District, in which 17% of about 5,300 students are economically disadvantaged, didn’t meet the threshold to qualify to participate in universal free school meals program until the state changes this year, said Mary O’Meara, superintendent.

She expects there to be huge participation in the new program at her seven schools because of the convenience it offers and the hidden economic strain that families are experiencing.

Every year, the state will have to allocate funds to the budget process for the universal free school meals program, said Assemb. Jessica González-Rojas (D-Jackson Heights), who co-sponsored legislation.

She said she is confident that the program will have the legislature and governor’s support going forward.

Several parents told Newsday an expansion of the free lunch program will help many households.

“I think this will benefit a lot of families that maybe wouldn’t consider themselves to be in the need-based category or would be embarrassed to admit they were. And this will take any stigma away from it,” said Jana Kron, 47, a married mother of three and the president of the Parent-Teacher Association Council for the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District.

Long Island’s high taxes and cost of living warrant a free meals program in schools, said Port Washington resident Troy Palmer, 54, a married father of an adult son and teen daughter who is an incoming high school junior. 

Funding boost

New York State currently receives $2 billion in federal funding to support school meal programs.

During the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted national child nutrition waivers to school districts that allowed them to temporarily provide free meals to all students, regardless of household income, starting in spring 2020. Those waivers expired in June 2022.

Now, in order for a school or district to offer free meals, a certain percentage of students have to be receiving some sort of social services, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Hesdorfer said.

In 2023, USDA lowered the percentage minimum from 40% to 25% to make more schools eligible but didn’t provide more funding, she said.

In the 2024 state budget, New York implemented a state-level subsidy of $134.6 million for the federal Community Eligibility Provision that allowed all CEP-eligible schools to offer free meals without needing to find local funds to make the program financially whole, she said. The provision allows the nation's highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch to all students without collecting household applications.

That change allowed about 90% of the state’s students to participate in the program, she said.

That changed this year after Gov. Kathy Hochul in May signed the fiscal 2026 state budget, which expanded the universal free school meals program statewide, expanding eligibility for free meals to nearly 300,000 additional students.

The state budget provides $340 million for school meals, a $160 million, or 89%, year-to-year increase.

On average, students who eat breakfast at school score 17.5% higher on standardized tests and attend 1.5 more days of school annually than those who don’t, according to the School Nutrition Association in Arlington, Virginia.

Nationwide, nearly 1 in 5 American children are in households that don’t have consistent access to enough food, according to the association, which has been advocating for Congress to provide free school meals to children nationwide.

“If we want to make America healthy, school meals are a great way to achieve that. School lunch offers fruits, vegetables, milk, whole grains and lean protein to students every day. They’re well-balanced meals that are limited in calorie, sodium and fat,” said Diane Pratt-Weaver, spokeswoman at the School Nutrition Association.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.