Broward schools expand free meals to 141 campuses next year
141 Broward campuses will serve free lunch without applications next year, saving some families about $810 a student on lunch bills.
One hundred forty-one Broward County Public Schools campuses will serve free breakfast and lunch through the federal Community Eligibility Provision next school year, removing the meal-application step for families at those schools. That would avoid about $810 in lunch charges over a typical 180-day school year for a high school student who would otherwise pay $4.50 a day.
The remaining 80 schools will keep using the Meal Benefits Application to determine free or reduced-price lunch. Students at those campuses will keep their prior-year meal status for the first 30 days of school, or until a new eligibility decision is made, whichever comes first. Starting Sept. 22, 2026, students without a completed application will have to pay for lunch until eligibility is set. The district's 2026-27 prices list reduced-price lunch at 40 cents, elementary lunch at $4.00, middle school lunch at $4.35 and high school lunch at $4.50. Citizenship status is not collected on the application, and families can add funds and track meal activity through My School Bucks.
Families at the CEP campuses will still be encouraged to complete an Income Survey Form for funding and eligibility data, even though it is not required for meals. Students who receive SNAP or TANF, and students in Head Start, foster care, homeless or migrant status, automatically qualify for free meals. CEP allows schools to offer non-pricing breakfast and lunch to all students by using information from programs such as SNAP and TANF instead of traditional paper forms.
Federal rules let a district, group of schools or individual school join CEP when at least 25 percent of students are identified, and states must publish eligible and participating lists by May 1. The Food Research & Action Center set districts' opt-in deadline at June 30, 2026, for the 2026-27 school year. Broward County Public Schools had operated under CEP for 167 eligible public schools beginning in the 2022-23 school year, but the district later resumed meal-benefits applications after federal pandemic-era funding that supported universal free lunch ran out.
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