Arise’s LaTrell Clifford Wood focuses this week on one of our key hunger relief priorities: no-cost school meals. After the Legislature increased state funding for school meals last year, Alabama public schools served 2.8 million more breakfasts to our Alabama students in fall 2025.

Greater access to school meals improves learning outcomes, and Arise is advocating to ensure that this school meal funding remains in the Education Trust Fund budget for school year 2026-27 and beyond. Arise also will keep working to increase this investment and ensure that every student in Alabama’s public schools can access a no-cost school breakfast option.

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Hi, everybody. My name is LaTrell Clifford Wood, and I’m our hunger policy advocate here at Alabama Arise. I’m excited to be bringing you this week’s legislative update with a little bit of a tilt. We’re going to be focusing on hunger policy.

So this year, our big legislative priority is to continue school breakfast funding so that our Alabama students can get access to no-cost school meals options. Last week, we saw the governor’s budget come out, as well as her State of the State address. And we really appreciated her focus on a strong start and a strong finish primarily through continuing to improve Alabama’s educational outcomes.

We have seen expanded school meals access improve learning outcomes since 2019, with nearly two out of every three Alabama students having access to a no-cost school meals option. This past legislative session in the spring, we saw the state invest their first-ever appropriation that helped to support no-cost school meals options. And with that, this fall, we saw 2.8 million more breakfasts served to our Alabama students.

And so we are seeing that school meals access doesn’t just improve learning outcomes in theory, but it does it in Alabama. And so we are hoping that our Legislature will ensure that this funding is institutionalized in the Department of Education’s budget for school year 2026-27 and beyond. But we also hope that we can reconsider how much is being allocated to ensure that every Alabama student has access to a no-cost school breakfast option.

And with that, we look forward to continuing this fight with you all, particularly our Arise members, as we push to ensure that we are building a better Alabama for everyone. Thank you.