B-roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Celebrates Universal School Meals Program in Effect During First Week of 2025-26 Academic School Year

Earlier today, Governor Hochul visited Manorhaven Elementary School on Long Island to celebrate the launch of New York's Universal School Meals Program during the first week of the 2025-26 school year. A cornerstone of the Governor's affordability agenda, the Universal School Meals Program ensures every single one of New York's 2.7 million students receive free breakfast and lunch at school, addressing food insecurity in the classroom and driving down costs for families by an average of $165 per kid per month.

While at the event, the Governor also took steps to protect vaccine access across New York State. With the availability of COVID shots under imminent threat by the federal government, the Governor today signed an Executive Order that will allow pharmacists to administer COVID vaccines, providing access for all New Yorkers who wish to be vaccinated.

B-ROLL: B-Roll is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will have photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining me at this outstanding school, Manorhaven, and I had the most enjoyable breakfast I've had in a long time. Speaking mostly to third graders about what life is like now that we are instituting a program that I'm enormously proud of, which is ensuring that every single school child in the State of New York has free breakfast and free lunch. And why is that so important? First of all, it's a savings for parents. Parents across the state are struggling with the cost of everything, the back to school sneakers and clothes and backpacks. And one more cost for parents is either to have to pay every day for their children's lunch, or to have to make lunches, which I never enjoyed doing either. So it saves about $1,600 per year, per child. So a family of two, I met this lovely little boy and little girl that were twins and that's $3,200 of savings right there between those two children in one family.

So, it's a savings for parents as we're fighting our issues on affordability, putting more money back in parent's pockets. The other one is that there's a stigma associated with children who have the free or subsidized breakfast or lunches and it's real. When I announced this here on Long Island right after my State of the State address, we had a large gathering in a neighboring school and I remember a Republican State legislator came up to me and said, "This is transformational what you're doing." And I said, "Why is that?" And he says, "I was one of those kids who because of the stigma, I never went to lunch. I skipped lunch every day because I didn't want to be embarrassed. The fact that I was singled out as a student whose parents couldn't afford to pay fully for lunch."

And so that meant a lot to me as well, that we want to remove the stigma, put money back in parent's pockets. But also, it is so important that our kids have every advantage possible to them when they're in our schools across the state. Why is that? I want to make sure that no child is hungry, that they're 100 percent focused on learning and the teacher's message to them, the curriculum and making friends with students. So it's all about making everyone's family my fight, and it's making sure that no child goes hungry in school. That their attention span is vast because they're not thinking about their stomachs hungry and the next meal. But also we talked about this over the last year and a half about removing cell phones from schools and I could not be more excited about the returns that are coming in already. The transition, of course, we knew it was going to be tough. It takes some time. But right now, New York is the largest State in the nation that has a full bell-to-bell, K-12 strategy to make sure that our schools are distraction-free.

I was in a school in Brooklyn yesterday, and handed out what they use as Yonder pouches, showing the students how to use them. And the kids who had been in a class environment before the previous year who had already surrendered cell phones - they're telling me that the schools are noisy, that kids are talking to each other, they're making friends in person, they're studying harder, they're learning more. So all the results are trending very positively and I'm very, very excited. This was an initiative that we undertook against a lot of opposition, but we came through. And I know that at the end of the day, our children are going to thrive without the stress of having that addictive cell phone bombarding them with messages all day long when they should be learning and making friends. So that's what we're working on here today.

As I talk about fighting for families, your family's health is everything to me. I was the mom who always made sure that my children got their vaccinations on time. Even as an adult, making sure that everyone I knew in my family, ensure that they knew how important it was to get the COVID shots over the last five years and how lifesaving they are. When you think about the fact that the State of New York lost nearly 86,000 of our residents to this horrible, horrible illness. And what stopped those numbers from growing exponentially was the fact that we had very much accessible COVID shots, vaccinations. And to hear that the Trump administration is basically ignoring science, ignoring health and making decisions that are just starting now that will have nothing but a negative effect on our family's health. And so here in New York, I can't sit on the side and let that happen.

When they said that they're not going to be requiring COVID shots and other vaccinations for our families, I said, "No, here in New York, we'll make parents have the option." If you want your child to have a COVID shot, it should be available to you and it should be covered by insurance, and that's something that's really important to me.

So what I'm doing now, is signing an Executive Order because extreme times call for extreme measures. And this is a power I have to use in the interim until we're able to have the Legislature get back together in January and pass legislation that mandates this.

So what I have here is an Executive Order to allow pharmacists to be able to administer COVID shots for the next 30 days. We can renew this every 30 days, but when you change State law, you're required to review it every 30 days. And we're going to continue developing a long-term plan to fight these reckless decisions coming out of Washington because I have no choice.

It's not a mandate for families, but I know a lot of families that want to make sure that their kids are healthy when they're exposed to other students in school. And I want to let people know, the number of cases COVID are on the rise in New York. We have about 600 new cases per day. I have many friends and family I know who are suffering from it right now, but this is the time of year when you'd normally be getting your COVID shot. I plan on getting mine very shortly.

But to have the federal government say that only people over the age of 65 - and they don't even recommend it for expectant mothers anymore - and not cover children and family members, I don't understand that. I don't understand why you won't let families have the choice to protect their children's health. That's what this is about. And so, I'm prepared to sign this now to let everyone know how seriously we are taking this - an Executive Order declaring a disaster in the State of New York due to federal actions related to vaccine access.

And this explains the laws that we need to modify for now. I'm looking forward to signing this as we stand here because I want to get this on the books and make sure that the status quo, as it existed before the federal government decided to ignore the health needs of our families before they took these steps - that the status quo remains in the State of New York. So you can go into a pharmacy and not have to worry about going to a doctor's office and getting a prescription, which is another step that I think a lot of people just don't have time in their busy lives to handle. They can go into a pharmacy, as they're accustomed to doing, and the pharmacist will now, as a result of this signing, be authorized to administer COVID shots to those who choose to have them.

Contact the Governor's Press Office