In federal fiscal year 2022[1], 30.1 million students — over 60% of all public school students — received a free or reduced-price lunch through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
In fiscal year 2021, the number of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch dropped to 11 million due to school closures during by the pandemic. Despite this, the percentage of all students getting meals through the program rose over the past four years. In FY 2022, 94.8% of all National School Lunch Program (NSLP) students received a free lunch, up 26.4 percentage points from fiscal year 2019. This increase is partly attributed to a pandemic waiver that allowed all students to receive free meals.
