ND voters to decide on ‘free’ meals amendment. Here’s what to know.

Following the defeat of a bill during January’s special session to provide “free” school meals for North Dakota students, voters will now decide in November whether to change the state constitution to require the provision.

The measure is citizen-initiated, which means advocates gathered signatures to put it on the ballot rather than running it through the legislature again. According to Ballotpedia, 18 states allow citizens to initiate constitutional amendments. Here is the proposed language:

SECTION 1. AMENDMENT. A new Section 7 is added to Article VIII, Education, of the Constitution of the State of North Dakota:

1. All public school districts, public schools, and public charter schools shall — while nonpublic schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, and other tribal schools may — provide one breakfast and one lunch every school day to all enrolled students, at no cost to students, their parents, or their guardians.

2. To be eligible for reimbursement by the state, any school district or school that provides free breakfasts and free lunches under this section shall maximize federal reimbursement, including by participating in all applicable federal programs for school breakfast and lunch funding, and by encouraging parents and guardians to apply for free or reduced price breakfasts and lunches.

3. The state shall reimburse eligible school districts and schools at 100% of the reimbursement rates that the state used as of the first day of the 2025 to 2026 school year for free breakfasts and free lunches, multiplied by the number of breakfasts and lunches served, respectively, less the amount of any other government reimbursement received for providing breakfasts and lunches. Reimbursement rates shall be automatically adjusted annually for inflation, inclusive of the time between the first day of the 2025 to 2026 school year and the implementation date of this section, using the methodology the United States Department of Agriculture uses to calculate the adjustments it publishes for free breakfasts and free lunches for that school year. If the United States Department of Agriculture adjustments are no longer published, the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall choose an alternative equivalent inflationary measure.

4. The reimbursement required under this section is mandatory. In the event the legislative assembly is unable to identify another source of funds, the required funds shall be appropriated from the legacy earnings fund.

5. This section does not apply to schools of higher education.

6. The provisions of this section are self-executing, and all of its provisions are mandatory.

7. The requirements of this section shall apply as of the implementation date, which shall be the first day of the first full school year beginning not less than 90 days after the effective date of this section, and continue thereafter.

8. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall have the authority to issue regulations and guidance and establish procedures in order to ensure timely implementation. Laws may be enacted to facilitate, safeguard, expand, or implement this section, but not to hamper, restrict, or impair it.

9. This section shall be liberally construed to fulfill its purposes.

10. The provisions of this section are severable, and if any provision is held to be invalid, either on its face or as applied, the remaining provisions and their application shall not be affected thereby.

11. In the case of any conflict between any provision of this section and any other provision of North Dakota law, the provisions of this section shall control.

A “yes” vote supports requiring public schools to provide one free breakfast and one free lunch to all students every day. A “no” vote opposes it.

What would change?

If it passes, the amendment establishes the Healthy School Meals For All (HSMFA) program in the state. Public schools would be required to provide every student breakfast and lunch each school day, regardless of family income, at no cost to the student or family. Nonpublic schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, and other tribal schools could participate voluntarily.

North Dakota currently provides free or reduced-price meals to students from households below 225 percent of the federal poverty line, which my colleague Josiah Padley explains here. For a family of four, this is roughly $74,250. About 47,000 of the state’s 120,000 K-12 students qualify. The amendment makes meals free to those currently paying a reduced price and extends free meals to approximately 73,000 students.

Ballotpedia put together the helpful chart below showing reimbursement rates for school meals in North Dakota for the 2025-2026 school year. Schools that serve free or reduced-price lunches to at least 40 percent of students two years ago are eligible for additional “severe need” breakfast reimbursements. New schools may qualify if they would have met this threshold in that same period. The “especially needy” rate is available to schools serving 60 percent or more free and reduced-price meals and provides an extra $0.02 per lunch in reimbursement.

Under HSMFA, schools would continue participating in the federal National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program. The state would reimburse schools at 100 percent of current rates, adjusted annually for inflation. If the legislature can’t identify another funding source, the money comes out of the Legacy Earnings Fund — the state’s oil revenue savings account.

How free is “free”?

The estimated price tag is $140 million over two years. As my colleague Kim Koppelman explains here, that money has to come from somewhere. Either taxes go up, or the legislature cuts elsewhere — most likely the education subsidy sent to districts, which shifts costs onto local property taxes.

Neighboring Minnesota passed universal free school meals in 2023 and ran into a financial pickle. The state’s formula for identifying low-income students depended heavily on families applying for free and reduced-price lunch. Once everyone got free meals, families stopped applying because they were already receiving the benefit. The result, then, was that low-income student counts dropped on paper, making districts that serve high-poverty populations look less needy than they actually were, which impacted funding.

North Dakota’s formula has a similar structural vulnerability. The state’s at-risk funding formula applies a weighted factor based on free and reduced-price lunch enrollment in grades 3-8. If those counts become artificially low, or disappear altogether, districts with high poverty could lose funding.

Minnesota has tried patching its problem with direct certification, which automatically identifies eligible students through SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF enrollment data. But even this approach comes with real limits, as Minnesota has discovered. Low-income families who don’t participate in those programs are being missed in counts. This risks hurting the very students the meal program should be focused on serving.

Questions to ask

Given that this is a constitutional amendment, and would be hard to undo, it is important to first understand what is being voted on.

If the amendment does end up passing, there are key details the legislature should ask and figure out:

1. How will the state maintain an accurate count of low-income students for compensatory/low-income funding purposes? Will we require households to fill out an income survey (as an alternative to school meal applications) even without a benefit attached to it? (A number of states do this — it’s called a “household income survey” or something similar.)
2. How strong is the state’s direct certification structure? Are there active data-sharing agreements in place with SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF agencies?
3. Should the state decouple its at-risk funding from free and meal program applications entirely and use census poverty data or Medicaid enrollment instead?