For students who owe on school lunch bills, menu is a lot smaller

The new policy, announced Sunday by Warwick Public Schools, is set to take effect Monday. It means that students with overdue accounts will be given the cold sandwich instead of other meals until their debts are settled or a budget plan is worked out, the district said.

The response that ensued from parents, educators and community members highlighted how the costs of school lunch programs have become a weighty forum for activism and economic justice in the United States. Many said that children whose families were struggling financially should not have to pay with hunger or inadequate nutrition while trying to learn.

“This is bigger than Warwick,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association, which represents 58,000 school nutrition professionals. “Public schools across the country are really struggling with this issue.”

“They know how important school meals are with students’ academic success,” she added. “If the federal government would provide funding to serve all students free meals, it would not be an issue. School meals are just as important as textbooks.”

“Lunch shaming” is the term often used for efforts to hold schoolchildren publicly accountable for unpaid lunch bills. A 2014 report by the Department of Agriculture found that about 45% of school districts withheld a hot meal and instead provided a cold sandwich to such students. Cafeteria workers have thrown away food from trays of students whose accounts were overdue or provided less desirable alternatives.

The social relevance of the school meal figured prominently after the death of Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor in Minnesota who was fatally shot by a police officer in 2016. A charity started in his name has raised more than $100,000 to pay off students’ lunch debts, and his mother recently gave $8,000 in donations to a Minnesota high school.

In Warwick, some worried that the sunflower butter and jelly sandwich could become a marker of shame.

In the days after the district announced the policy, nearly 600 comments have been posted on its Facebook page. Some readers blamed parents for not prioritizing their household expenses. Others said they had received mailed warnings that they owed just a few cents because a child had put a carton of milk or another item not covered by some meal plans on his or her tray.

“I know as parents this is our responsibility but why take it out on kids if parents are struggling,” one woman wrote on the district page.

“We need to look at both sides of this!” another wrote. “While it is inappropriate to embarrass a child over their parent’s failings — there’s also the argument that if we provide free lunches with no accountability, many parents will purposely choose not to bother paying at all.”

The district also defended itself against reports that it had refused donations from people outside the school.

Angelica Penta, an owner of Gel’s Kitchen, said she had set up donation jars at her restaurant last year after she saw a report about a girl who was refused food that she had chosen because her account was delinquent.

When Penta tried to take a $4,000 check to the school district this year as a donation, she said, officials refused it. “At the end of the day, it is the child who is suffering,” she said in an interview.

The district said in a statement Monday to WJAR, a local station, that it could not disburse the funds equally. “This is a position that the school department cannot support given the school’s mission to treat all children equitably,” it said.

The district’s superintendent, chief budget officer and food services program coordinator did not respond to calls and emails Wednesday.

About 30 million students each day in 100,000 schools and educational institutions in the United States are provided with meals under the federal National School Lunch Program. About 20 million of those meals are free; 8 million are paid in full, and 2 million are served at a reduced price, according to government figures published by the School Nutrition Association.

Children who come from families of four that earn less than $32,630 a year are eligible for free meals, and those with incomes up to $46,435 pay reduced prices, the figures showed.

About 75% of districts that answered a survey by the association reported lunch debt of less than $10 to more than $865,000 at the end of the 2017 school year, said Pratt-Heavner, its spokeswoman. The median amount was $2,500 — a $500 increase over the median amounts reported in the 2014 and 2016 surveys, she said.

Schools across the nation have taken steps to avoid lunch shaming, with laws passed in Washington state, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Oregon. Some schools have used private donations, Pratt-Heavner said.

Ballooning school lunch debt becomes an increasingly urgent problem for districts toward the end of the academic year.

Pratt-Heavner said it was not clear from the Warwick district’s statement whether the cold sandwich was an entree, meaning it would meet Department of Agriculture rules governing free lunch nutrition standards if it was accompanied by a fruit, vegetable and milk.

That distinction would matter little to those trying to block the initiative.

A GoFundMe campaign said the Warwick district had $77,000 in student lunch debt. The fund has so far raised more than $12,700 to help pay it off.

“Let’s come together and pay it for the kids so no one has to be singled out and embarrassed by being denied hot lunch,” wrote the organizer, Cait Clement.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

For students who owe on school lunch bills, menu is a lot smaller

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