Beating child hunger with tastier school food

City budget cuts seldom feel personal. It’s often months or years before we feel their impact on our lives. But last month, parents of nearly one million New York City public school students got a wake-up call about what the Adams administration’s big cut to school nutrition would mean for their families.

When parents got their school cafeteria’s menu for February, something was missing: A third of the menu to be precise. Popular items like chicken tenders, dumplings, vegetarian burritos and French toast sticks were no longer offered. Instead of two or three protein options each day, kids now have just one.

The outcry was fierce and spanned every borough. Just this week, after listening to students, parents, advocates and the City Council, the Adams administration announced a budget restoration that means many of kids’ favorite, healthy foods will be back on the menu.

We’ll be watching the implementation of this restoration very closely, looking at menus and at budget documents. But we’re relieved that school kitchens can keep doing what they do so well: providing every child with two healthy meals a day.

We hope the furor during the past 30 days will serve as a lesson to anyone that would make something as fundamental as food for children a target of future budget cuts.

Any parent can tell you: no two kids are the same, and having options is often the difference between your child eating a meal or not. These cuts would have meant fewer kids eating no-cost school meals — and that’s bad for their families, and for the fight against child hunger across our city.

We took this cut personally, too. Two of us are parents and hear from our children and kids in our districts how disappointed they are with the new menu items. Two of us have worked as teachers. We’ve seen child hunger firsthand, and we’ve taught kids who got their healthiest, most reliable meals of the day at school.

It has taken a decade of painstaking work to make real progress fighting child hunger in city schools, making New York City a model for the entire country.

We have come too far in this fight to turn away now. It took a years-long campaign to secure no-cost school meals in every public school, “Breakfast After the Bell,” and the wider selection of culturally responsive food across the school system.

That progress continued right up until last year, when the mayor announced $50 million to renovate school cafeterias, to expand vegan options and culturally appropriate offerings like halal foods. The mayor argued then that, “By serving healthier food in our schools and through comprehensive food education, we can transform our young people’s health and wellbeing, the health of their communities, our city, and our planet.” He was right.

All of these policies have been massively successful. This school year has seen 8% more kids taking advantage of free school meals than the prior year. All this at a time when enrollment was stable.

Restoring these cuts to school meals and menus means we can keep making progress in this fight. The success of quality no-cost school meals, ensuring at least two healthy meals a day to every child, is vital at a time when hunger is on the rise.

As rising inflation has driven up grocery prices, families are struggling more than ever to afford essential staples. A recent report shows that 1 in 4 New York City children lives in poverty. No Kid Hungry’s own 2023 poll showed 2 in 5 New York families experiencing food insecurity, and nearly 3 in 4 New Yorkers reported it had become harder to afford groceries.

We’re better than this as New Yorkers. Even when other levels of government have stepped back, New York City has always found the means to prioritize the fight against child hunger in our schools.

We became a national leader because we put our kids’ health and nutrition first. And now we can keep being that leader. We are relieved the Adams administration is recognizing that in a $100 billion-plus city budget, the resources are there to prioritize the fight against child hunger. And we’ll keep fighting to ensure the full restoration of our children’s health and well-being demands.

Let’s get school meals back to the quality and variety students and parents have come to expect.