Advocates tell House agriculture panel repeal of Vermont’s universal school meals would shift costs to families and local districts

Manore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont, and Kayla Strom, farm-to-school programs manager for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) of Vermont, told the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency & Forestry Committee that Governor Scott’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget would remove funding for Vermont’s Universal School Meals program from the Education Fund and that doing so would shift costs to families, school districts and local farms.

Horton told the committee the program — enacted as part of Act 64 in 2023 and providing breakfast and lunch at no charge to every student in public schools and participating independent schools — currently combines roughly $34.5 million in federal reimbursements with about $17.5 million in state funding for an estimated $52 million annual program cost. “It means 2,500,000 fewer healthy school meals served to Vermont kids every school year,” Horton said, and she warned that 27,000 children in the so‑called “missing middle” would face charges for meals if universal coverage were repealed.

The program, Horton said, eliminates unpaid meal debt, reduces paperwork and draws down additional federal dollars that also enable schools to qualify…