Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the largest school system in Florida. This summer it announced it would stop offering free meals at all of its 500-plus schools. Universal free meals now survive at 121 of them. At the rest, children have to apply individually.
The district did not say its families had gotten richer. What changed was a number in a federal funding formula.
How a food stamp cut reaches a cafeteria
Most people assume free school meals and food stamps are separate programs. They are wired together, in two ways.
Individually: a lot of students get free meals automatically because their household is on SNAP or Medicaid. Take the household off SNAP and the automatic qualification goes with it.
Institutionally: the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Community Eligibility Provision lets a whole school serve free meals to every student, and reimburses it based on the percentage of its students who qualify for SNAP and similar programs. Push SNAP enrollment down in a neighborhood and the school's reimbursement rate falls with it — even for the children who were never on SNAP at all.
That is Marion County, Kentucky, where nutrition director Jennifer Wheeler told Stateline that her district's current certification reimburses about 93% of its students at the maximum rate — but at today's SNAP enrollment, it would be about 75%.
"Which then is a huge financial impact on our program," she said. Her program is self-funded. Federal reimbursements pay for the food, the labor and the kitchen equipment for 3,000 students across seven schools.
"Cuts to SNAP are not going to stop at the grocery store," said Clarissa Hayes of the Food Research & Action Center. "They really are going to threaten children's access to school meals."
She added: "We are really only starting to see the beginning."
The numbers behind it
Between May 2025 and May 2026, more than 5.6 million people lost SNAP coverage — a 13.5% drop in a single year. That is faster than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted when it analyzed the 2025 budget bill.
More than 1 million American children have lost SNAP under the law.
About 36.6 million people were still receiving SNAP in May, at an average of roughly $187 per person per month.
More cuts are queued up as the law is fully implemented, including billions in administrative costs and benefit spending pushed onto the states.
Who voted for it
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act added new eligibility rules and work requirements to SNAP and shifted costs to states. On July 3, 2025, the House passed it on final passage. The clerk's roll call records the three Republicans who represent Miami-Dade County all voting aye:
Their constituents' children are among the ones now filling out individual applications.
When Congress passed the bill, Republicans who supported the food stamp cuts said the changes would strip waste and fraud out of the program. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, was among them.
Five point six million people is not a fraud rate. It is a program being taken away from people who qualify for it.
What it looks like from a kitchen table
Anthony Bonner is a 38-year-old campaign organizer and barber in Memphis. He and his 14-year-old son lost their $250 monthly SNAP benefit in March, when the federal change ended the work requirement exemption for parents of children 14 and over. His current contract job does not satisfy the work requirement.
He has cut back on fresh meat and produce and moved to frozen vegetables and ramen.
"It's one thing to cut me off, but I should have been able to get benefits for him," he said. "I still have yet to really have enough food that I feel comfortable with that me and my son can eat for the month."
The first day of school was a relief, because his son's school still serves free breakfast and lunch to everyone. That is the reimbursement formula holding — for now.
A survey by the nonprofit No Kid Hungry found more than two-thirds of low-income parents worried this back-to-school season that they would have to choose between paying bills and buying healthy food. More than half had already cut back on groceries.
This keeps happening, state by state
The pattern in this story is the one we have been tracking all year.
In Pennsylvania, SNAP rolls fell by 220,000 in a year, with the state attributing nearly half of it directly to the budget bill — and all nine Pennsylvania Republicans voted for it, including the Agriculture chairman who had promised "absolutely no reductions."
Nationally, 4 million people had come off food stamps between July 2025 and April 2026, and Republicans described the collapse as a sign the economy was improving — while unemployment held flat and grocery prices kept rising.
Now the same formula is reaching the lunch line.
What it adds up to
More than 5.6 million people, including over 1 million children, have lost SNAP in a year under the 2025 budget bill — faster than the Congressional Budget Office predicted. Federal free-school-meal funding is tied to rates of SNAP participation, which is why anti-hunger groups have spent the year warning that school meals are next. Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida's largest district, has already ended universal free meals at all but 121 of its 500-plus schools. The three Republicans who represent Miami-Dade all voted for the law, and House Speaker Mike Johnson told the country the changes were about waste and fraud.
Source
Kevin Hardy, "SNAP cuts could lead to kids losing free school breakfast and lunch", Stateline via Florida Phoenix, September 2, 2026. Vote record: U.S. House Clerk, Roll Call 190, July 3, 2025. Photo by Marcus Constantino for West Virginia Watch.
