Starting next school year, 52 public schools will serve free breakfast and lunch to all 25,000 children in their schools, regardless of a family’s ability to pay, as the Department of Education expands its free-meals program to benefit more low-income communities.

The department launched the program in seven pilot schools in 2015 before expanding it last year to 30 schools on six islands. An additional 22 schools will be added for the 2017-18 school year.

By providing free meals for entire schools, the federally subsidized program aims to increase access to nutritious school meals by helping remove the stigma for low-income children to participate. Studies have shown students who have access to better nutrition tend to perform better academically. The program also removes the burden for families to have to complete applications to qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

The meals are provided through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Provision program, which allows schools serving high-poverty areas to participate in the National School Lunch Program without having to collect and process individual meal applications. Eligibility is instead determined by relying on information from other programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, and the Temporary Assistance Program for Needy Families, or welfare.

Schools can offer two nutritious meals daily to all students at no charge if at least 40 percent of their students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals — a key indicator of poverty. Under federal income guidelines this year for Hawaii, a family of three earning less than $42,902 a year qualifies for the reduced rate, while a family of three earning $30,147 or less qualifies for free meals.

“We are very pleased to be able to expand this program to 22 additional schools statewide to provide free meals for over 8,500 more students,” schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said in a statement. “The program … provided significant relief for many families.”

Central Middle School near downtown Honolulu is one of the schools that will join the program next year. Principal Anne Murphy said she hopes the school’s meal participation rates will increase under the program. She estimates that on average, half of the school’s 430 students currently take advantage of the cafeteria’s lunch service, while a quarter of students eat breakfast at the school.

“Our students come from a socioeconomic background where a balanced meal isn’t always a given in their home,” Murphy said. “Once kids know that food is free at school, hopefully more and more students will access it.”

The school recently established a food pantry on campus to help distribute nonperishable food to students identified as homeless. The pantry’s shelves were stocked Tuesday with community donations of jars of peanut butter and jelly, cans of Spam and soup, and apple sauce cups.

Eighty-five percent of Central Middle students qualify for free or reduced meals this year, but Murphy said she thinks the rate is higher, “because of the paperwork piece,” she said, noting that the application process requires going on a computer, which not all families have.

“Being able to go into this program, which allows us to take out that component of having to sign up, might help us catch kids who we aren’t catching the traditional way,” she said. “The bottom line is kids can’t learn when they’re hungry. However we can ease access to food, especially nutritionally balanced food, we’re going to be all for it.”

In the seven pilot schools where the DOE first tested the meals program two years ago, breakfast participation on average increased by 138 meals a day at the schools, and lunch participation on average went up by 153 meals a day. The pilot schools have a combined enrollment of approximately 1,700 students.

The free-meals program also has a financial benefit for the Department of Education, which centrally manages school food services. The federal government reimburses the state at a higher rate for all meals served at schools under the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, meaning the state can recoup more of its costs.

The DOE, which serves more than 100,000 lunches a day, spends $6 to prepare a lunch at a high school, including food costs, labor and utilities, the department said in a report presented last month to the Board of Education.

The federal government reimburses the state based on the poverty level of students. For high school students paying full price for a lunch ($2.75), the USDA reimburses the state 43 cents. For lunches served at a high school participating in CEP, the reimbursement rate is $3.77 per meal.

At the seven pilot schools, the DOE said it saw federal meal reimbursements increase by 30 percent, or by more than $200,000, in 2015-16 from the previous year.