It’s still a harsh reality that many students get their best meal of the entire day when they go to school. Given this, public school systems have been working to ensure that more students are able to get free lunches. New York may have just outdone them all.

The New York Times reports that every single student in New York Public schools will now receive their lunches totally free of cost.

New York City Council and other local officials had been working towards this goal for quite a while. 75 percent of the city’s public school students already qualified for free or reduced lunches based on their family’s income. Still, this latest update is worth celebrating because it will help an additional 200,000 students save $300 per year that would otherwise be spent on the lunch program.

Other cities, such as Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Dallas, already had free lunch programs in place, but don’t have as many students as New York.

This development will help remove the stigma of free lunches that many students felt they needed to hide the fact that they were part of a free lunch program. Students like City Councilman Ben Kallos, who feared prosecution from his classmates if they found out.

“I had to choose between friends and food,” Kallos said. “I hope no child makes the same poor choices I did.”