Child hunger leaders from across North Carolina — including representatives from school nutrition departments, food banks, churches, and state government — convened in Asheville this week for an annual conference hosted by the (CHI).

“​​In this room, we are a community united by one common value: Kids deserve access to healthy food, no matter what,” said Lou Anne Crumpler, director of the CHI.

During conference sessions, which spanned a variety of topics related to school meals, one topic loomed large: the ramifications of changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was cut significantly by the , signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2025.

This year also marked the first time the conference was held in western North Carolina — aligned with a CHI project, funded by , that will examine child hunger and strategies to reduce it in the wake of .

“Hurricane Helene tested our infrastructure and our spirits,” said Jehan Benton-Clark, vice president of grantmaking and strategy at Dogwood Health Trust. “Western North Carolina has been navigating workforce shortages, market instability, and uncertainty in public funding. And yet, this region also represents what is possible when people show up for one another.”

Preparing for historic SNAP cuts

More than in North Carolina, including roughly 600,000 children, receive SNAP benefits each month. In addition to alleviating hunger, SNAP — particularly in rural communities, where food benefits play a crucial role in sustaining local grocery stores.

SNAP brings roughly $2.8 billion in federal funds annually to North Carolina, generating a $4.2 billion impact, according to a from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS).

“SNAP is the backbone of food access in rural North Carolina — SNAP is making sure that all of rural North Carolina has grocery stores that remain open,” said Kate Hanson, executive director of .

The , also called H.R. 1,  reduced federal funding for SNAP by , which amounts to a roughly 20% cut —

Beginning in October 2026, the bill increases the share states have to pay toward SNAP’s administrative costs from 50% to 75%. According to the NC DHHS presentation, additional costs to cover this increase annually are $69 million for county governments and $16 million for the state.

Separately, beginning in October 2027, the bill requires states with a above 6% to cover a portion of food benefits. Historically, the federal government has covered 100% of SNAP food benefits. Based on North Carolina’s most recent SNAP payment error rate, the state’s cost share for SNAP benefits could total annually.

If the state and counties are unable to absorb these additional costs, SNAP could face reductions or end entirely, threatening food access for hundreds of thousands of households.

“I’ve been calling on the federal government to delay implementation of H.R. 1 until fiscal year 2030 so that we states and the counties have adequate time to reduce our error rates, and to hold states harmless for the errors that occurred during the chaotic period of the federal government shutdown,” said Gov. Josh Stein in a prerecorded statement. “We need the General Assembly to fully fund SNAP in the state budget because we cannot risk losing this program.”

During a keynote address, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson discussed the temporary that occurred during the federal government shutdown in November. Following a brought by more than 20 states, including North Carolina, the Trump administration to be used for partial SNAP payments.

Jackson commended the work of staff at NC DHHS — who he called “unsung heroes” — for their work around the clock to ensure there was not a gap in SNAP benefits. In February, the North Carolina Department of Justice , the Dogwood Award, to the NC DHHS SNAP team who worked to “pull off this miracle,” Jackson said.

“Had it not been for them … food would not have been on the table for over a million people across the state,” said Jackson.

During a panel on SNAP, Hanson announced a new campaign called and urged attendees to share the importance of SNAP with their elected officials.

How cuts to SNAP impact access to school meals

Cuts to SNAP are directly tied to school meals because they impact one of the key ways students access free school meals: direct certification.

School districts regularly receive data from the state that allows them to automatically enroll students in free school meals based on their household’s participation in SNAP. As participation in SNAP declines, fewer students will be directly certified for free meals, and schools will have to return to collecting applications, which are often difficult to get families to fill out. Participating in SNAP also automatically enrolls children in , a grocery benefit available in the summer.

According to Rachel Findley, senior director of the Office of Nutrition at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI), more than 850,000 students were on SNAP in June 2025 — and that figure is already declining.

“That number will continue to decrease, and what that means is these students are no longer categorically eligible for free meals,” Findley said. “Now, our hardworking school nutrition central office staff are going to have to get free and reduced applications completed by families who haven’t completed a free and reduced application — perhaps the entire time that child has been in school.”

Declines in SNAP participation will also impact the (CEP), which allows eligible schools to serve all students free breakfast and lunch without collecting applications. That’s because CEP eligibility and reimbursements are calculated using the (ISP), a formula based on the number of students directly certified for free meals, such as by participating in SNAP or Medicaid.

As ISPs decline, some schools may lose CEP eligibility entirely, and others may no longer be able to afford to operate CEP — both of which would reduce access to free school meals.

When SNAP benefits lapsed in November, Findley said calls poured in from superintendents and community members across the state trying to figure out how school meals could help get more food to students. Findley’s answer was: “I can’t recreate this program to do things it was never regulated to do.” She described this as an “aha moment” where people realized: What do we do now?

“It’s going to be catastrophic for our students in North Carolina if SNAP benefits expire. It’s going to be catastrophic for school nutrition programs who rely on that categorical eligibility in order to operate meals at no cost for students,” said Findley.

Learn more about how cuts to SNAP are tied to school meals in .

Working to secure free school meals for all students

The coalition, launched with support from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, advocates for all North Carolina public school students to have access to breakfast and lunch at no cost to their families. The coalition is co-led by the , , , and CHI.

“Feeding kids isn’t controversial — it’s foundational for a full and a healthy life,” said Merry Davis, director of Health Through Food at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation.

Advocates of free school meals for all, including ensuring access to meals that can support students’ learning and health, reducing stigma in the cafeteria, eliminating school meal debt, and more.

— California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont — have passed legislation that provides free school meals to all students. Dozens of other states, including North Carolina, have introduced bills that would do the same.

In April 2025, a “” bill was introduced in the General Assembly, sponsored by four Republican House members. Although the bill did not move forward, it garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, with more than 50 sponsors.

According to Marianne Weant, director of programs at the North Carolina Alliance for Health, support school meals for all.

During the conference, Chanel Jones, a teacher in the and 2025 Piedmont Triad Region Teacher of the Year, shared her perspective on the importance of school meals for all.

In her remarks, Jones said she cares about school meals for all students because she has seen firsthand how hunger impacts her students, including a lack of focus, irritability, or deciding to put their head down.

“Hunger is quiet, it is subtle. It is often invisible, and yet it changes everything about a child’s ability to fully show up in a classroom,” she said.

At Broadview Middle School, where Jones teaches, all students receive free breakfast and lunch.

“And I can say without hesitation that is how it should be for every student in North Carolina,” Jones said.

Feeding western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene

In September 2024, caused widespread destruction in western North Carolina. Two days after the storm, 25 of North Carolina’s 100 counties were .

MANNA FoodBank, which serves 16 western North Carolina counties and the Qualla Boundary, lost nearly everything in the storm, including both of its warehouses and all food, equipment, and computer systems.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Claire Neal, CEO of MANNA FoodBank, said they devised a plan to receive donations in the morning and distribute items in the afternoon. Without cell service, internet, or open roads, “we were really just kind of relying on the kindness and capacity of our local neighbors,” she said.

What came next was “the scariest moment” of her professional life when she arrived at the donation site in the morning and realized how little food would be available to distribute.

“But the truth is … people gave what they had. They pulled things out of their garages to give to their neighbors,” said Neal. “And then when the roads opened up, the rest of the country, and really the world, responded in amazing and beautiful ways.”

Another learning from the hurricane, Neal said, was realizing just how long recovery takes. The food bank only recently restored its freezer and cooler capacity — nearly 500 days after the storm — and is now beginning to rebuild its volunteer center and offices.

“I say all of that just to use MANNA as an example … many of our neighbors are still rebuilding,” said Neal. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is something that we can do together.”

Connecting students to locally grown food

Farm to school — which includes purchasing local food for school meals, educational activities related to agriculture and nutrition, and school gardening — offers numerous benefits for both farmers and students.

For farmers, selling to school districts opens new institutional markets that can provide additional revenue and strengthen local economies. For students, eating local products in school meals and snacks can improve access to nutritious, high-quality food and increase interest in topics related to food systems and agriculture.

During a panel, Danielle Raucheisen, program director at the (ASAP), discussed the organization’s efforts to connect local farmers interested in selling to schools with school nutrition directors and child care programs that want to buy local products.

“One way we’re doing this is holding grower-buyer meetings at food hubs here in western North Carolina,” said Raucheisen. “Food hub staff, child care staff, and farmers from the community will learn more about each other and the different systems they all operate in.”

One of the farms ASAP works with is in Fairview. The farm offers grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pork, and pasture-raised chickens.

Virginia Hamilton, director of operations at Hickory Nut Gap Farms, said the farm supplies up to 8,000 pounds of ground beef to local schools each month. Located on 70 acres, the farm also frequently hosts groups of students for field trips and tours, allowing children from all backgrounds to “be a farm kid for a couple hours,” Hamilton said.

During the panel, Hamilton outlined three ways to support farm to school:

• Secure continuous funding for farm to school: To build momentum, Hamilton said farm to school efforts need continuous funding rather than being susceptible to the decisions of donors or politicians. “Every time we have to restart or retool something, it slows down the progress that we’ve made together,” she said.
• Support independently owned regional food infrastructure: “We can’t feed students if we can’t get the food to the schools,” said Hamilton. Infrastructure needed for large scale distribution of local food includes refrigeration, transportation, trucking, processing and slaughter facilities, and packing infrastructure.
• Advocate for farmland preservation: NC FarmLink estimates that the state will lose nearly of farmland to development by 2040. “Farm to school or farm to table just doesn’t actually work without the farm part. When we lose farmland, we can’t get it back,” said Hamilton.

