Opinion: 2025 and New York’s Fight Against Child Hunger

“Proposals in Congress and public comments from the incoming administration give us every reason to fear that federal leaders will target programs that fight hunger for cuts.”

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I’ve been fighting child hunger in New York for more than a decade. And I’m worried about what 2025 will bring. 

Last year, four in five New Yorkers reported having a harder time affording groceries, according to our annual hunger poll. I wish we could say help was on the way. But quite the contrary.

Proposals in Congress and public comments from the incoming administration give us every reason to fear that federal leaders will target programs that fight hunger for cuts. While I sincerely hope that bipartisan support for feeding kids perseveres, no one can predict what may come our way.

What I do know is that New York needs to start preparing now to protect New Yorkers from whatever may come from Washington. 

As I write, New York City’s mayor, our governor, and our legislatures are drawing up budgets and policy priorities for 2025. We need them to put in place real tools we can use to make sure no child goes without three healthy meals a day.

We have our marching orders. One of the only issues that unites every kind of New Yorker is making sure kids have enough to eat. In that same annual poll, 93 percent told us ending child hunger should be a bipartisan priority. Upstate, downstate, Democrat, Republican—New Yorkers want their government to do everything it can to fight child hunger.  

While that may seem a lofty ambition, it’s an attainable one. We just have to focus on solutions that are proven to work. 

When I look at the landscape of what’s currently in place and the uncertainty ahead of us, one critical resource stands above all others: our public schools. Even in times when misinformation, fear, and intimidation run rampant, families of every kind put their faith in our schools and educators. That makes them the ideal setting to confront child hunger.

In 2025, our goal is to transform every school into a community nutrition hub that provides free meals and connects families to food assistance programs. We can use schools to deliver and expand the most critical nutrition programs.

That starts with making no-cost school lunch and breakfast universal for every child, in every grade, and in every school across New York State.

Over the last two years, Gov. Kathy Hochul has expanded access to no-cost school meals to cover more than 86 percent of children in New York public schools. That’s a massive accomplishment.

By taking the final step and expanding access to all students, New York would ensure regular access to at least two meals a day for more than 2 million children. Other states, from California to Minnesota to Maine, have already shown us the way, enacting permanent school meals for all. It’s time for New York to follow and complete this vital work. 

But we can’t stop there. We’ve seen how effective schools and local community groups can be when they work together to provide families with essentials, they may not otherwise be able to afford. Over the last few years, the prevalence and need for school-based food and hygiene pantries has grown. With budget support from New York State, we could bring urgently needed school pantries to all the highest-need parts of the state.

We can also leverage all the contact schools have with parents to encourage families to enroll in food assistance programs like SNAP, which provides funds on a card every month to spend at grocery stores, farmers markets and bodegas.

Many schools already do this important work, but it’s far from universal. The state can and should require information about SNAP enrollment to be distributed in every school. This will make it even easier for eligible families to access Summer EBT, a new federal benefit available in the summer months. 

Together, these practical solutions could help protect many families in every community, rural and urban, upstate and downstate, from what may come from Washington in the years ahead. 

We can’t ever resign ourselves to more kids facing hunger, or more families going without the help they need.

We have the power here in New York to intervene. But we have to take action now. I’m urging the governor, mayor and the city and state Legislatures to act before it’s too late.

Rachel Sabella is the Director of No Kid Hungry New York.

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