The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
As a new school year begins in Ohio, an old problem persists: child hunger. Hunger relief programs continue to strain under the demand, while receiving less support from state and federal sources.
According to Feeding America, 1 in 5 children in the state face hunger, amounting to more than 517,000 kids.
“You have a lot of people bending heaven and earth to get food into kids mouths, but the problem is, we can’t do it alone,” said Deacon Nick Bates, director of Hunger Network in Ohio, which partners with religious congregations and local agencies to address hunger.
Bates has seen firsthand the compromises that have to be made at church food pantries and other hunger-relief efforts across the state because of state and federal budget cuts. Fresh foods are in limited supply, and resources are being spread thin.
“Instead of being able to give out five days worth of food, it means giving two to three days worth of food,” Bates said.
He said the long-term effects of hungry kids will hit the state in different ways, from health outcomes to education struggles, even with the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We should recognize that the pandemic may have ended, but the scars still remain,” Bates said. “One of those scars is hunger, and when kids are hungry, they’re more likely to get sick; when kids are hungry, they have trouble learning.”
Hunger and school funding
School districts are finding their own ways to support their students, even as they navigate a new educational funding model, on the state and federal level.
The Pickerington Local School District receives federal funding to allow the district’s 12,000 students to receive free breakfast and lunch.
Education support professional Joie Moore is nervous that the funding might not exist next year because of the back-and-forth over education (and other) funding happening in Washington, D.C., potentially leaving some students in the lurch when it comes to meals.
“I have worked in the school system for 15 years, so I know what’s it’s like to not have (the funding),” said Moore. “I remember when it was a cheese sandwich (if a student couldn’t pay for lunch), and that’s not enough to sustain a child throughout the day.”
Moore’s two children went through Pickerington schools, and she has served in many roles at the district, including helping at lunchtime. She engaged with students who didn’t have enough to eat at home, despite families working two and three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads.
“We had kids that would come into school hungry, and I would keep granola bars, protein bars, Goldfish, those kinds of things, in my drawer so they have at least something to snack on,” Moore said.
The district, like many others in the state, may have to find a way to do more with less, something Moore said the district has dealt with in the past.
But with the new state operating budget cutting public school funding through changes to the Fair School Funding Plan model that’s been in effect for the last four years, the district is looking at “dire” numbers, according to Moore, who is also president of the Pickerington Support Staff Association.
The most recent attempt to put a levy on the November ballot didn’t make it past the school board. If a levy isn’t brought forth and supported by district voters, Moore is concerned staff reductions are the next step to make ends meet.
“We have to have funding to give our kids textbooks, to give them food, all the things they need,” Moore said. “If we’re able to keep that (federal funding for school meals), but we don’t have the money to support the staff, that’s going to affect how we do that.”
Further cuts
In the state operating budget approved by the General Assembly in June, the Ohio-based Children’s Hunger Alliance received a total of $5.5 million over the next two years, down from Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposal that the alliance receive $7.5 million over the biennium.
The alliance supports programs in child care centers, after-school programs, summer meals, and weekend meals, and it provided about 11 million meals to more than 160,000 children in 2024, according to the organization.
The $2 million budget cut means direct impacts for Ohio children in need of food, according to the hunger alliance, including 1.2 million fewer meals for children returning to school this month.
“Despite the state budget cut, we do NOT plan to cut any children from our programs,” a statement from the alliance said. “To make the numbers work, we will have to provide less food over fewer weeks during the year.”
The alliance projected they would serve more than 400,000 meals by the end of the summer, including “rural grab-and-go” summer meals.
The Ohio Association of Foodbanks is also providing summer meal delivery for rural and underserved areas, despite also doing more with less funds.
The association’s earmark in the state budget included up to $24.5 million per year, to be used not only to address the increasing demand for food distribution, but also for summer meal programs, federal outreach for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other roles like free tax filing services and “capacity building.”
The state budget came as Congress debated their own budget bill, one that sought hundreds of billions in cuts, particularly from programs including SNAP, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called the “deepest SNAP cut in history.”
More than 40% of households in Ohio receiving SNAP benefits have children, according to Feeding America.
The final budget was passed 51-50, with the tie-breaking vote coming from Vice President and former Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance.
The funding reductions were a cut to the knees for food assistance programs already facing growing demand and Ohio counties already facing benefits shortfalls.
Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said while Congress did reauthorize legislation to establish permanent summer food benefits and the expanded summer meal delivery for rural and underserved areas, food insecurity continues to be a problem because of the various economic impacts that surround it.
This includes grocery store food prices, housing and utility costs, along with child care and other household needs.
“Tradeoffs in the quality of food and the quantity of food are often made first as family budgets are squeezed,” Novotny told the Capital Journal. “Unfortunately, Ohio’s statewide hunger relief network has less food on our shelves to help fill those growing gaps.”
The association leader cited a 23% reduction in state funding for “food sourcing,” along with increased food costs for the organizations trying to help hungry Ohioans as reasons the funding gaps are becoming untenable.
Between April and June of this year, the statewide food bank network provided less than four days worth of groceries per pantry visitor on average. In the same period in 2019, the network was able to provide seven days of groceries.
While food supply costs were only up 2% between April and June of 2025 compared to the 2019 period, the association said food pantry visits went up by 89%.
The School Nutrition Association’s analysis of the federal budget bill found that fewer children will be automatically eligible for free school meals as eligibility for SNAP gets stricter.
It also predicted that less schools will enroll in the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal program that allows school districts with a high percentage of low-income families to receive free meals for all students.
The number of Ohio school districts taking up that provision has already gone down over the last two years.
According to the Food Research & Action Center, 77.6% of Ohio school districts who were eligible for the provision took the assistance in the 2023-2024 school year. But in the 2024-2025 school year, participation in the state went down to 61.3%.
The superintendent of Edison Local Schools in Jefferson County recently announced the district would not be continuing with the provision in the 2025-2026 school year, going back to a paid model for anyone not eligible for free or reduced-cost meals.
“While CEP has allowed the district to offer meals at no cost to families, the current model is no longer financially sustainable,” Superintendent Bill Beattie wrote in a letter to families. “This was not an easy decision, but it’s one we must make to ensure the long-term stability of our food service program.”
Beattie said the district “can no longer sustain (the program) without compromising other essential services.”
Compromise seems to be the standard for many schools in Ohio as they figure out how to manage with the state budget funding changes on top of less federal funding.
Ohio Education Association President Jeff Wensing said the problems lie solely at the feet of legislative leaders, who don’t have students at the heart of their priorities.
“We’re in a position now where the legislators have determined there are going to be winners and losers in school meals,” Wensing said. “These are problems that we have, and every real problem that we currently have, you have to pin at the door of the Republican Party, because that’s the party that’s been in control (in Ohio) for over three decades.”
