The November CalFresh or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were delayed for a few low income Mustang families, who make up about 23.2 percent of the school according to The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This is due to the recent government shutdown and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a bill that strictly limits eligibility for SNAP benefits.
CalFresh will still be fully paid to recipients with slight delays. This was after several federal judges ruled in late October and early November that President Donald J. Trump has to provide the full SNAP benefits to recipients.
According to ABC7 News, CalFresh assists more than 1.5 million people, about 15.3 percent of the Los Angeles (L.A.) county population, and decreases the poverty rate by 2-4 percent. Cuts to the budget may cause students who may not be able to afford food to go hungry at home and harm their learning at school, which could affect almost 500 students from Walnut High School who rely on SNAP benefits according to the NCES. Due to the fear that these benefits would be stripped, families are more inclined to get food from food banks, causing food banks’ supplies to run thin. This adds pressure, that inflation and the new policies that came out already built up, to the food banks. As a result it could be more difficult for low income households to get the resources they need.
“I think they should [continue the program] because there’s a lot of struggling parents out there that can’t afford food. I [myself] grew up on [SNAP benefits] because my parents couldn’t afford food themselves,” sophomore Jacob Garcia said.
CalFresh is a program, supervised by the California Department of Social Services, that provides monthly food benefits to low-income households. The program transfers money into Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards, which households could use to buy food from grocery stores. Many constituents depend on the benefits of CalFresh, which could affect the Walnut High School students who depend on SNAP benefits.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of people use [Electronic Benefit Transfer cards] for food, but I think most people who are taking these benefits definitely need them and I don’t really think cutting that is really good,” junior Serena Li said.
The government shutdown has caused delays with payments, but the main contributing factor for these cuts is the Trump Administration’s recent actions like passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to cut federal government spending and to prevent people from receiving benefits that have the capability to work. This includes veterans, the homeless, foster children who are older than 24, and raised the age requirement from 54 to 64 years old.
“We want our society to be better, whether that’s food assistance, whether that’s housing assistance, not everybody is born in the same boat,” Social science teacher Eric Peralta said.
Peralta and others look at U.S. history and recognize that the government is going back in time because these were benefits that people have fought for in the past. The people who rely on food assistance tend to have laborious jobs that serve as the base of the economy, removing the support would add more pressure and as a result may affect those in higher brackets.
“The United States is one of the most industrialized nations in the world and we have all of these great, grand things. We see how lavishly people live on TV shows and whatnot, we tend to forget that there’s another side of that coin,” Peralta said.
