By Kathleen Shannon - Producer, Contact - News
Big Sky Connection - Seventy-five schools across 27 districts in Montana would no longer be able to provide free school meals if the proposed $12 billion cuts to the federal Community Eligibility Provision are approved. Comments from Erin Hysom, senior policy analyst, Food Research and Action Center.
Click on the image above for the audio. A proposed $12 billion in cuts to federal school meal funding could impact 75 Montana schools serving more than 10,000 students. (Adobe Stock)
Kathleen Shannon
March 20, 2025 - Children's advocates are crying foul after House Republicans called for $12 billion in cuts to school meal programs, including the Community Eligibility Provision that allows high-poverty school districts to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of their ability to pay.
Erin Hysom, senior policy analyst with the Food Research and Action Center, said these funds are an important public investment, and added that no child can learn on an empty stomach.
"We hear from teachers all the time that when schools offer healthy school meals for all, behavior in the classroom improves. And their academics improve, and they're able to graduate and become more productive members of society," she said.
Some 75 Montana schools serving more than 10,000 students are projected to be impacted. The proposed cuts are part of a sweeping effort by Republicans to eliminate waste and inefficiency in the federal budget in order to pay for extending President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts and other policy priorities including mass deportations.
Hysom said the Community Eligibility Provision has already reduced inefficiency and red tape, and cuts would send school nutrition directors away from kitchens and back to their desks to deal with unnecessary paperwork, and added that the move would also impact farm-to-school initiatives that put money directly into the pockets of local farms and ranches.
"They're able to meet with local agricultural producers and bring in local products that not only improve the nutrition of the meal but also support the local economy," she explained.
In the 2022-2023 school year, nearly 90 K-through-12 schools and after-school programs, and 31 early childhood education sites, were registered with Montana Farm to School, according to the group's annual report. The program reached nearly 22,000 children.
Hysom worries the cuts could also mean the return of lunch line shaming.
"And it really creates this stigma in the cafeteria. And so when we offer school meals to all children at no charge, it reduces that stigma," he expressed.