Increasing access to summer meals in rural communities

When school is out for the summer, efforts to feed children don’t end. In 2025, 5.3 million summer meals were served across the state to children ages 18 and under, an increase from the 4.2 million meals served in summer 2024, CHI.

Historically, all summer meals had to be eaten on-site, such as at a park or a library. This can create barriers to accessing summer meals, particularly in rural communities, where children may not have transportation to reach meal sites.

Beginning in the summer of 2023, new provided a solution: Summer meals sponsors in low-income, rural areas are now allowed to provide meals that can be eaten off-site, also called non-congregate meals or .

“SUN Meals To-Go are a game changer,” said Tamara Baker, project and communications director at CHI, adding that serving SUN Meals To-Go also provides a way for school nutrition departments to strengthen their financial position by receiving additional federal reimbursements.

Participation in SUN Meals To-Go has grown rapidly. According to CHI, there were eight sponsors participating in summer 2023, 33 sponsors participating in summer 2024, and 43 sponsors participating in summer 2025.

Two of those sponsors — and — shared their experiences with SUN Meals To-Go during the conference.

Nicole Caudill, director of community meals for Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, said implementing SUN Meals To-Go has resulted in rapid growth in the food bank’s summer meals efforts. In 2025, when the food bank increased SUN Meals To-Go operations, they served roughly 1,200 children per day through congregate meals, and another 1,000 children per day through SUN Meals To-Go — nearly doubling their reach.

“This really opens up doors for us to get meals into rural communities,” said Caudill, adding that more than 54,000 meals were served last year through SUN Meals To-Go alone.

Learn more about SUN Meals To-Go in Hickory City Schools in .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Anthony Bonner is facing looming uncertainty. A single dad living in Memphis, Tennessee, he fears he may soon no longer qualify for benefits through the  (SNAP)—aid that can be used like cash to purchase groceries. 

Until now, Bonner has been able to receive SNAP aid for himself and his son regardless of whether he was working. New regulations, part of Donald Trump’s , are about to change that. 

Under the , parents with minor children   must work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week to receive SNAP. Bonner’s son, Braylon, turns 14 in late February. The typical 13-year-old boy, who plays the trumpet and enjoys basketball and Roblox, may soon be the only one in his two-person household to qualify for food aid.

As a self-employed barber, Bonner’s hours fluctuate, leaving him unsure whether he’ll meet the 20-hour-a-week minimum. It’s a struggle acutely felt by single parents who are the sole earners in their household.

“Nobody should be worried about where the next meal is coming from,” said Bonner, who is already anticipating changes to how he shops and how his family eats. “I might have to really figure out how to stretch it,” he added, referring to the limited funds he said he’ll have for groceries.

With the new rules in place, around 2.4 million Americans could lose assistance within the next few years, according to estimates from the 

The new requirements fail to factor in people who don’t work in fields with consistent hours, said Ed Bolen of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.  “It can be a pretty harsh rule for people who work in jobs that don’t always have nice, solid, consistent 20 hours a week,” he said. 

Leighton Ku, the director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, told Prism, “There’s this sort of presumption that people who are getting SNAP benefits are undeserving people, and that the way you show that you are deserving is that you work.” 

It’s a perception familiar to Bonner.

“I get the sentiment that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. But our bodies need food. Our bodies need water, that’s a necessity,” he said. “Whether a person works or not, people should be able to eat. Families should be able to eat.”

In light of the new SNAP changes, Bonner recently took on a second job to boost his hours. As a community organizer for the nonprofit , he’s employed through a three-month pilot program. If his contract ends in March, he will likely no longer meet the SNAP work requirements.

Failure to meet new requirements for any three months in a three-year period will result in a loss of benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents under the age of 14.

About 1 in 8, or 41.7 million, Americans rely on SNAP, according to the latest figures from .

“You’re taking the people who not only, in many cases, have the fewest skills and the most difficulty getting jobs, but who are probably the most reliant on food assistance, and you’re saying specifically you can’t get it,” Ku said.

A  from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that among workers participating in SNAP, most have jobs with low wages. The study noted that low-paying jobs often have scheduling practices that contribute to workers’ unstable incomes.

Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, said the documentation needed in order to prove the required work hours will also be a challenge for some. “There’s a leap between being in compliance with this policy and proving that you are,” Bauer said.

Bauer and Ku said that the SNAP program has long faced bureaucratic hurdles, with excessive paperwork and documentation often preventing people from accessing benefits even when they qualify.

Da’jion Lymore, a single father of a 6-year-old, knows this firsthand. After moving from Missouri to Georgia, he was forced to restart his SNAP application. As a self-employed multimedia specialist, verifying his income has been a challenge. Now, he’s stuck in limbo without any SNAP benefits, even though he technically qualifies.

As he waits for his benefits to come through, Lymore works hard to stretch every ingredient for his son. 

“I make sure I use everything,” he said, “making sure he gets everything he needs, making sure he’s full with every meal. He’s a growing boy; some days it’s definitely surprising how much he eats.”

Bonner had a message for lawmakers who voted to restrict benefits. 

“Look at your constituents. Really look at us. Stop looking at the numbers, look at the people,” he said. “The policy that you’re making is really hurting us.”

Proponents of  for SNAP deny accusations of cruelty.  

“To me, work is not a punishment,” said Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “It’s sort of an expectation that we all have for ourselves and should have for the rest of society, if you’re able-bodied and don’t have caregiving responsibilities.”

But a  from the Economic Policy Institute found that for low-income adults, the main barriers to work are economic conditions outside of their control, and that work requirements in the past have failed to boost work in significant ways. 

“They have other barriers, like child care needs, and other problems in their lives that make it difficult to find work,” Ku said. 

That argument doesn’t persuade Rachidi. “You could argue if high school-age kids even need caregiving,” she said of the broadened work requirement for parents with children over the age of 14. 

Bonner is astonished by that assertion. “It’s ridiculous to expect a child to be able to suffice by themselves,” he said. “If I left [my son] alone and said go ahead, go fend for yourself, he’s not gonna make it. No 14-year-old kid is prepared.”

Rachidi predicted that tighter work requirements could expand to other safety net programs, such as housing assistance. 

Bonner, meanwhile, tries to talk to his son about how to best prepare for the uncertainty that lies ahead. “You may have to reach out and extend help to others,” he tells Braylon, knowing that people in his community may be facing similar uncertainties. In Georgia, Lymore said his neighbors have come together through Facebook groups to organize a market stand where people can leave food for each other, such as fresh eggs, produce, and bread. “The community definitely helps each other out in this time of need,” he said, filling the gaps the government no longer meets.

This has been an especially challenging year for Rosalba Ortega’s family. 

It’s been a cold, soggy winter in Bakersfield, and Ortega said her two granddaughters, ages 4 and 7, don’t have warm coats for their walk to school. Rent and food prices have been climbing, and as a farmworker, she’s struggled to find work in the fields. Last month’s delays to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — known in California as CalFresh — hit her grandkids at a time when her family is already struggling to put food on the table.

“There’s not much food for them,” said Ortega, in Spanish. “We have to look for low prices to buy for them. Sometimes the shelters give us food and that helps us a lot.”

Ortega said her family never had to rely on shelters and churches for food in the past, but this year has been different.

She isn’t alone. Disruptions to SNAP amid the government shutdown last month came at a time when California families say they are increasingly struggling to meet basic needs, including putting food on the table. 

Three in 10 Californians — and half of lower-income residents — say they or someone in their household has reduced meals or cut back on food to save money,  conducted in October by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Experts say that hunger and economic distress can affect students’ academic performance and determine whether they decide to attend — or finish — college.

“What’s happening out of school can have a huge impact on their ability to learn while they’re in school,” said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, director of TK-12 policy for EdTrust-West, a nonprofit that advocates for justice in education.

Research shows children struggle to pay attention at school when SNAP benefits run out mid-month, and families turn to ultra-processed foods, according to Martin Caraher, a food policy expert at City University London who has worked with the World Health Organization.

“You see it in behavior and performance at school,” Caraher said.

Federal cuts reduce food aid 

, passed by Congress in July, made cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in California. California’s low-income students and their families will likely see federally funded food support and health care shrink or vanish under the law.

This is coming at the same time that the Trump administration says it wants to  to “break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” a move that conservatives have long advocated since the creation of the Cabinet-level department in 1979.

Wheatfall-Lum said that the federal government has been making cuts and laying off staff at programs aimed at those who are already hardest hit by hunger and economic distress, such as migrant students, ,  and .

In its upcoming budget cycle, California should address the needs of families — both in and outside of education, she said. 

“What the state can do is make sure not to back away from programming in place to support these same students,” Wheatfall-Lum said.

EdTrust-West is advocating for the state to continue its commitment to a school funding formula that offers extra support to schools to help low-income and vulnerable students. Continuing to fund the community schools model is especially important, she said, because it is more responsive to families’ needs.

Families with young children hit hard

The number of struggling California parents with young children is especially alarming, researchers say. Nearly 3 in 4 families in California with children under age 6 report struggling with one or more basic needs, such as utilities, housing, food, health care and child care, according to the  survey conducted in July.

The project, conducted by Stanford University, has been surveying parents and caregivers with young children since November 2022. During that time, more than half of families surveyed said they struggled with basic needs, but over the last year, struggles with health care, food and utilities reached 73% — one of the highest levels since the survey began.

“It’s pretty stark data,” said Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. “Our research shows consistently that economic hardship translates subsequently into parent stress and distress, which . So if you want to know how kids are doing, these are not great trends.”

Fisher noted that supports rolled out during the pandemic, such as the expanded Child Tax Credit, increased SNAP and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) benefits, and stimulus checks, resulted in fewer parents of young children experiencing material hardship and emotional distress. As those benefits expired, that trend reversed, he said.

