A bill to expand free school lunches for low-income students in Arizona sponsored by a Tucson-area lawmaker is dead for now, but funding for the proposal could still come up in budget talks.

Rep. Nancy Gutierrez’s bill, HB 2213, which would provide free school lunches for low-income students in Arizona at a cost of $3.8 million, did not advance out of committee hearings.

The bill passed the education, appropriations and rules committees and the Committee of the Whole with bipartisan support.

The appropriations committee amended the bill to ban ultra-processed foods in these lunches in February.

But after weeks of waiting for a third read, she was told her bill would not move forward.

Gutierrez, a Democrat, said she would start a formal protest on the floor in a statement she posted on her TikTok account.

“This is feeding children becoming a political game, and I am not going to stand for it,” Gutierrez said in her video.

She encouraged her followers to get involved by emailing Republicans in the Arizona State House and Senate and the governor to include this funding in the state budget.

Eligibility for reduced-price lunch is based on a student’s household size and income.

Gutierrez said $3.8 million is “a drop in the bucket” compared to Republican-backed border protection bills that range from $50 million to $100 million.

“I know that it matters because I am a teacher, and I’ve seen the impact that food makes, which is no surprise,” Gutierrez said. “If kids don’t eat, they cannot learn. We are literally setting them up for failure.”

Robbie Sherwood, the communications director for the Arizona House Democratic Caucus, said that although the bill’s progress has been halted, “the battle is lost, but not over.”

“I will not rest until that money is in the budget,” Gutierrez said. “I will continue this fight for our students to eat.”

This story first appeared in Arizona Luminaria.