Adequate nutrition is essential to children’s growth, learning, and long-term well-being, and school meal programs, which serve nearly 30 million children each school day, are one of our nation’s most powerful tools for improving nutrition, supporting academic achievement, and advancing children’s health. For many children, school breakfast and lunch are the healthiest and most reliable meals they receive each day. Therefore, expanding access to and supporting the quality of school meals are critical investments in our nation’s children.
Across the country, states are wrapping up another year of Summer EBT. Since the program began in 2024, millions of families have received this benefit that helps provide children much-needed nutrition during the summer months.
October 1, 2026, marked the start of a new federal fiscal year — FY 2027 — and with it, the beginning of one of the major changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) included in the 2025 budget reconciliation law, H.R. 1: the SNAP administrative cost shift.