Fayetteville-Manlius High School to offer free breakfast and lunch next year

A Fayetteville-Manlius High School student who buys breakfast and lunch every day now pays $7.25, a cost that adds up to about $1,305 over a 180-day school year. Starting next year, that bill disappears for high school families as the district joins New York State’s Universal Free School Meals Program for the 2026-27 school year.

The Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District said the change was announced at a May 11 school meeting and confirmed in a May 12 district post. It means high school students will be able to eat breakfast and lunch at no charge while the district keeps its other schools on the free-meal track already in place. New York’s universal meal rules require participating schools in the federal School Breakfast and School Lunch Programs to operate CEP or Provision 2.

State officials have said the program serves more than 2.7 million students across New York and can save families about $165 per child each month. In Fayetteville and Manlius, the impact is more immediate and easier to measure at the kitchen table: a student who buys both meals on a typical school day is now looking at real savings in a district where grocery prices, gas prices and other household costs continue to rise.

Superintendent Magda Parvey said district leaders understood that pressure. The district had previously held off on joining the program at the high school because the newly renovated cafeteria created an opportunity to keep working with students on broader menu choices. Under the district’s current food-service pricing, full-price breakfast at the high school is $3.00 and full-price lunch is $4.25. Snack-shack items and a la carte purchases such as chips, drinks and ice cream will still be available in F-M cafeterias.

The decision also came after community pressure built. Students and parents had asked to bring the program back, and the Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance said more than 260 people signed an open letter urging the school board to adopt it. That matters beyond cafeteria preferences. A universal meal program removes the need for families to navigate income eligibility at the high school level, which should help students who missed traditional aid cutoffs and those who may have skipped meals rather than stand out as different from classmates.

For Onondaga County families, the change turns school lunch from a daily expense into a built-in support, and it shows how student nutrition has become part of the broader conversation about affordability, access and equity in public education.