Researchers at Stanford asked caregivers to explain the biggest current challenges for their family in their own words. They shared those anonymized answers with EdSource.

“We’re working hard, but it’s not enough anymore,” wrote one caregiver in San Joaquin County. “We need our leaders to understand that even full-time workers can’t afford rent, health care, and food in this state. Wages haven’t kept up.”

One caregiver in San Bernardino County said they are worried about how the cuts from Trump’s budget will affect their Medi-Cal and CalFresh benefits.

“They might get cut because the [Big Beautiful Bill] passed,” the caregiver wrote.

College students struggle with basic needs

College students are also struggling — and unlike K-12 students who receive breakfast and lunch at school, they don’t have guaranteed meals.

Typically, students come into Long Beach State’s Basic Needs center because of a specific crisis, such as losing their job, said the center’s director, Danielle Muñoz-Channel. But now, students tend to come in just because they’re getting squeezed all around by rent, utilities and food prices.

“They can’t pinpoint any one factor,” she said. “We ask what changed, and they say, ‘Nothing, I just can’t afford it anymore.’”

Muñoz-Channel said she’s monitoring whether federal cuts to CalFresh and Medi-Cal benefits, such as tightened work requirements, could affect students and the future workforce. She said students need to have their basic needs met so that they can focus on school — otherwise they risk not graduating on time or not finishing their degree at all.

“I’m worried about how it will affect our most needy students who use college to break generational cycles of poverty,” she said.

Maia Jackson should have been cranking out a research paper for her communications class. Instead, she found herself queuing up at a food pantry to secure groceries for her household amid the nation’s longest government shutdown. 

“I walked out with a shopping cart full of food,” the 25-year-old college senior said. “I could barely carry it all. I got cereal. I got some frozen meat, hamburger buns. I got a bag of black beans, and then I got a bag of rice.”

Finding a package of chicken strips, a dish she knew her picky 2-year-old daughter would actually eat, almost made her cry, Jackson said. She expects the combination of perishable, bagged and canned foods to last them a month. By then, she hopes her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments — widely known as food stamps — will have resumed.

On November 1, SNAP benefits ground to a halt during the federal budget impasse that began a month earlier, with President Donald Trump’s administration refusing to fully fund these payments, a matter now tied up in court. Even as the Senate has reached a framework deal that leaves lawmakers and the White House a step closer to ending the shutdown, the disruption in benefits has revealed how fragile the social safety net is for vulnerable Americans. That includes single parents and young adults experiencing food insecurity, a problem that occurs when people lack regular access to the nourishment needed to sustain their health. 

An estimated , including parents like Jackson, who attends North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo. For such students, a delayed SNAP payment isn’t a mere hiccup, but a serious setback that can imperil their education, their health and stability for their children, experts contend.

“It’s such a distraction for me as a single mom in school,” Jackson said. “I don’t have any bandwidth to give to trying to find food at pantries.”

She tried to minimize the time she spent at the food pantry last week by making an appointment first, but she was still one of a couple of dozen people in line. The visit prevented her from completing her research paper by its due date, which will likely result in her grade being docked. Jackson, who has so far maintained a 4.0 grade point average, isn’t happy about that prospect, but with her family members an hour away and her child’s father mostly out of the picture, she had to prioritize food over her education.

No college student should have to choose between a basic need and school, said Deborah Martin, a senior policy associate for The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit that advocates for college access and affordability. 

“A lot of students have to make these daily tough decisions where they’re wondering, ‘Where am I going to get my next meal from?’ instead of focusing on homework, on classwork,” Martin said. “We know that when students have these unmet basic needs such as food insecurity, they’re more likely to struggle academically, less likely to persist from semester to semester, and in some cases, may even drop out of college altogether.”

Roughly . For the most marginalized students, the risk of quitting school due to food insecurity may be even greater. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan federal agency that provides fact-based information to Congress, reported last year that about — meaning their parents don’t financially support them, they didn’t begin college immediately after high school or they are caring for dependents. Moreover, the from the Hope Center, a research center at Temple University focused on the food, housing and health of college students, found that around three-quarters of parenting, Black and . 

Most of these students, the GAO discovered, do not sign up for services like SNAP, and those who do may hesitate to discuss their food insecurity. As a mom and a slightly older student who works part-time, Jackson has felt largely alone on campus as SNAP benefits have paused. Her classmates don’t appear to share her anxiety over the shutdown, if they know about it at all. 

“A lot of the kids that I’m in class with, they’re not in the same circumstance,” Jackson said. “It’s weird to see a lot of people just carrying on as usual.”

Since most of her classmates — about an even percentage of NDSU students are women and men — are childfree and on the school meal plan, she doesn’t want to be a “downer” by bringing up her difficulties. For the same reason, she didn’t explain to her professor why her paper was late. “I didn’t want to tell him, ‘Oh, I couldn’t write it because I was standing in the food pantry line’ because it just sounds so sad,” she said. “What’s he supposed to say? I don’t want him to feel bad for me. I don’t want to be pitied.”

But faking normal could come at a high cost for college students who don’t reach out for help. Martin fears these young adults will resort to using high-interest payment plans or acquire credit card debt just to afford groceries.

“The longer that students and other SNAP participants don’t receive their funds, this is just more days that students are going to have to make these difficult decisions,” she said.

Some college administrators are taking action. When the shutdown began, Compton College President and CEO Keith Curry contacted Everytable, a food company that offers inexpensive made-from-scratch meals via carryout storefronts and a delivery service. The college, about 18 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, has partnered with Everytable for seven years to provide all students — — with one nutritious free meal on weekdays. 

The federal government crisis prompted Curry and Everytable CEO Sam Polk to scale up that program so SNAP-recipient and economically disadvantaged students didn’t suffer during the shutdown.

“We need to do something. Can we split the cost?” Curry recalled asking Polk. “I think if we double the meals, at least they get another meal for the day.”

On November 5, Compton College’s most underprivileged students began getting two free meals per day, or 10 per week. The need for such an intervention there is substantial: A 2025 basic needs survey of students found that 81 percent of them experience at least one form of insecurity related to a basic need. That includes signs of food insecurity such as skipping meals, reducing meal sizes or fearing they will run out of food. Most Compton College students are moderately food insecure, the survey revealed, indicating persistent hardship. Women make up .

“Right now, students have other stress, and what we’re doing to them is adding more stress,” Curry said of the shutdown. “They still want to do well in classes, but now they don’t have food.” 

Together, Compton College and Everytable have the resources to supply students with 10 weekly meals for a month, Curry said. The students are deeply grateful for the additional provisions, according to Dee Garrett, who oversees Everytable’s operation at the college.

“What better way to start your studies than with a stomach that’s full?” Garrett asked. “You don’t have to think about, ‘Oh, my God, my stomach. I can’t concentrate or focus.’”

Asked what impact he hopes the scaled-up program makes, Curry said he’s more interested in letting students know they’re not alone.  

“It’s not about the impact. It’s about our students knowing that we were there for them during this time,” he said. “In our community, when students need us most, we have to step up and be there for them, and they’re never going to forget that.”

Martin applauds the efforts of colleges and K-12 schools, which have connected students and their families to food banks, to curb food insecurity during the shutdown. But she also advocates for long-term policies to ensure students have enough food to eat. That includes the , proposed legislation to remove the barriers that prevent economically disadvantaged college students from utilizing benefits generally — not just during the current crisis. 

However, Martin continued, “the most important thing that we can do right now in this moment is for these SNAP benefits to be fully funded and for them to go out to students as soon as possible.”

Back in Fargo, Jackson has refocused her attention on her coursework now that she has a month’s worth of food. Still, she worries about the people who couldn’t make it to a pantry or that the government will cut other social services she needs. She currently earns $400 monthly working part time as an academic journal editor. The job, which she performs remotely, allows her to attend school and be her daughter’s primary caretaker when the toddler is not in day care. 

“If they cut child care, if they cut these programs I rely on, I would have to drop out of school,” Jackson said. “But I’m trying to give my daughter a better life than that.”

Jackson is majoring in university studies with a pre-law emphasis, a dramatic shift from her life before motherhood when she dropped out of school and struggled with addiction. Getting pregnant inspired her to undergo a transformation, which she largely credits to the Jeremiah Program. The national nonprofit provides single mothers with support for college, child care and housing, and it recently started a campaign to raise $190,000 to cover essential needs for families who have lost SNAP and other benefits because of the shutdown. The organization estimates that single-parent families represent nearly a third of families in the United States, with 80 percent of those headed by mothers.  

Jackson has been deeply disturbed to see the misperceptions that abound about mothers like herself. She’s encountered online commenters who have characterized SNAP recipients as “welfare queens.”

If she could confront such individuals in person, Jackson would emphasize how much value mothers add to society. “And on top of it… we are all in school and working, too,” she said. “The insinuation is that we’re just scammers, freeloaders, when, in reality, I’m working very hard every day to hopefully not need these supports.”

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of . .

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, released guidance Thursday to states to proceed with . 

Child and nutrition advocates are glad to see it resume, but have concerns about the multiple steps needed to relaunch SNAP — particularly around states’ ability to quickly arrange payments through third-party vendors. 

Some 42 million Americans — including 16 million children, the elderly, veterans and those with disabilities — rely on SNAP for food.

“This is a unique situation,” said Claire Borzner, director for Share Our Strength and its No Kid Hungry campaign. “There has never before been a pause in SNAP payments or a recommendation for partial benefits.”

Borzner said states that issued incomplete payouts will need to ensure participants receive the remaining allotment.

