By LINDA CHION KENNEY
As housing costs and inflationary pressures rise, the Hillsborough County school district is doubling down on its commitment to student nutrition, providing free breakfast for all students and free lunch for students at all but 31 of the district’s 217 traditional schools and centers.
“We try to find every way to get our kids fed,” said Shani Hall, the school district’s general manager for school nutrition. “Our kids are coming to school hungry, and a hungry child can’t learn.”
Meanwhile, menus for the 2025-26 school year have been updated. Based on a taste-testing event with students earlier this year, new menu items include southern chicken bites, hummus vegan wrap, Cajun chicken salad and teriyaki beef with fried rice pagoda. Fan favorites remain, including pizza, cheeseburgers and pasta. As for the popcorn chicken bowl with mashed potatoes? “That’s been around forever,” Hall said. “It’s not going anywhere.”
Also around forever is the Universal Free Breakfast program, funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which Hall said Hillsborough has been a part of for 25 to 30 years. “We qualify based on the district’s economic status, based on federal regulation,” Hall said. The state says to us, if you have a high percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals, you can qualify for the Universal Free Breakfast Program.”
Similarly, the school district participates in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a federal aid program established under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which allows schools in low-income areas to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students without the need for individual applications. To qualify, schools must have at least 25 percent of their students identified as eligible for free meals through means other than individual applications for free and reduced-price meals. This would include participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known colloquially as food stamps.
“We started using CEP [funds] coming out of COVID, which was encouraged throughout the country,” Hall said. At the time the percentage was 40 percent, which two years ago was lowered to 25 percent.”
That’s not to say that students in need do not attend schools that do not qualify for universal free lunch. For these students, “we encourage families to fill out free and reduced-price meal applications,” Hall said. “We know that there’s a lot of need out there.”
The Free and Reduced-Price Meals program, funded by the USDA and state governments, provides meals to children from low-income families. For the 2025-26 school year, eligibility based on household annual income is 130 percent of the federal poverty level for free meals, and between 130 percent and 185 percent for reduced-price meals. For a family of four, that amounts to $36,075, for free meals, and between $36,076 and $51,338, for reduced-price meals.
Hall stressed the imperative to apply promptly, noting that an application based on income at the beginning of the school year is good for throughout the school year, even if a family’s income rises. “We know that there’s a lot of need out there.”
To ensure more schools qualify for universal free lunch at CEP schools and to streamline the school nutrition program, the district follows instructions that allow schools in the same community to pool their numbers for 25 percent qualification. In other words, if one school has 20 percent of its students qualifying for SNAP, and a nearby school has 30 percent, the two schools together would average 25 percent, and, thereby, both schools would be eligible for CEP.
Based on the district’s resulting list of CEP-eligible schools, all but 31 of 217 schools qualify for CEP. That means students every day, regardless of need, are eligible for free lunch at all but 31 district schools. Again, students in need at those 31 schools can apply for free and reduced-price meals.
As for the 31 schools, more than a third of them are in the affluent FishHawk/Lithia and South Tampa communities, including Bevis, FishHawk Creek and Stowers elementary schools, and nearby Lithia Springs Elementary in Valrico. Also included are Barrington and Randall middle schools, and Newsome High in FishHawk; Gorrie and Grady elementary, and Coleman and Wilson middle schools in South Tampa; and the school they feed into, Plant High in Tampa.
Newsome and Plant are the only high schools on the list for schools not eligible for CEP funding. The list includes also York PreK-8 in Apollo Beach, Riverwalk STEM Academy in Riverview and Tinker Elementary School on MacDill Air Force Base.
As for charter schools, “even though they’re a part of the Hillsborough County school district, most of them do not fall under our sponsorship,” Hall said. “They have their own sponsorship and do their own feeding. They could be CEP eligible, but they’re doing that through their own feeding programs.”
Overall, feeding programs paint “the picture of the need that is still out there,” said Hall, who noted the discernible increase in the school district’s summer feeding program. “The need comes from housing affordability, rising prices and from dealing with back-to-back hurricanes last year. Many people are still digging out from that, and we’re heading deeper into the hurricane season.”
One thing that hasn’t increased is the cost of school lunch. That remains constant, Hall said, with meals costing $2.25 for younger students, and $2.75 for older students. The price for adults is $5.00, to cover the cost of the meal. Costs have been held down, Hall added, due to local food providers and commodity pricing through the USDA.