DENVER — Colorado’s Healthy School Meals for All program led to a surge of students turning to their school for breakfast and lunch.

At St. Vrain Valley and Cherry Creek School Districts, that jump has been significant.

Cherry Creek went from serving 3.2 million meals each year to 6 million, adding 82,000 meals to the district's service last year.

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State grant is helping Colorado schools put fresh produce on lunchroom menu

St. Vrain Valley has added an extra 100,000 meals to their service each year since Healthy School Meals for All went into effect in 2023. Its free meals serve over 60% of the district's students.

Neither school is seeing an influx in enrollment in the district. For Cherry Creek School District, student population has actually gone down.

This year, both schools are remodeling their nutrition warehouses, making more space for fresh produce.

But food is also growing more expensive. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), food prices were 3% higher in June of 2026 compared to June 2025. The USDA is predicting that trend will continue, forecasting a 3.1% increase for all food prices.

To help with those rising costs, the two districts and over a hundred others turned to the Healthy School Meals for All program’s new Local Food Program grant.

“[It] will help to offset our budget because our reimbursement rates are not covering all of our costs,” Cherry Creek School District Food Nutrition Department Director Kim Kilgore said. “We will be using most of that money on locally grown produce and bakery items.”

Cherry Creek got a million dollars from the grant to use this school year.

St. Vrain is also using the grant to cut down on local produce costs, a product it's been dedicated to including in lunchrooms for years.

“St. Vrain has been a local fanatic for a long time,” St. Vrain Valley Director of Nutrition and Warehouse Katie Cossette said. “This is a very agricultural rich area, so why not try to incorporate some of our community's growth into our school meals. For us, this is a great opportunity to keep expanding.”

The Healthy School Meals for All program is also offering a grant to help bump staff wages that spend majority of their time on the front lines of student food service or preparation.