The Trump administration first threatened to withhold SNAP benefits entirely for the month of November and then twice went to the U.S. Supreme Court in its legal quest to pay out only some benefits. It also moved to claw back money from states that went ahead and distributed 100% of benefits to their needy residents last week during a window of time when the USDA was authorizing it. 

SNAP benefits have historically not been cut off during prior shutdowns and President Donald Trump faced criticism that he tried to leverage Americans’ hunger— 1 in 8 receive SNAP benefits — to break Democrats’ opposition to ending the shutdown. 

Crystal FitzSimons, president at the Food Research & Action Center, said states are moving quickly to resume aid, though she understands some families might not feel relief until it arrives. 

“It is very fluid and moving in real time,” she said, speaking of getting the program up and running again. “The delays have created so much stress for the people who really need food on the table. I totally understand why they would be worried, but the shutdown has ended and as soon as people see the money in their card, they should be able to take a deep breath and move forward.”

But Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at , an early childhood advocacy group, said “there has been a lot of undermining of the basic government infrastructure necessary” to get SNAP operational again. 

Boteach noted families have been suffering needlessly since the start of the month, making tough choices about whether to eat or pay rent and utility bills.  

“These are the conversations American families have been having around the kitchen table,” she said, calling SNAP a miracle and crediting it for preventing starvation-levels of hunger in this country since the 1970s. 

Part of the confusion about when the aid might arrive centers around the uneven distribution of benefits. Stewart Fried, a principal attorney at OFW Law in Washington, D.C., and an expert on SNAP, said 19 states have already issued full November payments — the ones the administration told to “undo” those actions after the fact — while another 18 delivered partial allotments. 

Fried, who has represented many SNAP-eligible retailers on a wide variety of issues before the , Congress and in the federal courts, said states that issued partial payouts might need at least a week to disperse the remaining monies. The 13 states that sent out no money in November may face the easiest turnaround time.

“For states that have not issued any November benefits, that process should be quicker and benefits will hopefully be issued in the next few days,” he said. 

Meanwhile, low-income families have been across the country all month while also relying on schools to help fill the nutrition gap for their kids, child advocates say. 

Ian Coon, spokesman for the Alliance for Education, an independent, local education fund that supports Seattle Public Schools, said his group set aside $150,000 for grocery store gift cards in October. The school community raised an additional $70,000 in recent weeks to bridge any further gaps as kids head home for the holidays, some to empty cupboards.

The alliance has already distributed $154,000 in funding for kids and families in need.

“There have been increased donations to food pantries,” he said. “Nearly every local business has a food collection bin in the door and restaurants are still providing community meals or fundraising. This isn’t the time to standby. It’s the time to act and we’re so grateful to have the support of our community.”

Erika Roberson, senior policy associate at The Institute for College Access & Success, a research and advocacy group that addresses issues like food insecurity in secondary education, said she’s glad for the 1.1 million college undergraduates who rely on SNAP. 

“When students receive their benefits, they will worry less about where their next meal will come from and will be able to focus on their studies,” she said, adding those who wrestle with food insecurity are more likely to struggle academically, taking on extra hours of work and leaving them less time to attend class. “It’s a huge disadvantage.”

SNAP benefits have been ensured for a full year and therefore won’t be subject to disruption when to fund the government that was approved this week runs out in January. Recipients also still face the effects of the $186 billion eliminated from SNAP as part of the administration’s landmark signed into law this summer.

Borzner called the most recent chaos around SNAP a manufactured crisis. 

“Families should not have had to go through this pain,” she said, adding that the government had the resources to pay benefits in full. “This program could have continued to operate for November as it normally does. None of this needed to happen.”

The Trump administration that issued full food assistance benefits to their needy residents to “undo” those actions. Officials in more than full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits on Friday before the U.S. Supreme Court halted that action late in the day.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Nov. 8 notice that it wants those SNAP funds taken back is the latest development in a chaotic legal fight playing out during the prolonged government shutdown. Advocates say the delays and ongoing uncertainty are causing severe hardship for the roughly 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, the elderly, veterans and those with disabilities, who rely on SNAP for food.

The states are now warning of “catastrophic operational disruptions,” according to , if the federal government does not reimburse them for the money sent to recipients before the high court’s temporary stay was issued and while the USDA was telling states that it “will complete the processes necessary” on Friday to make full SNAP funding available to them.

President Donald Trump initially threatened to withhold SNAP benefits entirely for the month of November and then agreed to release partial benefits — first putting that number at 50% and then raising it to 65% — only after being successfully sued by two groups of plaintiffs, including more than 20 states, the District of Columbia and three governors and a coalition of cities, religious groups and nonprofits. The coalition plaintiffs then returned to court to argue that the federal government should be required to fully fund SNAP and a federal judge in Rhode Island agreed, ordering the administration to do so Thursday.

The administration appealed the order to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and when it did not get quick action, petitioned the Supreme Court for a temporary stay. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson . The move gives the circuit court in Boston more time to decide whether the lower court was correct in ordering the Trump administration to not only tap into contingency money set aside to keep SNAP going during government emergencies, but other funding sources needed to deliver benefits at 100%.

More than 42 million Americans who rely on federal food assistance — 16 million of them children — will apparently get their full benefits this month, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture memo sent to states Friday.

The , obtained by several news outlets, was the latest pendulum swing in an ongoing legal battle over whether the Trump administration will be forced to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown.

Lawyers for the administration went before an appeals court Friday to try and overturn an order issued a day earlier by U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell saying it must provide full SNAP benefits by Friday. 

While Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary of Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, was informing states that the USDA “will complete the processes necessary to make funds available,” according to the memo, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance were voicing their opposition to complying with the federal court. 

Vanced because “you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democrat government shutdown.” Trump cited the country’s need to remain “very liquid” in the event of “catastrophes, wars” as a reason why the funding would not be forthcoming.

Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP program director at , condemned the back-and-forth and the larger dispute that has left vulnerable children and families hanging in the balance.

“It is unconscionable that the administration is using 42 million Americans as chess pieces that are going hungry,” she said. “Retailers rely on these benefits, and communities and states are being forced to step up, all because the president is holding back food assistance to use as leverage in ending the government shutdown.”

While the administration was pushing the federal appeals court for a decision by 4 p.m. Friday, several hours later none had been issued. It was unclear what the president might do if the appeals court ruled in its favor. 

Advocates say the continuing legal dispute is wreaking havoc. 

“This is absolutely devastating,” said Erika Roberson, senior policy associate at The Institute for College Access & Success, a research and advocacy group that addresses issues like food insecurity in secondary education. “Food should not be politicized: Everyone has a human right to food.” 

McConnell also said on Thursday that with his previous order to fund SNAP. 

The government agreed last week to a partial payout using U.S. Department of Agriculture contingency monies, but the judge said it must tap $4 billion in additional resources to ensure families receive their full November allotment. 

“People have gone without for too long,” McConnell said . 

Ian Coon, spokesman for the Alliance for Education, an independent, local education fund that supports Seattle Public Schools, called the judge’s initial and subsequent orders to fund SNAP a critical win for families. 

“Our kids can’t continue to lose when adults don’t get along,” he said. “The uncertainty and distrust this has already sown will last a while and we are worried about what it will take to get this life-altering benefit back up and running in full.”

His group created an emergency food aid plan that would distribute up to $100 in gift cards to assist families in need. 

“As an organization committed to advancing educational outcomes,” he added, “we know that students cannot focus on learning when they are hungry or when families are forced to make impossible choices between groceries, rent, and other essentials.”

The USDA announced earlier this week that SNAP recipients would receive , up from an estimate of 50% last week. The greater percentage came after Trump to say he would defy the court order and halt SNAP altogether until the government reopened. The White House press secretary later walked back those comments. 

Friday’s memo was the first indication that the government was willing to fully fund SNAP during what is now the longest government shutdown in history. SNAP benefits have historically not been cut off during prior shutdowns.

Trump’s landmark , signed into law this summer, eliminated $186 billion from SNAP. Eligibility requirements also grew more stringent, which affects the number of students who automatically qualify for free and reduced-price meals at school and the number of schools that can offer universal free meals to all their students. 

currently provide universal school meals. Voters in Colorado this week approved two ballot measures to preserve the state’s free school meals program, including one that will .

The White House said Tuesday afternoon that the administration would partially fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that feeds some 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, hours after President Donald J. Trump threatened to withhold the money and defy a court order.

Multiple news outlets reported that press secretary Karoline Leavitt , saying the administration would comply with last week’s ruling that it could not cut off all funding to the federal food assistance program known as SNAP .

On Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump wrote: “SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

The president’s post sparked anger and confusion among advocates Tuesday, who said they’ve been working with the federal government to get the critical aid flowing. Gina Plata-Nino, interim director for SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, called Trump’s apparent reversal on providing partial funding cruel and intentionally harmful to needy families.

“He has to follow the law,” she said of the president. “The agencies are already working on this. USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] already agreed to comply and issued the memo guidance form last night.”

Last week, two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration could not withhold SNAP funding. The government then agreed to a partial payment using contingency monies, but said it would not tap other sources to fully cover the food assistance program. Advocates say families can expect to receive just 50% of their typical allotment for the month of November. And it’s unclear when the aid will arrive.

Meanwhile, multiple outlets reported Tuesday that one of those judges, U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, has to consider a new motion that would force the USDA to provide the full $8 billion needed for November benefits.

Two federal judges on Friday ruled against President Donald Trump’s move to suspend food stamp benefits starting Nov. 1 amid the month-long government shutdown, with each noting contingency funding is available. 

It’s unclear if the Trump administration plans an appeal or how quickly food assistance can flow to the 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Sixteen million of them are children, putting pressure on schools to address their needs.

