Mills signs Apple Act in Brunswick, expands free meals for preschoolers

Free meals for 36 pre-K children at Family Focus Early Learning Center are expected to save the Brunswick program almost $15,000 a year, a concrete local gain from the Apple Act as Maine extends its universal school meals policy deeper into early education. Gov. Janet Mills and Senate President Mattie Daughtry marked the new law at the Brunswick child care center on April 22, with the practical effects now moving from ceremony to implementation.

The law fills a gap in Maine’s existing school meals system. Since Mills signed landmark legislation in 2021, Maine has covered free breakfast and lunch for all public-school students, making it the second state in the nation to do so. But pre-K students in public school buildings were treated differently from children in off-site public preschool programs run by community partners. Those classrooms could fall outside the National School Lunch Program’s reach, even when they were part of the public system.

The Apple Act, built from LD 2064, sets up a grant program so school administrative units can contract with eligible off-site public preschool providers to serve breakfast, lunch and a snack. To qualify, programs must meet Maine’s public preschool standards, and the meals must follow child care nutrition rules. The Maine Children’s Cabinet Early Childhood Advisory Council will oversee the program with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.

The fiscal note puts the new initiative at $866,086 in General Fund spending for fiscal 2026-27. That includes $480,000 in meal grants for about 400 students, calculated at $1,200 per student each year, along with $217,430 for two Education Specialist II positions and $18,656 in overhead. The plan also includes a one-time $150,000 startup fund for infrastructure upgrades, plus an additional infrastructure grant of up to $10,000 for eligible preschool programs.

At Family Focus, executive director Laura Larson said the savings would help the center keep feeding children rather than cutting elsewhere. That matters in a state where Feeding America estimates 50,610 children face hunger and 191,920 Mainers overall are food insecure, with a statewide food insecurity rate of 13.8% in 2023. Daughtry said the problem surfaced during her child care listening tour, where providers described how children in the same public program could have different meal access depending on whether their classroom sat inside a school building or at a community site.

Maine’s Department of Education says public preschool remains a local decision for school administrative units, and the state’s pre-K focus is on all 4-year-olds through a whole-student, community-based approach. For Brunswick families, the change is less about symbolism than the daily cost of lunch, breakfast and snack for the youngest public school students.