Next year, school meals will be free for students regardless of their income.
The new law was signed May 9, by Gov. Kathy Hochul and will take effect starting in the 2025-2026 school year.
Students at Shenendehowa High School were part of the effort to make this new reality possible. Members of the Shenendehowa Student Faculty Administration Senate and the Rho Kappa Honor Society went to the New York State Capitol earlier this year to lobby for free school meals for all students.
The Senate’s Board of Education representative Ruoxi Zhan, a junior, was one of the members on the trip to the Capitol.
“We discussed certain policies with Governor Kathy Hochul. Several representatives agreed with our policies, so the law has been passed and we will now have free meals for all next year,” she said.
Shen senior Katie Schloth is a member of Rho Kappa who went to the Capitol to support the campaign. She said the law would be beneficial for everyone in the state.
“We went to different representatives and we tried to convince them to have free lunch because a lot of kids that can’t necessarily afford the lunch have a hard time focusing on school,” she said. “It’s important that we try to promote free lunches to help those kids.”
Senior Isabella Sweitzer, the president of the SFA Senate, said the need for free meals was especially necessary for Shenendehowa, as some students who got meals for little to no cost in Elementary school lost that opportunity when they got older.
“We wanted to educate the congresspeople about situations like ours in particular,” she said. “Only some schools in our district qualify for free meals due to the tax brackets. However, all of those kids end up together at the highschool and lose the food they need.”
Sweitzer said she was thrilled about the new law. However, she said it did not come without some challenges.
“Getting to hear Congress people was a challenge,” she said. “A lot of them have so much work to do, and on lobby days there are so many people that have meetings with men and women in Congress and advocate for their cause. The state has a bunch of schools that do have more [families] that can afford paying for lunch, so it’s hard to recognize the schools that don’t because we’re all in a similar area.”
Ruoxi Zhan said that after all of the effort, she was glad that the bill had finally been passed.
“Students in New York State deserve free meals, and that includes free breakfast and free lunch,” she said.