Some Minnesota schools shut out of free meals

Every day at 11:15 a.m., students at the Math and Science Academy crush into a kitchenette and start heating up their lunches in a bank of microwaves.

The school does not have the kind of big kitchen that can make lunch for all 700 middle and high school students on the school's Woodbury campus, so students bring lunch from home or buy snacks from vending machines.

It's not the ideal situation, said Kate Hinton, the school's executive director, but it works. Still, the way some charter schools handle school lunch means they are not able to offer free breakfasts and lunches as part of the the universal free school meals program the Legislature passed in 2023. Math and Science Academy is one of 11 schools, all charter schools, that do not participate in the program.

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