U.S. District Judge of Rhode Island ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute the funds in a timely manner using contingency money. 

“SNAP benefits have never, until now, been terminated,” McConnell “And the United States has in fact admitted that the contingency funds are appropriately used during a shutdown, and that occurred in 2019.”

In a separate ruling, U.S. District Judge of Massachusetts gave the Trump administration until Monday to decide whether it will provide at least some food stamp benefits to recipients. She indicated the suspension of SNAP benefits is contrary to law. 

She found fault with the defendants’ assertion that the U.S Department of Agriculture is prohibited from funding SNAP because Congress has not enacted new appropriations for the current fiscal year.

“To the contrary, defendants are statutorily mandated to use the previously appropriated SNAP contingency reserve when necessary and also have discretion to use other previously appropriated funds,”  

Despite the judges’ rulings, many advocates say some kids will go hungry in November because the process for obtaining the aid consists of multiple steps — some of which have already been missed for those who receive help at the start of every month. 

On Oct. 28, more than 20 states, the District of Columbia, and three governors for suspending November’s SNAP benefits. They called the move unprecedented and illegal.

“SNAP is one of our nation’s most effective tools to fight hunger, and the USDA has the money to keep it running,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, with the president, said in a statement. “There is no excuse for this administration to abandon families who rely on SNAP, or food stamps, as a lifeline. The federal government must do its job to protect families.”

Gina Plata-Nino, interim director for SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, said her organization encouraged the USDA to tap into its contingency and reserve funds to save children and families from going hungry. By refusing this opportunity, at least some recipients will likely miss their allotment. 

Plata-Nino said states were directed by federal officials on Oct. 10 to stop reporting critical data — a list of household eligibility and food stamp allocation — information they send directly to electronic benefit transfer contractors, who are key in distributing the aid. 

“Even in the best-case scenario, if the judge says, ‘We rule in your favor and we demand that this happens right now,’ and the Trump administration doesn’t appeal … the process of getting benefits into recipients’ accounts would take time,” she said. 

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, executive director of EdTrust New York, a statewide education policy and advocacy organization, said it’s clear that serious damage has already been done to what is an essential program. 

“We know from what has happened so far with this administration that when they make announcements like this, it does have a direct impact on programs and the ability to sustain them,” she said. “For example, there was an announcement of federal cuts to Head Start very early on in the administration, and the program actually shut down. It’s still recovering. So, we can’t predict the chaos that is spread by this most recent effort to cut benefits.”

Benjamin-Gomez praised New York for declaring a state of emergency on the matter: Gov. Kathy Hochul is committing an additional $65 million in new state funds for emergency food aid to support state food banks. But not all states will do the same.  

Ian Coon, spokesperson for Alliance for Education, an independent, local education fund that supports Seattle Public Schools, said his organization has already earmarked funding to bridge the gap for those in need. 

He said the Alliance decided in late October to fund $150,000 in gift cards to area food stores for families in crisis. He said school staff will help identify children in need and offer the assistance of $25, $50 or $100. The $150,000 comes from a reserve fund.  

“We are fully aware it’s not a long-term solution, but we needed to do something,” Coon said. 

Carolyn Vega, associate director of policy analysis for Share Our Strength, which runs No Kid Hungry, said her organization also does not predict an abrupt or smooth end to the suffering of American families who rely on these benefits. 

“We are not holding our breath for the money to start flowing today,” she said. “Kids can’t wait: Families have to eat every single day. We know from our extensive work with schools that teachers already see kids show up to school hungry on Monday mornings. We can only imagine how much worse that would be if a family came in and were expecting to see benefits on Saturday and they did not. It’s an unbelievable strain for food banks. We know that schools will be an important resource for many families, but they can’t fill in the gap.”

In fiscal year 2023, nearly 80% of SNAP households included either a child, an elderly person or a non-elderly individual with a disability, . About 39% of SNAP participants were children that year. 

A statement on the federal agency’s website blames Senate Democrats for the shutdown. 

“They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance,” . 

The department declined to comment on the judges’ rulings.

The one in six Oregonians who rely on federal SNAP food and nutrition assistance to pay for groceries each month will be left with nothing in November due to the ongoing government shutdown, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Department of Human Services.

The federal government funds nearly all the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, with states administering the program. But USDA to states on Oct. 10 that they should not distribute November assistance if Congress’ lapse in appropriations continued, because there would be insufficient funding to send to states for their program beneficiaries.

On Monday, the USDA notified states that there would be no November funding, and Oregon’s human services agency on Monday notified recipients they would not be receiving the assistance after Oct. 31.

Oregon’s acting human services director, Liesl Wendt, said in a statement that they would keep SNAP recipients informed throughout the shutdown about any further delays or lapses in assistance beyond November.

“In the meantime, during this time of uncertainty, we encourage everyone who receives SNAP to familiarize themselves with the free food resources in their community and to make a plan for what they will do if they do not receive their food benefits in November on time” Wendt said.

More than 42 million Americans, and more than 750,000 Oregonians, rely on the program. Among Oregon recipients, more than one-quarter are children and nearly 20% are adults 65 and older.

“This is a cruel and unacceptable situation. President Trump should focus on feeding families by negotiating a deal with Congress, not doing other things like deploying troops in American cities on taxpayers’ dime,” Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Trump has said he would ensure back pay to federal immigration and border police, Transportation Security Administration police, Secret Service and FBI agents when the shutdown ends. He and his administration have not been clear about what assistance, if any, will be offered retroactively to SNAP beneficiaries when the shutdown ends.

USDA has already in tariff revenue into its Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, through Oct. 31.

The shutdown started Oct. 1 after Congress failed on a short-term government spending bill.

Senate Democrats have pushed for negotiations to extend enhanced tax credits meant to help Americans afford health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, which are set to expire by the end of the year.

Republicans have insisted on passing a short-term government funding bill that does not address rising insurance premiums.

The GOP mega bill passed by Congressional Republicans in July includes $200 billion in cuts to SNAP during the next decade, along with new work and income requirements that are likely to cause about 2 million Americans to lose assistance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.

Talk of government shutdowns has become common in Washington, but Congress is usually able to avoid them by passing short-term funding bills to keep money flowing.

Not this time.

The federal government ceased operating at midnight Wednesday morning, adding more uncertainty into the nation’s education system after eight months of cancelled grants, funding freezes and the Trump administration’s moves to take back money Congress already approved.

For most schools, disruptions would be minimal in the short term. The U.S. Department of Education has released a saying that Title I funds for low-income schools and special education funding, expected on Wednesday, would be available as expected. But districts that rely on , such as those near military installations or national parks, could face cash flow problems. Nationally, nearly 1,100 districts, responsible for about eight million students, are eligible for those funds.

“In some cases, they need this funding for basic services such as keeping the buildings open, the lights on and the buses running,” said Tara Thomas, government affairs manager at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. 

A shutdown that drags on for a few weeks or more could trigger additional funding problems for Head Start and school nutrition programs. 

Congress hasn’t completed its budget process on time since 1996, meaning that it on temporary funding measures to keep the government operating. In March, President Donald Trump signed that kept funding at 2024 levels. But that expired at midnight and lawmakers were unable to pass another continuation. The House passed a short-term funding bill that would have given members until Nov. 21 to finalize fiscal year 2026 budgets for all federal agencies. But Democrats are pushing for to offset the cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” They also want to extend tax cuts that lower the cost of insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act. Leaders of the two chambers met with the president, but made no progress. 

“If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Monday.

Districts and programs serving young children and families have based their expectations of this shutdown on “past precedent,” noted Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at Zero to Three, a nonprofit advocacy organization focusing on infants and toddlers. But this administration is determined to make the federal government smaller. Trump has already signed one rescission package and wants to for teacher quality efforts toward its civics initiative centered on  the nation’s 250th birthday. 

“We are not in times that have preceded us” Boteach said.

One difference is that the administration, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, could seize on the pause in operations to further its goal of downsizing the government. 

“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” from the Oval Office Tuesday. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want.”

On Sept. 24, the Office of Management and Budget agencies to consider additional mass layoffs of employees. Federal employee unions have already filed a lawsuit over the plan.

“Only time will tell,” if McMahon or any other agency head acts on that suggestion, said Rachel Snyderman, managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. ”But this is certainly …new information this year.”

Here are some of the ways a shutdown could impact schools and families:

Head Start

Six grantees serving roughly 6,500 children are expecting a new round of funding Wednesday, according to Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. So far, none plan to close right away, but that could change if the shutdown lasts more than a few weeks. Beginning Nov. 1, additional grantees could be in the same position.

If programs don’t close, or if the shutdown is resolved quickly, even talk of disruption can mean children miss out on learning, Boteach added. In January, for example, the administration said Head Start was exempt from a . But over 50 programs serving more than 21,000 children were still locked out of payment systems and some had to close temporarily.

“There were still parents who were confused as to whether or not they could bring their kids and centers who were confused about whether or not they could pay employees,” she said. “There’s what technically happens, and then there’s fear, confusion and chaos.” 

Many low-income families who qualify for Head Start or Early Head Start also receive nutrition assistance through the program. 

“We like to think program by program, but really it’s about the human being at the center of all of it,” Boteach said.

The National Association of Counties that states may have to “rely on their own funding streams” to make sure families receive WIC benefits.

School Meals and SNAP

School nutrition programs rely on monthly reimbursements from the federal government to pay staff and purchase food and other supplies, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association, which represents district programs.

In its , the Department of Agriculture said it has enough funds on hand to pay schools back for September and October meals. The agency will also keep a “limited number” of staff on hand to oversee operations. 

