Governors Get the Message
Yesterday, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders made history. In signing legislation to enact universal school breakfast, Arkansas became the first red state to guarantee meals to all kids. As a result, around 250,000 more kids, many of whom do not get enough food at home, will now receive free breakfast at school every single day.
Sanders is at the forefront of a new trend, brought on, I believe, by Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s selection last year as Kamala Harris’ running mate. While Harris lost and Walz returned to Minnesota, his embrace of universal school meals won attention and plaudits during the announcement of his selection. Other governors clearly noticed, from both parties.
2024 was an awful year for school meals. Governors from both parties turned their backs on kids. States like Illinois and Pennsylvania1 that seemed on the cusp of universal school meals instead chose priorities whose recipients could return more political favor than kids who can’t vote.
But post Walz? This year, either universal school meals or significant expansions are in play in New York, Delaware, Oregon, Ohio, Washington, Kansas and North Dakota. With Arkansas, that’s eight states split evenly in half between red and blue.
Why? A few reasons.
Most obviously, every governor wants to be president and when they see a fellow governor elevated in part because of their steadfast support for a particular issue, that issue suddenly becomes very popular. Second, the notion that feeding kids is both good politics and good policy may be setting in (if kids are hungry, they can’t learn so you’re wasting the entire education budget as a result). Third, it’s at least possible that some governors are sitting there, thinking to themselves, “what’s the point of being governor if you can’t even feed hungry kids?” Think about it. If you were starting a society from scratch, wouldn’t feeding kids be among your top priorities? How could it not be?
To be clear, there are around ten million kids in this country whose parents currently make too much money to qualify for free school meals but between rent, inflation, utilities and everything else, there’s always not enough money to reliably put food on the table every day. Every one of those kids should be fed at school. Full stop. If we win in all eight states (and right now, our organization Solving Hunger only has the resources to run campaigns in 5-6 of them), around 10-15% of kids currently going hungry will get fed. That still leaves far too many — and that’s before the risk of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, John Thune and Mike Johnson cutting federal funding for school meals.
Governor Sanders yesterday, through her bold and compassionate action, said something we all know: we should never let anyone go hungry, especially kids. We know other governors have been listening. Let’s hope they are in Washington too.
Shapiro has had the opportunity to expand to lunch multiple times. His budget office has proposed it multiple times. He has rejected it each time.