Every Rhode Island public school must now offer families at least one way to pay for lunch without a surcharge, and any fee that is charged is capped at two percent of the transaction — the result of a law Governor Dan McKee signed on June 10 that took effect immediately.
H8129, brought by Senate President Valarie J. Lawson, D-East Providence, and Rep. Justine Caldwell, D-East Greenwich and West Greenwich, targets the processing fees that payment platforms charge parents each time they add money to a child's meal account. Under the law, those fees may not exceed the actual cost of processing or collection and may not be levied for profit. Any company handling school meal payments must disclose, before a transaction is completed, whether a fee applies, how much it is, and how to reach the no-fee alternative.
The measure passed without a single dissenting vote. The House approved it 62-0 on May 28, the Senate concurred 63-0 on June 4, and the bill reached the governor's desk that same day.
The fees the law now restrains are not trivial. According to a July 2024 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, families nationally pay more than $100 million a year to add money to student lunch accounts, with processors charging an average of $2.37, or 4.4 percent, per transaction. Because those charges fall hardest on parents who make frequent small deposits rather than a single large one, the burden lands unevenly. Guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that families with children eligible for reduced-price meals may send 60 cents to payment processors for every dollar they spend — roughly $42 a year — on school lunches.
The distinction matters: the law does not make meals free. It removes a surcharge on the act of paying for them.
In Rhode Island, the reach is broad. The state's National School Lunch Program serves more than 65,000 children daily, according to the Rhode Island Department of Education, and 58 percent of the lunches served in the state go out free or at a reduced price — meaning many of the families exposed to processing fees are precisely those already qualified for discounted meals.
Those costs arrive against a worsening backdrop. Food insecurity in Rhode Island climbed from 25 percent of households struggling to afford food in 2020 to 38 percent last year, according to the 2024 Status Report on Hunger.
"Data shows that well-fed kids do better in school, so we should remove any barriers that might cause students to go hungry, especially in times of rising costs and acute food insecurity," Lawson said. "There should always be a way to pay for meals without a processing fee and any fees that are charged should be limited and exist only to cover the actual costs, not profit the vendor."
Caldwell, who has sponsored legislation to provide free school meals for four consecutive years, was the primary House sponsor. The path to passage was not immediate: introduced February 27 and referred to the House Education Committee, the bill was held for further study on March 24 before advancing to a favorable committee recommendation on May 19.
The state law is more expansive than the federal effort it parallels. The USDA has announced that students eligible for free and reduced-price meals must not be charged such fees beginning in the 2027-2028 school year, a rule that initially applies only to families with income under 185 percent of the federal poverty line — $57,720 for a family of four. Rhode Island's statute is already in force and applies to all students and all payment methods.
The Rhode Island Department of Education is responsible for setting uniform statewide standards for the no-fee options and for ensuring districts inform families they exist. Those implementing rules had not yet been made public as of mid-July.
A separate and broader proposal — a phased-in universal school meals program that would make lunches free outright — remains pending in the General Assembly and has not passed.