Editor’s Note: March is celebrated nationally as Women’s History Month. Here in Arkansas, we also recognize March as School Breakfast Month. If you’re familiar with Arkansas School Breakfast Month, it’s likely because of the diligent work of a handful of women who have championed the importance of school breakfast for fifteen years. Thanks to their persistence and patience, next year students in Arkansas schools will have access to free breakfast. The importance of this one small meal cannot be overstated, and it will take another decade to fully appreciate how all of Arkansas will benefit. Thanks, ladies!
The best news for Arkansas this year? Free breakfast for all students. This School Breakfast for All story spans fifteen years and three governors—some wins are worth the wait.
by Patty Barker, No Kid Hungry Campaign Director
Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance
The Historic Milestone: Senate Bill 59
With her signature, Governor Sanders made Arkansas the first Southern state and first conservative-led state to pass universal free school meal legislation. This is a game-changer for a state ranked by the USDA as the hungriest in the U.S. Ensuring every student has a nutritious breakfast will have a significant impact on students’ health and academic success. Here’s how we became part of Arkansas’s school breakfast miracle.
On February 20, 2025, Governor Sarah Sanders signed into law Senate Bill 59, which will make school breakfast available free of charge to all 470,000-plus public school students in Arkansas, regardless of their family’s income level, beginning in the 2025/26 school year. The bill, sponsored by Senators Jonathan Dismang-R and Clarke Tucker-D, and Representatives Zach Gramlick-R, Tippi McCullough-D, and DeAnn Vaught-R, plus 83 more bipartisan members of the Arkansas Senate and House as co-sponsors, was passed with near-unanimous favorable votes in both houses.
The Beginning: Governor Beebe
In 2010, then-Governor Mike Beebe was asked by Share Our Strength, a national hunger relief nonprofit, to make Arkansas a “proof of concept” state for their No Kid Hungry Campaign, offering funding and technical support to develop a locally-led, five-year campaign to end childhood hunger in Arkansas.
Without hesitation, Governor Beebe agreed. He returned home, called together his cabinet-level leaders overseeing child nutrition programming, along with key child health and education advocates. He reminded them that Arkansas was ranked #1 in childhood hunger and declared the Arkansas No Kid Hungry Campaign a top administrative priority. You could hear a pin drop in the Governor’s conference room when he finished his pronouncement.
Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe and his wife Ginger provided much needed support as No Kid Hungry kicked off in Arkansas.
Building the Foundation: No Kid Hungry Arkansas
With significant support from Share Our Strength, the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance was tapped as lead partner in Arkansas. The goals were clear: increase participation in school breakfast, expand access to afterschool and summer meals, and support families with nutrition education and SNAP access.
Research showed that students who ate a healthy school breakfast had improved attendance, fewer trips to the school nurse, and better concentration and behavior in the classroom. Yet, in 2010, only about half of Arkansas students who ate a free or reduced-price school lunch also ate breakfast. Barriers included social stigma, busy schedules, long cafeteria lines, and kids wanting to play or socialize before school.
The Solution: Breakfast After the Bell
The answer was Breakfast After the Bell (BAB)—serving breakfast as part of the school day through programs like Breakfast in the Classroom, Second Chance Breakfast, and Grab-and-Go. The Arkansas No Kid Hungry Breakfast team, led by Vivian Nicholson, a former child nutrition director, and a handful of breakfast advocates, including former school superintendents and teachers, set off across the state to persuade school districts to adopt BAB programs.
By 2022, breakfast participation had increased by 7.3 million meals—a 27% rise—thanks primarily to BAB programs. The results of implementing BAB programs spoke for themselves: improved student attention, fewer nurse visits, better attendance, and increased federal meal reimbursements. The campaign successfully achieved its goal: 70% of eligible students who ate lunch also began eating breakfast.
Legislative Wins: Governor Hutchinson
Legislative efforts further supported school breakfast advocacy. In the 2013 and 2015 legislative sessions, the Alliance partnered with several legislators and the Department of Education to establish the Arkansas Meals for Achievement program, which designated funds for grants to support BAB programs in schools that agreed to provide universal free breakfast to all students. Although the program was discontinued, increased meal participation rates were reported and the groundwork was laid for future proposals.
Governor Hutchinson attended Alliance events, toured schools, and encouraged eligible schools to participate in CEP.
In 2015, with support from Governor Asa Hutchinson, the Alliance worked with the Department of Education to suggest changes to regulations that governed state funding for school districts, paving the way for districts to adopt the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a new USDA meal option which allowed eligible high-need districts to offer universal free school breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of their family income levels. Since the revision, over 75% of eligible Arkansas schools are participating in CEP.
The Pandemic: Challenges and Silver Linings
By 2019, Arkansas ranked fifth in school breakfast participation in the U.S. But in spring 2020, COVID-19 closed schools, and for the next two school years, the pandemic produced many serious challenges for schools and students. Regarding school nutrition, however, there were a few silver linings.
Child nutrition teams across the state stepped up to the challenge and developed innovative ways to serve nutritious meals to their students. In addition to permitting meal delivery flexibilities during the 2020/21 and 2021/22 school years, USDA allowed all students to receive free school meals, providing essentially a two-year universal free school meal pilot program to all school districts in all states.
