In Rochester, nearly 1 in 2 children live in poverty. Although our city’s struggles with poverty and food insecurity are well-documented, few people know about the resources that support families in need. When school is out during the summer, the summer meals program allows city schools, R Centers, and other community sites to serve free nutritious meals to anyone 18 and under. This program is a critical support for thousands of families who struggle to make ends meet. Still, the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) threatens kids’ ability to access summer meals. 

To address such widespread need across the city, the Summer Meals Partnership of Rochester (SMPR) brings together summer meals providers, community members, and partner organizations to coordinate and improve meal programs. According to the 2024 data from SMPR, its members served over 1,960,720 meals between the years of 2019-2024! This number includes about 871,227 meals for breakfast and 1,089,493 meals for lunch! 

At a time when we should be doing more to help struggling families and support the healthy development of kids, recent actions in Washington, D.C. have created more uncertainty around the future of summer meals. When a city or suburb wants to offer free meals at sites that any kid can access, they rely on their community’s food insecurity rates data for eligibility. Areas with sufficiently high numbers of people enrolled in SNAP can offer meals without requiring additional income verification and paperwork from families. This also reduces the administrative burden on meal sites, which allows small community sites like churches and libraries to operate meal programs without hiring additional staff. 

The OBBB aims to reduce SNAP enrollment, which will cause additional administrative burden on communities that now have to rely on Summer Meals. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, thousands of people who qualify for SNAP will fail to submit the proper enrollment information and fall through the cracks. The new law takes SNAP benefits away from refugees and many other non-citizens living legally in the United States. With less people enrolled in SNAP, there will not only be increased pressure placed on local food pantries and food banks like Foodlink, but some communities may also lose their ability to serve summer meals without the administrative burden of verifying individual family incomes. 

Many of our Summer Meals sites within the City of Rochester rely on funding from the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) program. This program is a key federal funding stream dedicated to afterschool and summer programs. For much of the summer, the White House froze all CCLC funding and proposed eliminating future funding. Although CCLC funds were eventually released, and the program maintained its funding in the latest budget bill, it’s clear that this key program is a target of the administration. 

As SNAP and afterschool programs continue to come under threat, citizens must understand the far-reaching effects such changes could have on Rochester, our region and New York State as a whole. Every federal rule change and funding cut sets off a chain reaction. Local governments and organizations have spent decades working to better connect programs and services to make it easier to meet the needs of our community. As we continue to navigate these unprecedented times, it is crucial to understand the impacts of federal policy changes. We must speak out and protect vital programs like summer meals and the hard-won progress our community has made through years of hard work. 

The final day for summer meals is this Friday, August 29th. To learn more about summer meals in Rochester, visit summermealsroc.org. To advocate for policies that protect the summer meals program, connect with the Rochester Food Policy Council by visiting rocfoodpolicy.org.