Families who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, should also receive benefits as usual and should not be affected if the shutdown lasts no more than a week. 

The last shutdown, which also occurred when Trump was in office, lasted 35 days over the 2018 Christmas holidays into late January. 

Education Department

In a shutdown, the majority of federal employees stop working. While some essential staff will remain available at the Education Department, civil rights investigations would be put on hold. A shutdown also halts the department’s work on any regulations or guidance being prepared, and states and districts won’t be able to reach anyone if they have questions about grants or other programs.

Work currently in progress includes gathering feedback on of the Institute for Education Sciences. Christy Wolfe, director of K-12 policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, noted that just last week, the department awarded $500 million through its Charter School Program. 

“Schools that were planning on opening with those funds on a certain timeline,” she said, “may have to be delayed.”

The American Federation of Teachers published the findings Sept. 10 after research company Grow Progress 705 members about classroom expenses and federal education policy changes. The union also collected personal insights about student hunger, an issue that have found is prominent at school and could be impacted by impending to food assistance programs.

“Every year, public school educators dig into their own pockets to help their students get the education they deserve,” union President Randi Weingarten said in a . “They pay for books, decorations, paper, pencils and, yes, even food.”

Families that deal with can’t afford enough groceries to meet their needs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most recent available shows that nearly 18% of households with children across the nation struggled with food insecurity in 2023.

Research the national nonprofit in March found that 92% of teachers have taken some type of action to address student hunger at school. Nearly half personally provide food in the classroom, while 29% have purchased food for students to eat outside of class.

“Families are struggling to put food on the table for their kids for a variety of reasons, whether that’s the rising cost of food or the worsening job market or limited resources,” said Sara Steely, a No Kid Hungry spokesperson. “The entire education system is stronger when kids are well-fed, and teachers are up against a lot — food shouldn’t be something they have to think about.”

In the AFT survey, a Florida union member said students need food at school because of a lack of it at home, while another teacher in Kentucky said many students “are starving because of lack of food availability.”

Ann Walkup, a Rhode Island physics teacher and AFT member, said she and many educators at her high school buy food like granola bars, crackers and water bottles.

“Most of us keep some sort of stash somewhere,” she told The 74. “There are definitely some teachers who have a situation like [food insecurity] with some of their students. We’re supposed to refer them to the office, and there’s a system the school has to support them, but admittedly, it is just easier to be like, ‘Hey, I’ve got an extra granola bar.’ ”

Steely said child hunger is about to become even more complicated with the recent cuts to the , which helps about 42 million people afford groceries each month. In July, the Trump administration approved a tax bill that will from SNAP funding through 2034.

Once the SNAP cuts are fully implemented, roughly 2.4 million people are projected to lose food stamp benefits in an average month, according to estimates from the .

Students automatically qualify for free or reduced-price lunch if their families receive SNAP benefits, Steely said. Parents will have to return to filling out paperwork to get their children free meals at school — something that is an obstacle for people who have language barriers or are embarrassed about their income, she said.

“As we see these SNAP and Medicaid cuts play out and the impacts to free school meals access, I could see that burden falling to the teachers,” Steely said. 

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, told The 74 that student hunger continues to be a critical issue for members of the nation’s largest teachers union. She said schools already felt the impact of cuts this spring, when the in funding for districts and child care facilities to purchase food from local farms for student meals.

“We’re seeing more kids coming to school hungry,” she said. “We spend money buying snacks, we send things home to families in book bags. We do that because, at least as educators, we can’t look away.”

Barren cupboards at home during the summer. Empty stomachs at school in the fall. Advocates predict that may soon be the reality for many of the nation’s children after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which calls for dramatic cuts in federal food aid.

Signed by President Donald Trump after squeaking through the House and Senate, the massive bill will reduce funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, by roughly — approximately 20% — between 2025 and 2034. And new rules are expected to make it harder for needy families to obtain the aid. 

The result: Some will lose at least some benefits, including 800,000 children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.

The controversial bill, which delivers tax breaks to the , comes just a few months after the agriculture department slashed from programs that allowed schools and food banks to buy locally produced goods. 

And it arrives at the same time that 13 GOP-led states, including Texas, are , rejecting federal dollars to feed children during the months when they are most vulnerable, citing .

Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, said the cuts and eligibility changes to SNAP — the deepest since its as the food stamp program — put students’ well-being and education at risk. 

“Children’s learning will be disrupted and their health will be jeopardized,” she said. “It’s really going to be devastating. Every state will be affected by this.”

Currently, people without dependents are limited to three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 80 hours per month and continue to do so until age 54. The new law . 

Under current rules, SNAP recipients responsible for a child under 18 are exempt from the work rule. The new bill .

Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director for the at The Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank, said the work-related rules, which require extensive documentation, will pose an administrative hurdle some families might not overcome. 

“A lot of people who get cut off from these services are people who are working but don’t have the time or energy to fill out all of this paperwork,” she said. 

But perhaps the most significant change to SNAP is a shift in financial responsibility for the program from the federal government to the states. All 23 Democratic governors warned Congress in June that they were unprepared to shoulder this new — some noted they from the program completely — and food banks are  

Child and family health advocates were relieved to see at least one of their fears was not realized: The , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, was expected to lose billions. Those changes were not included in the bill’s final version.

SNAP eligibility among children is a trigger for schools to provide free meals. As fewer kids qualify for food aid at home, those children will not get the nutrition they need and their classmates will also lose access, advocates say.

“As SNAP enrollment drops, fewer schools will be able to offer all students free meals,” Hysom said. “So, we’ll see a rise in stigma in the cafeteria, a decrease in school meal participation, the return of for many schools and increased hunger in the classroom.”

Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund, is worried about the kids who will be pushed out of the program despite their ongoing food insecurity, noting that children of color might be .  

Wilson said schools moving toward universal free meals in recent years — delivered without students having to apply —  The changes brought about by the new bill mark a major step backward, he said.  

“We believe we will see a shift back to an individual eligibility model, which costs more and means fewer students will have access to it,” he said. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2028, any state that has a payment error rate — the percentage of people given benefits who did not qualify or who were denied aid despite meeting the requirements — must contribute a 5% match for the cost of SNAP program allotments. 

State contributions rise incrementally as the error rate increases: those reaching 10% or higher will be required to kick in 15%, though questions loom about how this will be implemented. as soon as others. 

The paperwork requirement is not only burdensome for families, but for those who process the documents, child advocates say. The task comes as the federal government also plans to drastically reduce what it spends on SNAP’s administrative costs, from 50% to 25%, leaving states responsible for the rest.

Gina Plata-Nino, the Food Research & Action Center’s deputy director for SNAP, fears states will not be prepared to properly administer the benefit program. 

“This will cost state agencies a lot of time — and time is money,” she said, adding new applicants might have to wait to be processed. “The state agencies are already at capacity.” 

Plata-Nino said the related calculations will be more complex, especially for families with children. 

The bill also eliminates , an evidence-based program that “helps people make their SNAP dollars stretch, teaches them how to cook healthy meals, and lead physically active lifestyles,” according to the USDA. 

Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that the bill changed the work exemption for able-bodied adults with children from those with dependents under age 18 to those with kids under 7. The reduction to age 7 was in the House version of the bill, but was changed to age 14 in the Senate version that was ultimately approved.

was originally reported by Amanda Becker of . .

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives approved a sweeping package early Thursday morning that contains what advocates call that serve lower-income Americans.

President Donald Trump wanted “one, big, beautiful bill” and GOP Speaker Mike Johnson pushed to get the package through the House before the Memorial Day recess. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to undergo significant changes.

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The proposal approved in the House would slash $1.7 trillion in government spending to pay for the renewal of the tax cuts from Trump’s first term, which largely benefited corporations and the wealthy. Some of the largest cuts would come from Medicaid, the . House Republicans also agreed on significant changes in eligibility to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, which helps more than 40 million Americans buy groceries every month. Both programs are .

Democrats have been largely on the sidelines because Republicans in the Senate will use a process called reconciliation, which allows the majority party to bypass the 60-vote filibuster requirement and approve legislation by a simple majority vote. There are 53 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate.

It has become common for both parties to take advantage of reconciliation when they control the White House and both chambers of Congress. Republicans used reconciliation to enact the 2017 Trump tax cuts that they are now attempting to renew. Democrats used it to enact President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 stimulus bill and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Here are the programs serving women and children that House Republicans’ bill would change:

Medicaid

House Republicans’ proposal aims to slash $625 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, leading to an enrollment drop of more than 10 million people, a nonpartisan health organization.

The federal-state health insurance program covers more than 40 percent of all births in the country, and about 37 percent of those enrolled are children. Three million Americans enrolled in Medicaid report that they are unable to work due to caregiving responsibilities, .

The legislation approved by the House would cut Medicaid spending in part by imposing a strict 80-hours-a-month work requirement for adults without children or disabilities. The 19th has reported on how these stepped-up work requirements would .

The bill also would make it easier for states to cancel Medicaid coverage if recipients do not provide additional paperwork to show they meet eligibility requirements; force states to require co-payments for some types of care for Medicaid enrollees who live above the federal poverty threshold; and reduce the reimbursement rate for states that use their own funds to cover immigrants not lawfully in the country, according to a

The version of the bill passed by the House would prohibit Medicaid from , which are already banned from using federal funds to pay for abortions. It also would as an essential benefit under Affordable Care Act plans and prohibits Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from covering the treatment. Earlier drafts limited this prohibition to care for minors; the approved bill extends it to care for all ages.

SNAP

The package passed by House Republicans would require more SNAP recipients in their 50s and 60s to work and provide fewer exemptions for parents.