During the pandemic, school meal participation increased significantly, and food insecurity rates dropped. However, Congress discontinued universal free meals after the pandemic. As a result, schools had to return to pre-pandemic policies, requiring students to meet income qualifications for free meals once again.
Several states took matters into their own hands and passed legislation to require school districts to continue to provide universal free school meals to all their students, but most states, like Arkansas, did not.
A Step Forward: Eliminating Reduced-Price Copays
Many families in Arkansas, where over 64% of students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, were hard-pressed to come up with the funds for either the reduced-price meal copay or the full price of a school meal every day. Families that had grown used to the universal free meal policy during the two full school years of the pandemic did not understand why they again had to pay for meals. With schools required by law to provide a meal to any student asking for one, meal debt balances began to reach record levels—in the tens and hundreds of thousands in larger school districts in Arkansas—and meal participation rates dropped below pre-pandemic levels.
In 2023, to address these issues, the Alliance team worked with Senators Jonathan Dismang and Clarke Tucker to draft legislation requiring the state to cover the cost of the reduced-price meal copay that was charged to the approximately 49,000 students in that school meal income category. Senator Dismang introduced bills requiring the state to cover the cost of reduced-price meal copays, making meals free for 49,000 students starting in the 2023/2024 school year. Senator Dismang used current funding resources, underscoring the need to address student hunger in a state where two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. The bills, eventually Acts 656 and 657, passed unanimously in both the Senate and House. Over 55,000 students qualified for those free meals last school year.
A Defining Moment: Governor Sanders
Despite the success of the reduced-price meal measure, Arkansas still was not reaching many of the hungriest students who needed a nutritious start to the school day. And again, in the fall of 2023, USDA released its annual food insecurity report listing Arkansas as the hungriest state in the U.S.
With that report in hand, then-Alliance CEO Kathy Webb and I requested a meeting with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to highlight several legislative and administrative proposals that could, if implemented, help reduce food insecurity in Arkansas. Governor Sanders, who had already stated her interest in tackling childhood hunger, was receptive and agreed that hungry kids struggle to learn and that they need access to nutritious meals every day.
Governor Sanders supported Arkansas’ participation in Summer EBT and volunteered with her family to help distribution.
Governor Sanders directed the state departments of Human Services and Education to adopt USDA’s newly approved summer nutrition program, Summer EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer), to supplement students’ nutrition needs while school is out. Arkansas was the only Southern, conservative-led state to adopt the program in its inaugural year. According to the governor, over 260,000 Arkansas students received Summer EBT benefits in 2024.
Summer EBT and non-congregate meal programs have been a game-changer for reducing summer hunger and learning loss in rural states. Arkansas Senator John Boozman had long-advocated for non-congregate meals, which allows summer meals to be offered by schools and organizations in flexible ways—multi-meal pick-up, delivery to parks and playgrounds, and even home delivery— in qualifying rural communities.
A Dream Realized: Universal Free Breakfast
After 14 years with universal breakfast as a dream goal of the Arkansas No Kid Hungry Campaign, 2025 marked a historic milestone. Hunger relief champions—Senators Jonathan Dismang and Clarke Tucker, along with Representatives Zack Gramlich, Tippi McCullough, DeAnn Vaught, and 83 additional co-sponsors—introduced Senate Bill 59. This bill will provide universal free school breakfast to every public school student in Arkansas, over 474,000 children, beginning in the 2025/2026 school year.
Through years of collaboration with legislators, state agencies, and school districts, school breakfast champions Patty Barker, Kathy Webb, and Vivian Nicholson helped pave the way for the passage of Senate Bill 59, ensuring free school breakfast for Arkansas school students.
Governor Sanders announced her support for the measure in her State of the State address on January 14, 2025, prioritizing funding from medical marijuana sales and privilege tax revenue, now collected in a Food Insecurity Fund. This fund will cover the costs of hunger relief programs, including Summer EBT, reduced-price meal copayments, and universal free school breakfast. The measure, now Act 123, passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support in both the Arkansas Senate and House.
Those 474,000 Arkansas kids join us in saying, “Thank you! It was well worth the wait!”
The Alliance thanks Governor Sarah Sanders for prioritizing solutions to childhood hunger in Arkansas, the legislative champions who helped us create lasting policy change for the good, and our steadfast No Kid Hungry partners at Share Our Strength, and our many No Kid Hungry stakeholders who have worked with the Alliance to help move the needle toward food security for all Arkansas families. Working together, continued solutions to hunger can be achieved, ensuring that all Arkansas children have access to the nutritious meals they need to thrive.
Patty joined the staff of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance in September of 2012 to serve as the Campaign Director for the Arkansas No Kid Hungry Campaign. The Campaign is a unique partnership among the Arkansas Governor’s Office, state agencies, hunger relief agencies and nutrition advocates all working together to alleviate childhood hunger in Arkansas by improving access to nutrition programs and educating families about healthy, affordable food choices. She previously served as the Policy Director for the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, supporting a state-wide citizens’ coalition advocating for improved education, environmental and economic policy. Patty earned her J.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Law and her B. A. from Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College).