Officials in Houston are bracing for a sharp rise in the number of families who will need food assistance this fall, according to FOX 26 Houston. The concern centers on children who will no longer automatically receive free meals once the new school year begins.
Part of the problem is that a number of families are no longer eligible for SNAP or other food assistance. At the same time, some schools are no longer providing additional free lunch automatically to their students.
That is because some schools are opting out of the CEP, the community program that would provide that free food. Without it, families are now trying to navigate how their children will be fed during the school day.
The latest data from the district puts numbers to the shift. According to HISD, 33 schools are no longer participating in the automatic free lunch program, which works out to roughly 35,000 students who are going to be food insecure.
The reason, officials said, is that the money is not there. Even though the CEP program is a nonprofit, it operates like a business and can cost more, and in some cases the funds are simply not available for schools to continue running it.
The result falls hardest on households already under strain. Families that are struggling at home now face the prospect of their children losing a guaranteed meal at school, and officials expect a good number of them to seek out additional resources to fill the gap.