The largest high school district in Arizona serves thousands of meals every day at no cost to the district.
Phoenix Union High School District, which participates in the federal Community Eligibility Provision reimbursement program, offers free meals at the majority of its 23 campuses without requiring an application from students or families.
The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and offers reimbursements to school districts in low-income areas. Nancy Cohen, the food services director for Phoenix Union, said the district is able to qualify for the program across all of its schools because of the number of its students enrolled in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or other assistance programs.
The goal,
she said, is for the district to feed as many students as possible and the program allows her to do that without the usual stigma of receiving a free meal.
"In our district, everybody's eligible. So everybody can eat and nobody has to feel embarrassed," Cohen said. "They can just go grab some food."
Which schools receive free meals?
A total of 17 locations across the district participate in the lunch program:
- Alhambra High School
- Betty H. Fairfax High School
- Bioscience High School
- Bostrom High School
- Cactus Canyon High School
- Camelback High School
- Carl Hayden Community High School
- Central High School
- Franklin Police & Fire High School
- Linda Abril Educational Academy
- Maryvale High School
- Metro Tech High School
- North High School
- Phoenix Coding Academy
- South Mountain High School
- Trevor G. Browne High School
- Wilson College Prep
Students at specialty micro-schools inside the district's larger campuses are also eligible for the program. This includes Camelback Montessori at Camelback High School, Maryvale Gifted and Talented Academy at Maryvale High School and ARCH at Cactus Canyon High School.
Students at the district's Desiderata Alternative Program, which serves students with emotional or behavioral disabilities, are also eligible through their home school campuses.
Still, the program does not reach every student within the district. Students at Phoenix Digital Academy and PXU City, which are hybrid learning models offered by the district, are not automatically eligible for the program.
According to Cohen, digital schools aren’t recognized the same way by the Arizona Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"They don't believe kids are really coming to those schools and most frequently they aren't," she said.
Cohen said PXU City allows students to build their own schedule consisting of district and college courses, online classes and internships.
"PXU City is very unique because they do have kids that come to campus. They're out in the community, they're doing internships, they're all over the place. But it's not considered a brick-and-mortar school, which is how ADE defines who's eligible for the program," she said.
Thousands of meals served every day
According to Cohen, the district has offered free meals under the Community Eligibility Provision program for three years now and serves over 4,000 breakfast meals and over 12,000 lunch meals on a daily basis.
Phoenix Union pays upfront for each meal it serves and files a claim every month to the Arizona Department of Education for reimbursement. According to Richard Franco, all expenses on food services, including labor, are covered through these reimbursements.
This year, the district is also looking to make more meals from scratch, partly due to recent regulations. The Arizona Healthy Schools Act banned districts that receive federal funding for their meal program from serving ultra-processed food during a normal school day beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
Cohen said the district hired a new executive chef to create healthier meals and remove processed foods, which the district has been doing for over a year.
Coverage of education solutions on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is partially supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Arizona's largest high school district serves students free meals
