A student eats a meal served for lunch at a school on Feb. 4, 2022, in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images) As U.S.
families prepare for the start of a new school year, there will likely be changes involving school meals — including the end of free lunches for many public schools across the country.
Federal aid given during the COVID-19 pandemic made school meals available for free to all public school students — regardless of family income levels.
But some of those eligibility waivers expired over the summer, so beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, many districts will no longer be serving all of their meals for free.Instead, families will do what they did before the pandemic, in which schools take applications and use a family’s income to qualify kids for free, reduced-price, or fully-paid meals, according to the U.S.