May 12, 2026 10:16 AM UTC

Pettersen Pushes Federal Version of Colorado School Meals Program

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved funding to pay for free school meals for students with the passage of Proposition FF in 2022. Now one of the main proponents of the Healthy School Meals for All (HSMA) initiative wants to make the wildly successful program a national model.

As a press release from the office of Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Lakewood) explains:

U.S. Representatives Brittany Pettersen (CO-07), Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05), and Darren Soto (FL-09) introduced the Feed Our Kids Act, which would provide free breakfast, lunch, and afterschool snacks to every student in K-12 public schools in Colorado and across the country.

This legislation comes as House Democrats sounded the alarm on the devastating nutrition cuts jammed through by House Republicans in the Farm Bill last week. This Republican-led bill would lock in cuts to critical funding for school meals, SNAP, and local food programs that threaten to push hundreds of thousands of students into hunger.

As a state legislator, Pettersen sponsored the referred measure that voters passed to create the Colorado Healthy School Meals for All (HSMA) program, which provides funding to schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students in public schools. Colorado’s HSMA program provides over 600,000 free meals daily and has improved meal quality while supporting local agriculture and farmers.

The “Feed Our Kids Act” would provide free breakfast, lunch, and afterschool snacks to every student in K-12 public schools across the country, while eliminating unpaid meal debt from schools. Research shows, intuitively, that students who eat healthy meals for breakfast and lunch perform better in the classroom. Similar to Colorado’s program, the “Feed Our Kids Act” proposal also benefits farmers by it directs meals to be locally sourced whenever possible.

Pettersen sponsored legislation as a State Senator in 2022 to put Prop. FF on the ballot; voters approved the measure by a 57-43 margin, which now provides meals for 600,000 K-12 students in Colorado. Funded by an increase in taxable income for people who make more than $300,000 a year, HSMA proved to be so popular that voters in 2025 passed Propositions LL and MM to increase funding by limiting some tax deductions available to wealthy Coloradans.

The “Feed Our Kids Act” should be a no-brainer for Congress at a time when Americans are being crushed by a rapidly-weakening economy. Congressional Republicans, however, seem more interested in throwing money at President Trump’s White House ballroom expansion than on helping average Americans. Regardless, this legislation is a good election year message for Democrats and something that should absolutely be pursued if Democrats (as expected) retake control of the House of Representatives in January.