The proposal would lower the age at which work requirements end by a decade, to 54. Right now, parents with dependent children under 18 are exempt from working; the bill lowers that age to 7.

Additionally, the Republican-approved legislation would require states to take on more of the costs of administering SNAP and limit the ability of future administrations to raise benefit amounts.

Changes to SNAP could affect school nutrition programs, as many students qualify for free meals based on whether they and their families are eligible for food stamps.

The Congressional Budget Office has not yet evaluated the SNAP provisions in the reconciliation bill. Their analysis of past similar legislation adding new work requirements showed that it could result in more than 3 million fewer people participating in the federal nutrition program.

Child tax credit

The House Republicans’ tax bill would increase the amount of the child tax credit to $2,500 from $2,000 through 2028, the last year of Trump’s term. The tax credit would then drop back down and be indexed to inflation.

Another provision in the approved House version would require a child’s parents to have a Social Security Number to access the credit, even if the child also has a Social Security Number.

The intent is to in the country illegally and without work authorization from claiming the benefit; these parents are already typically excluded from accessing the credit. In mixed immigration status households, where one parent has a Social Security Number and the other does not, the child would still be ineligible for the credit.

The House version of the tax bill also caps the refundable portion of the child tax credit at $1,400 per qualifying child, down from $1,700. This change would limit the ability of the country’s lowest-income parents to access the credit.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently that provided roughly $1 billion in funding for the purchase of food by schools and food banks. 

And the , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, may tighten its requirements, potentially pushing some 12 million kids out of the program.

These moves come at the same time the House Republican budget plan to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The program fed more than per month nationwide in 2023. In 2022, 40% were  

This recent shift reflects a stark reversal of earlier, nationwide efforts to keep families fed during the pandemic. Many districts, such as Baltimore, organized days after schools were shuttered in March 2020 with no identification or personal information required. Those initiatives led to the nation’s food insecurity rate dropping to a when it reached 10.2% in 2021, down from a 14.9% high a decade earlier, according to the USDA.

It has since crept back up to 13.5% and now, five years after schools utilized USDA waivers to deliver meals in , they are bracing for what could be massive cuts from the federal government.

Elizabeth A. Marchetta, executive director of food and nutrition services for Baltimore City Public Schools, said 31 campuses — serving 19,000 children — would lose out on free breakfast and lunch if the Community Eligibility Provision changes go through. They are among 393 schools and who would be shut out. 

“It would be devastating,” Marchetta said. “These are critical funds. If we are not being reimbursed for all of the meals we’re serving … the money has to come from somewhere else in the school district, so that is really not great.”

Nearly benefited from the Community Eligibility Provision in the 2023-24 school year. The program reimburses schools that provide universal free meals based on the percentage of their students who automatically qualify for free and reduced-price lunch because their families receive other types of assistance, like SNAP. 

In 2023, after the COVID-era policy ended where any student could receive a free school meal regardless of income, President Biden lowered the percentage of high-need students required for a school to qualify from , greatly expanding participation. 

House GOP Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington now seeks to . The budget proposal would also require all students applying for free and reduced-price meals to submit documentation verifying their family income.

, a barometer of food insecurity among students, is already on the rise. It will almost certainly increase if universal school meals disappear for students whose families make too much to qualify for free and reduced-price lunch but too little to afford to buy meals at school. At the same time, kids who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals could lose that benefit if the required paperwork becomes harder. 

In the fall of 2023, across 808 school districts, the median amount of school meal debt was $5,495. By the fall of 2024, that amount reached $6,900 across 766 districts, a 25% increase, according to the .

It was just $2,000 a decade earlier. A trio of Democratic senators is the , with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman saying in 2023, “‘School lunch debt’ is a term so absurd that it shouldn’t even exist. That’s why I’m proud to introduce this bill to cancel the nation’s student meal debt and stop humiliating kids and penalizing hunger.”

Research shows students benefit mightily from free meals: those who attend schools that adopted the Community Eligibility Provision saw compared to those who did not. Free in-school meals are also credited for boosting attendance among low-income children, improving classroom behavior and

Joel Berg, the CEO of , said further cuts will greatly harm the poorest students. 

“Over the last few years, things have gone from bad to worse,” he said. “We were all raised seeing Frank Capra movies, where, in the end everything works out. But that’s not how the real world works. In the real world, when the economy gets a cold, poor people get cancer.”

the number of Americans who didn’t have enough to eat over two one-week periods between August-September 2021 and August-September 2024. The states with the highest rates of food insecure children were Texas at 23.8%, Oklahoma at 23.2% and Nebraska at 22.6%. Georgia and Arkansas both came in at 22.4%. 

The USDA slashed the $660 million — it allowed states to purchase local foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, for distribution to schools and child care institutions — and $500 million from the , which supported food banks nationwide. 

Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations for the School Nutrition Association, said that as families struggle with the high cost of groceries, the government should be doing more — not less — to bolster school meals and other food aid programs. 

“We’re urging Congress not only to protect the federal Community Eligibility Provision, but to expand it,” Pratt-Heavner said. “Ideally, all students should have access to free school breakfast and lunch as part of their education.” 

SNAP benefits stood at $4.80 per person per day through 2020 before jumping to more than after they were adjusted for rising food and other costs. Even then, the higher amount was not enough to in most locations. 

Republicans in Congress seek to cut the program by over the next nine years, possibly by returning to the pre-pandemic allotment of $4.80 and/or expanding work-related requirements, said Salaam Bhatti, SNAP director at t. 

Another possibility, he said, is that SNAP costs could be pushed onto states — including those that can’t afford them. 

“This would be an unfunded mandate,” Bhatti said. “States would have to take away from their discretionary spending to offset the cost and if it is not a mandate, then states in rural America and in the South that don’t have the budgets just won’t do it.” 

Food-related funding decreases come as the child tax credit, created to help parents offset the cost of raising children, is also facing uncertainty, said Megan Curran, the director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

The American Rescue Plan increased the amount of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6, and $3,000 for those under age 18. Many taxpayers received monthly advance payments in the second half of 2021, instead of waiting until tax filing season to receive the full benefits. The move The expanded child tax credit was allowed to lapse post-pandemic and now even the $2,000 credit could revert back to just $1,000. 

All food-related and tax benefit cuts — plus the unknowns of Trump-era tariffs — will leave some Americans particularly vulnerable, Curran said. 

“It’s shaping up to be a very precarious time for families,” she said, “especially families with children.”

Maryland is set to examine their current method of evaluating poverty in schools throughout the next year, potentially opening up a pathway to boost funding for schools with students in need.

A new study is meant to help address the undercounting of poverty in Maryland public schools according to Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman. The Board of Public Works approved funding for the study at its Dec. 4 meeting.

“This issue is exacerbated for undocumented students or citizen children of undocumented parents,” Lierman said at that meeting. 

The current method of tabulating poverty “really penalizes” schools with large numbers of immigrant students, Lierman said.

The state currently uses proxy measures, such as eligibility for national programs like Medicaid and SNAP, to calculate aid for public schools, according to the proposal for funds from the Department of General Services.  

According to the Governor’s Office for Children an accurate count of students in poverty is important to ensure that they get adequate resources. The office also told CNS that the “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future created several new school funding streams that rely on counts of low-income students.”

Schools currently rely on applications for the free and reduced meals program and enrollment in social programs like Medicaid as methods of calculating students in poverty. According to the Governor’s Office for Children, “not all low income families participate in these programs.” 

The office also said that “districts that provide free school meals to all students under the federal community eligibility program do not collect that data.”

In the case of immigrant families, some may not qualify or, as the office told CNS, may be hesitant to enroll and reveal their citizenship status.

Other data the state might rely upon is out of date. According to Lierman, the Maryland State Department of Education recently proposed using data from 2013 to calculate school poverty in Baltimore City. Lierman said that many public schools have been shuttered in the city since that data was collected.

“As a Baltimore City Public School mom,” Lierman said, “I’ve got a lot of strong feelings about this.”

The board approved the DGS request for $48,000 monthly for “modeling, analysis and providing a presentation on findings.” 

According to the Office for Children, a recommendation based on the results of the study will be made to the Maryland General Assembly by Dec. 1, 2025.

This was originally published on . Capital News Service is a student-staffed reporting service operated by the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism.

“I’m Max. Muscle Max,” he says. “How did I get so totally in shape? Lots of exercise, and protein from meats, beans and milk.”

Muscle Max is from “,” created by a team at Auburn University, part of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, as an obesity prevention effort aimed at grade schoolers. Muscle Max is one of six anime-styled characters — like Body Doctor, who is a Black girl samurai and avid eater of fruit, and Shining Rainbow, who likes veggies for their vibrant color — who also visited some Rhode Island schools as part of a research study led by Kate Balestracci at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

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Balestracci is the program manager of , the nutrition education component of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Balestracci also leads Children, Youth, and Families at Risk (), another USDA initiative, at URI.

recaps the quantitative results from Balestracci’s USDA-funded study, which brought one-hour weekly classes — usually swapped in for an existing health class — to six different schools in Rhode Island over three years. As is typical for research studies, the schools are not identified directly, but they are cited as being from lower-income school districts.

There were 242 third graders in the control group, who received no special programming. The 217 third graders in the intervention group received the “Body Quest” curriculum — something created as part of Alabama’s own SNAP-Ed program, Live Well Alabama. The curriculum involves printed materials and in-class activities and discussions, with the centerpiece being an iPad app loaded with games to encourage healthy eating.

When asked about the timeline of the new research in a recent phone interview, Balestracci laughed and noted it wasn’t that new. The articles took a while to complete, she said, and the actual classroom sessions took place between 2015 and 2018. came out first in 2019 and included interviews with the third graders.

