At least in the short term, Oregon’s 2025 legislative session might be best remembered for what didn’t pass, such as a high-profile transportation package and a legislative proposal to stop students from using cellphones at school.

Add one more to the list of things left undone: school meal expansion.

House Bill 3435 would have required all 197 school districts to provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to their students, also known as universal school meals. It was one of three key initiatives tackling hunger in this year’s session that didn’t pass.

“We are deeply disappointed with the outcomes of this year’s session and mourning the devastating impact these decisions will have on Oregon families,” said David Wieland, policy advocate at Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, which has been among the most vocal critics of lawmakers for not approving these proposals.

Many school districts already provide universal free meals, and Oregon has come close to making this a statewide offering in the past. But districts have been able to give out breakfasts and lunches in the past, in part, due to sustained federal support.

“Our lawmakers had a clear opportunity to protect Oregonians from the growing hunger crisis and from devastating federal threats,” Wieland said, “but they chose not to act.”

But lawmakers say it’s not that simple. Budget co-chairs Sen. Kate Lieber, D-Beaverton, and Rep. Tawna Sanchez, D-Portland, said they knew it would be a challenging session financially.

Especially after the May forecast came out — down almost half a billion dollars — Lieber said they knew funding new programs was almost impossible. And that’s before the severity of federal cuts was clear.

“There’s a larger picture here to be looked at,” Sanchez said. “[The] lack of federal resources, the current bill in Congress right now, Oregon’s own deficit in revenues — all of those things were things that we had to take into consideration when we made these really, really hard choices.”

President Donald Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is making its way through Congress this week. The Senate narrowly approved the bill Tuesday; the House is expected to vote in time for the bill to be signed on July 4.

The bill would reduce federal spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, that helps provide healthy food to more than 42 million Americans per month by $287 billion over 10 years.

“The federal government — if this bill happens — is fundamentally remaking the way federal dollars come into the states,” Lieber said. “Oregonians are going to suffer because of what the federal government is doing.”

The push in Salem to expand food access

Oregon is facing record levels of need.

One in six kids in Oregon and Southwest Washington is experiencing hunger, and food banks have seen record demand for emergency food. According to Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, the federal threats to SNAP could cut roughly 108,000 Oregonians off the program and shift $850 million in costs to the state.

State lawmakers this session considered several bills aimed at providing needed food to young Oregonians:

• School Meals for All would have guaranteed no-cost meals for every public school student.
• Food for All Oregonians would have ensured food access regardless of immigration status.
• The Student Basic Needs Package aimed to address hunger and housing insecurity on college campuses.

None of these passed.

Advocates argue that state lawmakers didn’t just fail to advance vital bills; they actively cut programs like eviction prevention and child care — essential services that keep people housed and fed. They say the legislators’ failure came in spite of thousands of concerned people calling, writing and attending rallies and lobby days.

“While we are frustrated, we are not defeated,” added policy advocate Wieland. “We’ll continue to organize and hold our leaders accountable. Oregonians deserve better — and we won’t stop fighting for it.”

Oregon lawmakers weigh budget tensions

Lieber and Sanchez described their moves this session as cautious.

When the May forecast came out, Lieber said it became very clear that lawmakers did not want to start any new program that, in a very short period of time, might have to be cut.

But even before the revenue forecast was released, Sanchez said the lawmakers had a feeling that things were not going as well as they had anticipated.

“Lottery is down, the [corporate activities tax] was down, tobacco was down, alcohol was down, marijuana was down,” Sanchez listed off. “Like all of those indicators for revenue for the state were down.”

On top of that, they knew federal funding wasn’t going to be reliable this time around. Many of the state agencies that would normally apply for significant federal funding didn’t have those opportunities.

“We also know that the state’s budget was not designed to backfill federal resources,” Sanchez said. “It was designed to draw down federal resources.

“So,” she said, “we were really very conscious and very clear about saying, ‘Nothing bright and shiny and new, folks,’ because we can’t. We may not be able to afford it going forward.”

This reasoning led lawmakers to shelve the expansion bills, such as universal school meals. However, Lieber said they did make a point to “hold harmless” several programs, sparing them from cuts.

For example, they didn’t have reductions in the state budget for SNAP or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. She said they also protected money in the state’s Student Success Act fund.

When Oregon lawmakers passed the Student Success Act in 2019, it created a dedicated, new corporate activities tax. The act outlines specific uses for the money, but lawmakers said the business tax was down this year from what was expected.

“We had to find $200 million within that fund in order to make sure that it stayed,” Lieber said.

In addition to food security and literacy, Lieber said they also made a point to not cut staff on college campuses called “benefit navigators,” who help students access social services and other supports.

“The governor took a cut in the benefit navigators,” she said. “We restored that cut and held that harmless.”

This mother relies on SNAP to help feed her kids. Now, she’s bracing for cuts

Sanchez also pointed out that the legislative session ended late Friday night — before it was clear what Congress would approve in the federal budget bill.

“We had no idea what those impacts were going to look like,” she said. “We still don’t know, technically speaking, what those impacts are going to look like. So, we weren’t just doing our due diligence as we are required to come out of the legislative session with a balanced budget.”

Lieber said state lawmakers are worried about keeping current SNAP benefits — let alone the millions of dollars it would take to expand — and, by extension, keeping food for kids in schools as these multiple federal cuts hang in the balance.

“There’s $1.5 billion that comes in from the federal government in the schools, and about $500 million of that is food,” she said. “As difficult as the decisions were to make this year, I think we are coming into even more difficult decisions in both 2026 and [the 2027-29 biennium].”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/02/oregon-school-meal-expansion-fails-legislature/