Last week, Angel of Edgewood, a Hartford nonprofit fighting poverty and hunger, distributed more than 6,000 pounds of fresh produce at its annual back-to-school event.
Founder and CEO Jendayi Scott-Miller said the number sounds high but is actually “heartbreaking” — the organization has typically provided thousands more pounds of food at its past events. Community partner organizations that hand out school supplies say they also need to significantly scale back.
Scott-Miller attributed the reduction in food and supplies to rising costs, caused in part by tariffs. Many of these items needed for the school year are imported into the U.S. and now face steeper tariffs recently imposed by the Trump administration.
“For the first time, our distributors could not match our purchase request because of skyrocketing costs and tariffs,” Scott-Miller said Monday. “When children are starting the school year with less food on their tables, we are not just failing them, we are failing our future.”
Connecticut lawmakers and local groups are pushing back against some of the policies and legislation from the Trump administration that they argue will hurt families, students and teachers as they return to the classroom.
In addition to sweeping new tariffs on U.S. imports from dozens of countries, they also pointed to the implications of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” on public education and food assistance. The cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, also put at risk eligibility for free and reduced-price school meals.
"There are tens of millions of kids all across the country who are going to have less food on the table when they get up in the morning, when they come home at night, because the average SNAP benefit will be much lower for families all across this country,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Monday at the state Capitol.
Murphy argued there is “a coming food crisis for kids. Lawmakers and advocates noted that children that go hungry have a harder time concentrating on assignments and homework, whether that’s because they don’t get enough to eat at home or at school.”
“We cannot build a strong education system, or a strong country, if our foundation in education is weak. We know hungry kids can’t focus as well,” said Miguel Cardona, the former U.S. Secretary of Education and the former commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education.
SNAP allows students to automatically enroll in free school meals without needing to fill out an application to qualify. Losing access to a program like SNAP would mean a student is no longer directly certified in the school meals program. They would then need to fill out the paperwork to see if they are eligible.
In higher poverty areas, school districts can qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal program that allows a school to offer free meals to all enrolled students. Dozens of school districts in Connecticut were approved in the prior school year for a universal free school meals program under CEP.
Because of changes to SNAP in the new federal law, some of those universal school meal programs could face higher costs and lose access to the Community Eligibility Program, which could affect an estimated 18 million students, according to a May report from the think tank Urban Institute.
“Although individual students would remain income-eligible for free school meals, the changes to SNAP could leave fewer students automatically enrolled for these meals, especially if students enrolled in both SNAP and Medicaid were to lose both benefits,” according to Urban Institute’s report. “Further, reduced participation rates in SNAP and Medicaid could increase school meal costs in schools, districts, and states.”
The “Big Beautiful Bill” will make major changes to both SNAP recipients and the state agencies that administer the program in the coming years. While the state is still waiting for federal guidance on expanded work requirements to access SNAP, Connecticut could also pick up a much larger portion of the tab when it comes to those benefits in the next several years.
The state could face nearly $180 million in annual extra costs to its food stamps program within the next five years, according to a preliminary analysis of federal budget cuts by Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration.
Tariffs are also hitting some imported food items and school supplies.
For years, teachers have used their own money to pay for additional supplies and resources for their classrooms that their schools haven’t been able to cover.
And now with the new tariff policies, they say, the higher costs will keep falling on teachers as well as families. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., referred to it as a “back-to-school tax.”
“This stuff is imported whether it’s apparel, crayons, calculators, strawberries, grapes. Whether the tariff is 15% or 50%, the ones who pay for are the students, their parents, teachers and the American people,” Blumenthal said Monday.
In response to the “Big Beautiful Bill” and other policies, state legislators are weighing how Connecticut will make up shortfalls to federal assistance for programs like SNAP and Medicaid.
But lawmakers on Monday wouldn’t weigh in on whether the General Assembly should take up the issue of more funding for school meals during a special session anticipated for the fall.
Cardona generally said there’s a role for the state but noted the “additional burdens” placed on states that may have to take up certain services in the absence of the U.S. Department of Education.
The state’s U.S. senators said they will be focused on the debate over funding the federal government when they return to Congress after Labor Day.
“That will be a chance for us to say to our Republican colleagues, ‘Do you want our vote on that budget? Then you have to roll back some of the health care cuts that are going to devastate families in this country,'” Murphy said.
Blumenthal agreed that filling the gaps shouldn’t fall squarely on the states. He said Connecticut is better positioned than others because of its rainy day fund, but, “It doesn’t have endless resources.”
“It’s about parents having to make a choice between dinners and bearing school supplies,” said Julieth Callejas, executive director of End Hunger CT! “In a state that is so full of wealth and opportunities, our children should not be worrying about their meals.”
CT Mirror reporter Andrew Brown contributed to this story.
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
