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Back-to-school season is in full swing. Normally, this time of year provides relief for parents whose kids have been out of school and away from school meals over the summer. This year — as our social safety net has been decimated and an affordability crisis is putting everything from produce to pencils out of reach — school meals have become an economic and nutritional lifeline for families. 

That lifeline is more fragile than people realize. Last summer, Congress made devastating cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, causing nearly 5 million Americans — including an estimated — to lose their benefits. In doing so, those children lost their automatic eligibility for free school meals. Access to free meals is also now threatened for entire school districts in high poverty areas. This is a crisis hiding in plain sight, and as kids return to the classroom, it is hitting families and schools hard.

Families participating in SNAP or Medicaid in most states automatically receive free school meals without needing to apply. When that link breaks, as it has now, kids feel it first. Parents may not find out their child has lost free meals until an unexpected notice from school arrives, or their child comes home owing lunch money they don’t have. 

In many high poverty school districts, all students are able to eat free meals through the Community Eligibility Provision. Last school year, in our nation’s highest need neighborhoods attended public schools offering meals through CEP. A school’s eligibility, as well as its ability to financially sustain the program, is largely determined by the percentage of students who are participating in SNAP or Medicaid. Which means as more kids lose access to these programs, fewer districts would be able to qualify for CEP, hurting the children and families most at risk of hunger.

We’ve already seen the first round of consequences as several school districts have curtailed participation in the program. That includes , the nation’s third largest school district, which ended districtwide participation this school year because too many children had been cut from SNAP and Medicaid. School districts qualify for and opt into CEP once every four years, so we can expect the full effects of these cuts to crystallize over the next few years. 

Access to free meals is at risk in other ways, too. Nine states — including New York, California and Michigan — use to bolster federal funding and offer universal school meals at no cost to families. If federal funding for meals continues to drop, states will have to chip in money they simply do not have. With costly new funding requirements for SNAP also set to hit state budgets in the coming months, legislators will be forced to choose which nutrition programs to fund and which to cut.

At the same time, groceries are getting more expensive. For families navigating the affordability crisis, losing access to free school meals means being one car payment or one utility bill closer to hunger. In from my organization, nearly three in five low-income parents reported that their child wouldn’t have enough to eat without school meals. Nearly three in four reported that without free or reduced-price school meals, it would be difficult for them to afford their child’s school supplies.

Families who never expected to struggle are feeling the squeeze. Households at all income levels are putting grocery bills on , and this year, nearly opened a new credit card or increased their credit limit to afford back- to-school shopping.

Parents make these sacrifices because they know kids learn best when they’re nourished. Kids with reliable access to have better attendance, fewer behavior issues, and stronger academic performance. Our polling also found that 85% of lower-income parents believe that school meals help their child excel at school and 65% report these meals motivate their child to attend school regularly. 

When Congress voted to slash SNAP last summer, Americans didn’t see school meals on the chopping block. But that’s exactly what happened, all as a result of cuts to a program Americans support. New from the Program for Public Consultation found that a majority of Democrats (88%) and Republicans (70%) believe that SNAP benefits should be increased. 

Congress is out of step with the American public. Instead of protecting kids, it is taking away access to the nutrition they need at home and at school. They can change course: As members of Congress debate the Farm Bill and other legislative packages, they must support policies to reverse, or at the very least delay, these harmful cuts. Kids’ biggest worries as they return to school should be whether they completed their summer reading, not whether they’ll have enough to eat. It’s time Congress took that assignment seriously.

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