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Rosy Nick eats lunch with her friends Lily and Hayden on April 9, 2026, in Rapelje. The entire middle school and high school eat lunch together everyday, including the teachers.
Lauren Miller/Montana Free Press/CatchLight Local/Report for America
Families who lose federal food assistance may also lose their automatic qualification for free or reduced school meals.
Just two weeks before classes were set to begin, the Missoula County Public Schools board debated whether to raise the price of school meals.
In the end, the trustees decided to raise the adult meal price by 15 cents while maintaining the student meal price, but the August discussion highlighted the connections between meal debt and changes to eligibility for federal food assistance.
In Missoula and other school districts, students are fed regardless of their ability to pay. But that unpaid meal debt can add up, with Missoula’s balance sitting at $384,716 at the beginning of this school year. Districts statewide and across the country rack up meal debt every year and take varying approaches to addressing it. Nine states have enacted universal free school meal programs, while some school districts send unpaid meal debts to collections agencies.
So, why do schools track student lunch debt? And how does it affect low-income families?
In Montana, about half of lunches served in schools are free or reduced-price and subsidized by federal funding, according to the state Office of Public Instruction’s website. Most schools also offer breakfast.
To receive federal reimbursement for the free or reduced meals, school districts must comply with a laundry list of regulations, Missoula Superintendent Micah Hill told Montana Free Press this week. That includes adopting policies around making a reasonable effort to collect unpaid lunch debt, something the Missoula school district hadn’t done until April.
Under the district’s new policy, families won’t get “sent to collections,” but the district will contact parents regularly about paying off debt, Hill said during the April meeting.
Many students with meal debt are likely eligible for free or reduced meals, and school staff encourage families to apply for the program, Burley McWilliams, the district’s facilities and operations director, said during the August school board meeting.
Hill told MTFP that families likely don’t fill out the application because they don’t think they are eligible.
“Family circumstances can change from one day to the next,” he said. “Things could be good, and we’re doing fine, and then someone’s job, you know, they get laid off, or say a lumber mill closes, and it suddenly changes the financial picture for a family.”
It’s unclear how much of the district’s meal debt is attributable to families who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals but are not enrolled, Hill said.
Last school year, about 33% of Missoula students were enrolled in free or reduced-price meals, said Valerie Rosman, the Missoula County Public Schools’ spokesperson. That’s up from 27% in 2019-2020, before a nationwide COVID-era universal free school meal program skewed numbers.
In the 2024-2025 school year, about 41% of Missoula County students and 54% of Montana students were eligible for free or reduced-price meals, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a national organization that funds initiatives supporting children and families.
The state Office of Public Instruction directly certifies families signed up for SNAP, the federal food assistance program, or who receive other benefits for free or reduced meals, and the school district notifies families if they are automatically enrolled in the program, Rosman said. Students found eligible at the beginning of the school year retain that status through the following October, she said. The district encourages families who do not qualify to reapply during the year, especially if they’ve had changes to household size or income, Rosman said.
Two Missoula elementary schools, Franklin and Lowell, are part of the federal Community Eligibility Provision, which allows high-poverty schools to serve free meals to all students. Those schools are reimbursed based on the percentage of students eligible for programs like SNAP.
Missoula school district officials are concerned that federal changes to SNAP requirements will result in fewer eligible students receiving free or reduced-priced meals.
“We are anticipating that we’re going to see a significant impact to what our free and reduced numbers are,” Hill said during the August meeting. “Our goal is to make sure that all parents are aware. … It’s going to be a challenge for us. We work with the food bank and other community partners to try and figure out how can we best support [families]. At the end of the day at MCPS, every kid gets breakfast and lunch if they want it, no questions asked.”
Under the updated SNAP changes included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and implemented Nov. 1, 2025, more adults must show they are working, volunteering or studying 80 hours per month, including parents whose children are 14 or older, to gain eligibility.
This year, about 7,000 Montanans, including roughly 3,000 children, have lost SNAP benefits, said Samantha Dennison, director of community engagement for the Montana Food Bank Network.
Dennison said families who lose SNAP benefits and no longer automatically qualify for free or reduced-price school meals may not fill out the application for that assistance and could accrue meal debt. Processing applications and dealing with meal debt creates a larger administrative burden for school districts, she said.
“We’ve created systems to help us be more efficient and bring down administrative costs,” she said. “If we take one of the foundational blocks like SNAP out of that system, then the whole system can cascade.”
The changes to SNAP are also a concern for Hamilton Public Schools Superintendent Dave Thennis. Right now, 538 students qualify for free or reduced meals through SNAP or Medicaid, he told MTFP. While it’s unclear how many of those students will be affected by the changes, families already in a tough financial situation will now have to apply for the meal program, he said.
Hamilton teachers, counselors and administrators work to find resources for kids and families, but “it’s difficult for families and students to ask for help sometimes,” Thennis said.
At the end of last year, the district had about $19,000 in meal debt, Thennis said. The Friends of Hamilton Schools Foundation helped raise money to reduce that amount to less than $10,000, he said.
“We’re in a better place, but this will definitely challenge that effort,” he said.
Similar to Missoula, it’s unclear how much of the district’s meal debt is from students who could qualify for free or reduced-price meals, Thennis said.
“The harder you make this, the more friction you put in the way for getting qualified for free, reduced meals, the less likely you have those families finish that process,” he said. “And then I think what ultimately happens, not that they wouldn’t pay if they had the means, they don’t pay because they don’t have the means.”
After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, the federal government offered waivers that allowed districts to serve all school meals for free. The program ended in fall 2022.
During the 2023 Montana legislative session, Helena Democratic Rep. Melissa Romano introduced a bill allocating $22 million to cover all non-federally funded costs of providing school breakfast and lunch to all students. The bill died in committee.
Last year, Romano’s bill to have the state cover “copayments” for reduced-price meals passed both chambers but was vetoed by Gov. Greg Gianforte. In his veto letter, Gianforte wrote that the bill’s goals are already accomplished through existing programs and that the Legislature did not appropriate enough funds to cover costs.
Romano, a longtime teacher and current Montana Federation of Public Employees president, told MTFP this week that while the cost of a reduced-priced lunch may seem small, it adds up for families who are just making enough to pay the bills.
While Romano did not run for reelection to the Legislature, she said other lawmakers have expressed interest in advancing a school lunch bill next year. Romano said the 2025 bill gained bipartisan support because hunger doesn’t discriminate.
“Kids don’t choose who their parents are and what jobs they can get,” she said. “Their job is to go to school and get the education they deserve, and part of that is being fed.”
Dining and Cooking