WILMINGTON — The North Carolina General Assembly is tasked with providing funds for the majority of public education — teacher salaries and the curricula they use in their classrooms, transportation and instructional materials. Despite data showing state money going less distance every passing year, child nutrition advocates are hoping to add one more item to the legislature’s coverage list.
READ MORE: NHCS to resume using collection agency for unpaid meal tabs
A local coalition working in and adjacent to area schools gathered on Friday for a town hall put together by School Meals for All NC. The campaign advocates for free breakfast and lunch in all schools across the state and Friday’s group showed out to demonstrate why that goal is important.
“When you say every child is worthy of a meal, you’re saying every citizen has value,” New Hanover County Schools middle school teacher Cyndy Bliss said.
Bliss was joined by other panelists Amy Hobbs, director of food services at the YMCA of Southeastern NC, and associate Karen Rodriguez-Ayala; Kelly Ramos, child nutrition contract manager at Pender County Schools; Amy Stanley, director of child nutrition at New Hanover County Schools; and Owen Clark, a NHCS student and School Meals for All ambassador.
Clark said he knows fellow students that consistently don’t eat outside of school meals, which inspired him to become an ambassador. The nonprofit encourages its advocates to be “storytellers” for kids in food-insecure situations.
“We need to take these stories to policymakers,” Clark said.
School Meals for All NC is an initiative through the Center for Black Health and Equity and North Carolina Alliance for Health; it has been active for years requesting North Carolina pay for all student meals. Several bills have been proposed in the path, including the 2023 Schools Meals for All Act that called for $172 million in funding to make breakfast and lunch free for all students.
The bill, which had little Republican support, was referred to the House rules committee where it died. Meanwhile, several states have passed a similar provision, including California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Vermont. North Carolina would be the first Southern state to take up the torch.
In their discussions with lawmakers, the panel said everyone supports feeding hungry schoolchildren but legislators expressed hesitancy due to the high price tag. Stanley said she also thought the issue could be dismissed due to child nutrition being a federal program.
“But they don’t think about all that entails,” Stanley said.
Now a new bill is being fielded by the General Assembly to provide free breakfast to all; House Bill 774 is sponsored by 55 House of Representatives members, including Deb Butler (D-New Hanover), Charles Miller (R-Brunswick, New Hanover), and Carson Smith (R-Pender).
Free school breakfast was included in Governor Josh Stein’s budget proposal, released in March 2025, but it is unclear whether the General Assembly — in the budget process for the next two-year budget cycle — will pick it up. Stein suggests an allocation of $85 million annually for this purpose.
The proposed legislation indicates state funding will supplement — “not supplant” — federal funding schools receive now from the federal government to cover 100% of child nutrition.
The bill also requires the the Department of Public Instruction to develop a farm-to-table initiative to “incorporate locally sourced and fresh ingredients into the universal breakfast program.” However, this is already a component of a program under the United States Department of Agriculture, which runs child nutrition for the entire country.
H.B. 774 does not set aside a pot of money for the initiative, instead detailing the funding plan “to the extent funds are made available for the purpose,” though Stanley said this was a critical detail.
“This has to be a state-funded policy,” she said, telling PCD in a follow-up that an unfunded mandate would bankrupt local districts.
The USDA provides reimbursements to school districts based on its various programs, the main one being the National School Lunch program, which also allows for free or reduced lunch for families below the federal poverty line. For a family of four, this means an income below $57,720 for reduced lunch and below $40,560 for free lunch.
Stanley said the USDA reimburses free lunches at $4.43; paid lunches get reimbursed 44 cents a meal. New Hanover County Schools’ meal prices are $3.45 for elementary students, $3.50 for middle school students, and $3.60 for high school students.
“And what that reimbursement pays for is all of the supplies, it pays for all of our team members, it pays for their benefits,” Stanley said. “So we essentially operate as a restaurant within the school district.”
Child nutrition is also unlike a restaurant in that it can’t turn away students from the meal line, which means students start tabulating a balance.
But just because someone is required to pay doesn’t mean they will; Pender County’s Ramos pointed out some families apply for free or reduced lunch but don’t qualify, though they still may have financial burdens that prevent them from sending lunch money with their child. Bliss said she once had to confront a student about his $500 lunch balance but was told the family could either pay that or the light bill.
In 2023, the year the School Meals For All Act was introduced, school meal debt had reached a state record high of $3 million; this year, New Hanover County Schools’s debt exceeds $100,000. And the debt has to be paid for somehow; districts can send debt to creditors; however, many use this as a last resort and try to cover the balances with other funding streams, including donations from the community.
Stanley pointed out the community is already bearing the burden of school meal debt, so adjusting to a free-for-all system would just be confronting these costs upfront, while also presenting a return on investment for families and students in the future.
Aside from making sure each child is fed, having all meals be free reduces the stigma on children who can’t pay for lunch, who are often resistant to being singled out as someone who needs free lunch. Because of that, the panel said they’ve seen some students choose not to eat so as not to alert their friends to their free-lunch status.
When schools aren’t ringing kids up in the lunch line, kids don’t have to worry about being differentiated because of their family income.
The panel said evidence for this exists already in schools qualifying under the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision. This program allows the nation’s highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. New Hanover County has 30 out 42 schools qualifying, while Pender County has 15 out of 19.
Not only does the CEP help socially, but research shows it also improves academics.
A 2033 study in North Carolina found significant improvements in fifth grade science and middle school reading test scores for schools offering meals to all students at no cost to their families through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Additionally, the Education Policy Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill found that CEP schools demonstrated better academic performance, including met growth targets and higher performance grades compared to similar-income schools that didn’t participate.
“In teacher terms, we say that we have to match flow before we can bloom, meaning that we really have to meet the basic needs of kids,” Bliss said. “Do they feel safe? Are they well? Do they have what they need so that they then can engage in learning and not thinking about how hungry they are or being tired because they’re so hungry?”
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