Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator:
On behalf of our 3 million members and the 50 million students they serve, we urge you to VOTE NO on the Farm Bill in its current form, the Agricultural Act of 2026 released by Senate Republicans. Votes on this issue may be included in NEA’s report card for the 119th Congress.
Educators continue to advocate for and support a Farm Bill that reflects our recommendations from 2024. Such a bill would strengthen the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to better serve the many people who depend on it—for example, by removing limits on how long recipients can receive benefits and extending benefits to college students in need. The bill released by Senate Republicans completely disregards our recommendations.
The current version of the Farm Bill also fails to adequately address the impact of H.R. 1, the reconciliation bill passed last summer, on students, families and state budgets. The number of children living in food-insecure households is rising, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s report, Household Food Security. Nearly 5 million families have lost SNAP benefits since the passage of H.R. 1, including some 1.5 million children. Moreover, while the bill delays the SNAP benefit cost shift, the delay is too short—only a year—and does nothing to address the administrative cost shift. As a result, states could be forced to choose between keeping people fed and reducing or eliminating support for education and other crucial programs.
The cuts made by H.R. 1—the largest in the history of SNAP—will also impact children’s access to free school meals, because children in households that receive SNAP benefits are automatically certified for free school meals. Without automatic certification, schools will return to an inefficient and outmoded method of individually certifying each child. In addition, the lack of automatic certification places a costly administrative burden on schools and creates additional complex paperwork for families that are already struggling to keep their heads above water.
The fallout does not end there. Lower SNAP participation could mean fewer schools qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows certain schools in high-poverty areas to serve free school meals to all students. Congress can still reverse course before these cascading effects occur, but time is running out.
NEA also strongly opposes efforts to privatize SNAP, which would erode federal requirements for the program to be administered under a merit-based personnel system. Outsourcing will do nothing to reduce SNAP backlogs, improve error rates, or reduce administrative costs. Program administration requires adequate funding for critical infrastructure and a knowledgeable, stable workforce—neither of which this bill supports.
Educators know that when children are hungry, they cannot focus on learning or engage in the classroom. You have the opportunity to address the reality of hunger and food insecurity in America today. Please VOTE NO on the Farm Bill in its current form to protect hungry children.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Johnson Trinca
Director of Government Relations
National Education Association
