But federal budget cuts to Medicaid and SNAP under current President Donald Trump threaten how many students get automatic access, and high prices and supply issues are impacting school nutrition.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
Nearly 766,000 children across Ohio qualified for a free lunch last school year, according the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, based either on their Medicaid or SNAP status. Another 61,862 students qualified for a reduced price school lunch.
Modern school lunches are significantly healthier than the past. Schools have strict regulations on how much sodium and fat can be included in a school lunch. This year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school lunch and breakfast, limited added sugar. Meals have to include whole grains, protein, vegetables and fruits.
Fairborn City Schools child nutrition supervisor, Emmy Mitchell, attended Fairborn High School growing up. She said as a teenager, she remembers soft pretzels with cheese in the cafeteria, Red Baron’s pizza or getting served Chick-Fil-A.
“Which was all things that we loved, right?” Mitchell said. “But we can’t really serve (those) anymore because there’s sodium restrictions, trans and saturated fat restrictions, there’s added sugar restrictions, calorie minimums and maximums. There’s all kinds of guidelines we have to follow.”
School lunch popular
At the beginning of the pandemic, when schools shut down, nutrition services suddenly had to figure out how to serve meals to students who weren’t in the buildings.
When students began to come back in the 2020-2021 school year and until the end of the 2022-2023 school year, there were universal free school lunches for any student in the U.S. who wanted them.
But that ended. Some states still offer free universal school meals, but Ohio qualifies individual schools and families based on federal guidelines.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
Food supervisors say there’s a lot of reasons why there are more students eating school meals now, including more students who are eligible for meals, less stigma around eating school food, school lunch being a cheaper option for many families than packing food for their kids, and the district working with students to make sure they like the options available.
“You can find something you like, and it’s $2.50 or it’s free,” said Mary Lynne Bierman, supervisor of food and nutrition services for Kettering City Schools.
Bierman said there are other barriers to getting younger kids to actually eat the food. Kids play or talk in the cafeteria instead of eating — something parents know is normal, even if kids are hungry. It’s a good day if half the food provided gets eaten, she said.
She said while she agrees with many of the updated guidelines, including offering more fruits and vegetables to students, she believes some of the guidelines go too far.
“We’re trying to feed kids, not trash cans,” Bierman said.
Josh Ashley, the nutrition supervisor for Beavercreek City Schools, said from the 2018-2019 school year to the 2023-2024 school year, the number of students who were eligible for free school lunch nearly doubled, from roughly 13% to 24%, mostly due to the new Medicaid guidelines.
Ashley said last year, the district served a daily average of 4,020 school lunches that met USDA nutritional guidelines. Based on enrollment data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, that suggests about half of the district’s students were opting for a school lunch, even if the student didn’t qualify for a free or reduced lunch.
Schools on the National School Lunch Program get federally reimbursed some amount for every lunch they serve that meets USDA guidelines, which is what helps keep school lunches affordable.
Ashley said he thinks there are Beavercreek students who wouldn’t have participated if they hadn’t been there during the school years where there was free universal school lunch. Beavercreek also offers more choices, he said, which means kids can find something they like.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
What are kids eating?
The food that students are served include classics, just changed a little to meet federal guidelines. Schools say some of their most popular items include breaded chicken sandwiches, which have whole grain breading and less sodium, pizza that’s lower fat and whole grain, and breakfast for lunch.
But there’s some popular items that are different. In Fairborn, General Tso’s chicken, a dish that students can build, is so popular that high school students asked for more vegetable options to add to the meal. (Mitchell said she is working on those options.)
Mitchell said because of the limits on sodium and fat, she thinks outside of the box to make food more appealing to the kids. Fairborn worked on cooking methods and using different seasonings to ensure food tasted good. The district’s nutrition service team even changed the serving trays to get food to look more appealing.
Mitchell said the items they buy are held to USDA guidelines and are not the same items sold in a store.
Clark-Shawnee Local Schools spokeswoman Jenna Potts said some of the most popular items are chicken nuggets and pizza.
“We are also seeing more and more students prefer the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables offered,” Potts said.
Megan Grippa, child nutrition coordinator for Lebanon City Schools, was named the Midwest region director of the year by the School Nutrition Association, a trade group that represents school nutrition professionals. Reasons she stood out included a fresh-baked pizza program, adding a salad bar and new menu planning software, according to the School Nutrition Association.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
A 2021 Tufts University study found school meals are some of the healthiest meals available to children, mostly due to the regulations from the Obama-era law.
“Preservatives are mostly removed,” Mitchell said. “A lot of this stuff is dye-free. A lot of the stuff is preservative-free. Everything’s pretty much low sodium. The breading on the chicken nuggets is whole grain rich, which means 51% whole grain or more.”
Bierman said she knows parents think school lunch is gross or unhealthy, but that isn’t true. She says while the district gets some items, like meat sauce, delivered pre-packaged and frozen, the meals are not ultra-processed and are held to high nutrition standards.
“We cook our own spaghetti,” she said. “We serve it with fresh salads.”
Ashley said one of his goals for the future is getting more food made from scratch into Beavercreek schools.
“It’s definitely healthier,” Ashley said. “I would argue that a whole muscle, hand-breaded chicken nugget, it’s much better than a processed chicken nugget.”
Balancing nutrition and taste
One of the biggest barriers to getting kids to eat a school lunch is making sure it’s something they want to eat.
Almost every local school district says the nutrition services team routinely talks to students and incorporate new items into the menus based on suggestions.
In Beavercreek, Ashley said he was working as a cashier in the middle school one day when a girl came through with just a cookie and some chips. She told him the options didn’t appeal to her, and when he asked her what she wanted to see, she named several Indian dishes, including tika masala.
Now, Beavercreek serves tika masala at the middle school. In response to requests from other students, customizable Mediterranean bowls are available. Ashley said at one of the elementary schools, they offered dragonfruit and mango smoothies to students to get them to try a greater variety of fruits.
“What we’re trying to do is break the barrier, especially at the younger age,” he said. “That way as they get older, they’re not as resistant to trying new things.”
He added, “My overall goal with food is just be curious about it.”
Troy City Schools Director of Food Service Clint Hufford said cooks talk regularly with students about what they eat at home, what they like and he reviews menus to see what items are popular and can be adapted to school lunch standards.
“Seeing what a majority of students pack from home, our meals are more well balanced with fruit and vegetables, and also healthier with following the previously mentioned requirements,” Hufford said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
How Trump could impact school meals
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that recently passed Congress and was signed into law by President Trump includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, including cuts to children, according to Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
That means many kids could lose access to Medicaid, but it also means families who qualified for free or reduced price school lunch could lose automatic access to it.
Cuts to SNAP could also impact families who automatically qualify for free school lunch.
Bierman said the school gets a list from the state telling them which kids automatically qualify under Medicaid or SNAP guidelines. Families who are no longer automatically eligible may qualify still for free or reduced lunch, but Bierman said families often don’t think about turning in those forms. The district has a system set up to remind the families multiple times.
In Ohio, 484,560 kids automatically qualified for a free school lunch based on SNAP last school year, according to ODE.
The School Nutrition Association, a trade group that represents school nutrition professionals, said in a press release dated July 3 that additional concerns from this budget bill include increased administrative costs to schools and more hoops for schools to jump through to get universal free school meals.
High food prices are also impacting schools.
“Specific cuts to funding have not been felt at this time,” said Olivia Stone, with Centerville Schools. “However, we are still battling price increases that started during the pandemic and seem to continue. The recent tariffs have also put an immense strain on our budget as they have resulted in higher food, supply and equipment costs.”
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