By Legislative Intern Phoenix Vu
Arkansas is the most food-insecure state in the country.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Natural State had an average food insecurity rate of 18.9% between 2021 and 2023, meaning roughly 570,000 households experienced limited or uncertain access to adequate food. Children in Arkansas are hit even harder with 24.2% facing food insecurity, over a quarter of whom aren’t eligible for federal nutrition assistance.
But even among folks eligible for programs like SNAP, the largest federal food assistance program, tens of thousands remain unenrolled because of the tedious application process and restrictive eligibility requirements. Just like with postpartum Medicaid coverage, paperwork and bureaucracy create hurdles to accessing helpful systems.
Clearly, Arkansans struggling to buy quality food for their children could use a hand from their government.
Fortunately, SB59 from Senator Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy) would overcome this need by providing a free breakfast to any public school student who requests one, regardless of their eligibility for free or reduced meals. This universal school breakfast bill will reduce food insecurity, improve student academic performance, behavior, and health, and save time and money for schools and parents.
It’s no wonder why this bill has bipartisan support or why 70% of Americans support similar free school meal programs. Let’s take a policy deep dive into why SB59 is a great policy.
Students Are Better In and Out of the Classroom
The most obvious benefit of SB59 is simple: it feeds kids. A 2019 study in Maryland found that schools with free school meal programs were half as likely to have food-insecure students compared to schools that did not. Several other studies find that free breakfast programs reduced food insecurity by increasing the number of students who ate breakfast as opposed to skipping it, even among students who were not low-income.
Students Are Healthier
In addition to eating more, students will also eat healthier. Families may resort to ultra-processed foods for cost and convenience as opposed to fresh fruits or meat. But school meals must meet rigid nutritional standards and are now a better source of high-quality food for children than grocery stores and restaurants. Students eating free school breakfasts tend to have diets with more fruit and dairy and less sugar.
Having access to nutritional breakfast also translates to broad health improvements. Lower quality diets from food insecurity have been linked to stunted child development, poor mental health, and an increased risk of developing cancer, diabetes, and other conditions. One study of over 170,000 children found that children in poverty who received free meals experienced a massive 47% reduction in obesity; another study found that universal breakfast decreases student depression and anxiety.
Students Perform Better
Snickers said it best: “you’re not you when you’re hungry.”
Hungry students have trouble focusing in class and misbehave more frequently. Free school meal programs have consistently been shown to significantly improve academic performance, especially in math. These improvements range widely across varied student populations from 3rd-8th graders in South Carolina to inner-city students in Boston to non-low-income students in New York.
This should be particularly relevant to the AR Department of Education, which learned last week that Arkansas students not only still rank below average in math performance, but have consistently trended downwards over the past decade.
Well-fed students also perform better in non-academic settings in school. Universal meal programs in multiple states have been linked to reductions in behavioral incidents, like fights and in-school/out-of-school suspensions. Free breakfast programs also improves attendance rates because students are more incentivized to go to school to receive a free meal and the healthier meals reduce their chance of illness.
Essentially, the good effects compound, and do so dramatically.
Parents and Schools Save Time and Money
Proving free breakfasts to all students also makes the lives of parents and school administration easier by cutting bureaucratic red tape, something the Arkansas legislature claims to want to reduce.
Many eligible families don’t enroll in free or reduced meals because of a lack of information or language barriers, and schools spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on paperwork and administrative tasks. It turns out, however, that serving meals to students for free can save school districts 68 minutes and $29 of labor per student per year. Per student, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but in large districts? That time and money sure do add up.
Plus, busy parents won’t have to stress about making breakfast or navigating a stack of forms. They can instead spend the money they save on other essentials for their children.
And the best part?
It won’t cost taxpayers much at all. Even with more meals being served, universal breakfast programs consistently break even and save money because of decreased labor costs, increased federal reimbursements, and the cheapness of buying food in bulk. Dismang noted that the $14.7 million dollar estimate is likely on the high side, and a reduced lunch bill he ran in 2023 ended up costing taxpayers much less than the predicted $6 million.
That $14.7 chump change in the grand scheme of the budget, largely coming from the medical marijuana fund, and is intended to close the gap between reimbursements provided to districts with a high level of kids receiving free/reduced lunch. So, in the event the $14.7 million program isn’t largely self-sustaining, it’ll be funded by Arkansas’ billion-dollar medical marijuana industry which definitely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
A Win-Win Situation
Under SB59’s free school breakfast program, everyone wins.
Parents and school districts save time and money, Republicans cut bureaucratic red tape, and Democrats strengthen the social safety net — all without raising taxes.
Most importantly, children have full stomachs, healthier diets, and better performance at school, even those who didn’t qualify for free or reduced meals before.
Children in Arkansas are among the hungriest in the country. SB59, a free school breakfast bill, would be a huge, cheap, and universally effective step in the right direction.
SB59 has passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously and awaits a full Senate vote. This article was edited to clarify the funding estimate.