“The thing is, with kids, hard data like pre-, post-quantitative data, [it’s] pretty hard to get accurate information,” Balestracci said. “They just are arbitrary, or they don’t really know. But when it comes to qualitative, they speak their mind very well. So that actually I think is a little more valuable sometimes.”

Data collection for the quantitative study centered on student surveys with questions like: “How many times did you drink a sugary drink yesterday?” or “How many times did you eat a salty snack yesterday between your meals?” The results show that the intervention students sipped fewer sugary drinks, didn’t consume as many salty snacks and ate more fruit. Intake of vegetables and sweet snacks, however, barely changed.

“Sweet snacks are often desserts, which kids are maybe less likely to swap out for a fruit,” Balestracci said. “But salty snacks, like Takis or chips — sometimes kids are OK with decreasing that and having a healthier choice for snack.”

But what about snacking outside of school?

Balestracci’s study may have been conducted some years ago, but the research is still relevant. At a March 7 meeting of the Rhode Island House Committee on Finance, the night’s hottest topic of discussion was inarguably Rep. Justine Caldwell’s bill to provide free school meals for all public school students regardless of income. In Balestracci’s studies, both intervention and control schools had just under 90% eligibility for free or reduced lunch.

came from Geoffrey Greene, Balestracci’s colleague at URI and a co-author on the new study. Lunchboxes from home may be packed with love — but Greene noted in his testimony that his research shows they are generally less healthier than those served at school.

“In Rhode Island, we have to rely on the Healthy Schools Coalition that has quite stringent food policy guidelines for the state and for the school that participate in school meals,” Balestracci said.

But she said snacking outside of school is much less governable: “No corner store is gonna stop a child from buying something,” Balestracci added.

Ideally, corner stores would stock more fresh fruits alongside Pringles and Sour Patch Kids — but Balestracci acknowledged the challenges of supply chain issues and the demand it would create on small businesses.

One of the study’s limitations, the article noted, was that it only accounted for weekday eating habits — and weekends tend to be filled with vice. Students’ eating habits could definitely differ on the weekend, said Balestracci: “That could be a whole different ballgame. It’s everyone’s different ballgame.”

The URI researchers used a retooled version of the “Body Quest” curriculum, since the original didn’t devote much coverage to sugary drinks or .

“While eating fruits and vegetables is great, it doesn’t necessarily replace the other things that they’re having,” Balestracci said.

Information on “Body Quest” was still available on the SNAP-ed national website as of late February, but by March 13 the page . Requests for comment from both Alabama Cooperative Extension System and the national SNAP-Ed office went unreturned. The “Body Quest” handbook and classroom materials are still . The iPad app, which was last updated in 2022, is on Apple’s .

Still present in Balestracci’s remade curriculum was Trans Fat Cat — the ostensible villain of  “Body Quest,” who is not really sinister but rather injudicious in his dietary habits.

Alas, change is possible, even with picky eaters.

“I just have one thing to say, is that when I was little, I didn’t wanna eat yogurt. I didn’t like yogurt,” one student in the 2019 qualitative study said. “Now, I’m eating the whole cup of yogurt.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

When University of Missouri student Puna Neumeier finishes a day of classes, she can’t think about homework. Her pressing worries are getting food, paying rent and taking care of her mother, who is disabled.

“As a caretaker and daughter, I have to be in charge of getting the food, cooking the food, serving the food, as well as taking care of her,” she said.

Neumeier has a job, but making ends meet this year has been particularly tough because of inflation, she said. So she turned to a food pantry along with federal aid, which lightened her daily expenses.

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With the possibility of losing food stamps, her family’s bandaged income and food security were in danger. Students reapplying for federal food assistance after July 1 might not be eligible.

During the pandemic, rules were relaxed so students weren’t required to participate in state or federally funded work programs such as work-study. Students who received no financial support from their families now qualified, too.

Those temporary pandemic rules allowed 3 million more students to qualify for food stamps.

Those students now have to find other ways to put food on the table.

The invisible struggle

Worrying about the next meal or skipping it altogether for lack of money have become unofficial benchmarks of the college experience for some.

It’s an invisible epidemic that affected 44.9% of Missouri college students in 2021, according to a Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics study. Almost half of students in Missouri lacked consistent access to enough food to live an active, healthy life, as defined by the USDA.

Additional older studies have reported student food insecurity rates in the U.S. ranging from 25% to 35%.

Food insecurity is also common in the general population. In 2021, Boone County had a food insecurity rate of 11%, which included more than 20,000 people.

“Food insecurity happens everywhere. It happens in every corner in every community and every county in Missouri,” said Kim Buckman, director of advocacy and communication at Feeding Missouri, a coalition of the six food banks in the state.

Many people are just one unplanned emergency away from not having enough money to buy food, Buckman said.

“You get a flat tire, and all of a sudden that took all your reserves.”

The effects of food insecurity among students range from low performance in school to health risks such as depression, stress and obesity tied to overconsumption of added sugar, fat and refined grains.

Although many students might need food assistance, most don’t get it. They’re unaware of the resources that can help them, or they are confused about the application process.

Students also don’t know where to go for help in a nonjudgmental setting since using federal benefits or food pantries is often stigmatized.

Feeding Missouri tries to make it easier for students to use the benefits “without feeling some kind of stigma associated with battling with food insecurity,” Buckman said.

Resources available to MU students include SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program of food stamps; SNAP-Ed, which provides nutrition education; and Tiger Pantry, which provides emergency food to the wider campus community.

Addressing food insecurity

The central government program that helps Americans combat food insecurity is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once commonly known as food stamps.

It uses a system like debit cards for eligible recipients to buy food from authorized stores. Last year, the federal program assisted more than 40 million people.

Approximately 1.4 million U.S. students received SNAP benefits in 2016, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

But this number doesn’t reflect how many students actually qualify to receive support. GAO reported that 57% of students qualified in 2016 but didn’t receive any SNAP benefits.

Single-family households making no more than $17,676 in gross income are potentially eligible for SNAP benefits. To qualify, students also must meet at least one of several criteria that include age, health, work, child care and other responsibilities.

Universities are trying to address the food security gap with educational programs and emergency food assistance. SNAP-Ed, implemented by MU Extension, delivers research-based nutrition education to SNAP recipients and others who are eligible in every Missouri county.

“We are working with the four UM System campuses, as well as all two- and four-year institutions across the state, to really make a concerted effort,” said Jo Britt-Rankin, extension professor and administrative director of SNAP-Ed.

Each UM System campus is investing in full-time positions — basic needs coordinators — who will be able to assist those who need SNAP benefits or other types of federal aid programs, Britt-Rankin said.

SNAP-Ed offers one-on-one sessions with students who need help filling out an application or figuring out if they’re eligible.

“Using that benefit says nothing about your worth as a person,” said Kimberly Keller, associate extension professor and evaluation coordinator for the program.

Britt-Rankin said a lot of awareness comes from word of mouth. It’s important to spread information about their programs through financial aid offices or student services, she said.

“There’s anxiety about the whole process, and then having someone who understands that can help you navigate it,” said Leslie Speller-Henderson, education programmer for the program.

Lack of awareness regarding eligibility and how to seek assistance can be a barrier for some students to receive benefits they deserve.

Gabriel Martinez, a graduate student at MU, received SNAP benefits when he was an undergraduate.

“Sometimes it was easy, like filling out an extra checkmark on student entry stuff. Sometimes it’s a matter of hunting down whatever you needed to find,” he said about his experience with applying for SNAP.

Now, as a doctoral student, he uses Tiger Pantry instead, which requires just a simple registration.

Alternatives to SNAP

Tiger Pantry, a Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri partner agency, is an on-campus resource in the Hitt Street parking garage that helps to combat food insecurity.

Most of the inventory comes from the Food Bank, in addition to food drives, public donations and local supermarkets. The pantry has received more than 4,500 pounds of food donations so far this year.

“The pantry is, I think, a very basic resource — basic, as in foundational for students to be able to succeed and not have to worry about things that would impede that,” said Lindsey Linkous, the pantry’s student director.

Opened in 2012, the pantry doesn’t have a screening process, and anyone in the MU community is qualified to use the services after registering.

In recent years, the number of pantry users has doubled, according to Tiger Pantry data. In 2020, an average of 128 households used the pantry monthly, compared to an average of 283 between January and July this year.

“Every semester, more and more people have come to the pantry,” she said.

The increase comes both from the promotion of the pantry and the need in the community, she said.

With about 35 volunteers per semester, the pantry is open three times a week during a regular semester.

There is also collaboration with Campus Dining Services for meal programs. Registered pantry patrons can request up to 12 meals per semester to be used at any all-you-can-eat dining hall on campus.

In addition to the pantry and meals, Tiger Pantry also has more than 20 locations for emergency food packs on campus with two to three microwavable meals and four to six types of snacks. The packs are intended for times when a student can’t access any of the pantries in Columbia.

The resource helps students devote their energies to school and extracurriculars instead of worrying about where their next meal is coming from, Linkous said.

As an MU student, Neumeier has been using the pantry on and off for the past couple of years. It is an important resource in her life, she said, helping her to concentrate on school and other responsibilities.

“It’s less having to worry, ‘How am I going to find the time to go to the grocery store?’ and more of, ‘I have this assignment due tonight,’” she said.

Despite the available support, students still might be uncomfortable at a food pantry. The grocery store pantry model, also referred to as client-choice mode, can be empowering and make it easier for people to ask for assistance, said Feeding Missouri’s Buckman.

“One of the biggest things, though, that I will say that we need to continue working on is overcoming the stigma associated with it,” she said. “Food insecurity can happen to anyone.”

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