Children growing up in food insecure households experience serious challenges in their day-to-day lives, wellbeing, and development which understandably affect them at school. While food insecurity and maternal nativity, and food insecurity and school outcomes have been explored substantially by other scholars – there is a scarcity of work which interacts the three together. Using nationally representative data from the period 2010-2016 for 4,250 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011, with household incomes at or below 400 percent of the federal poverty level, this study explores whether maternal nativity affects the relationship between household food insecurity and children’s academic achievement and teacher-assessed behaviour. This analysis demonstrates a substantial food insecurity gap between households headed by US or foreign-born mothers, and a diversity of relationships between food insecurity and school outcomes. This paper provides evidence for the importance of disaggregating the ‘foreign-born mother’ category to think about the relationship between different places of origin and later trajectories in the United States.