From Hot Meals to PB&Js: The Realities Of School Lunch Debt
What happens when a student incurs debt from meals provided at school?
One Pennsylvania school district tried to collect on that debt by sending parents a letter threatening that their children could be taken from them.
The New York Times reported on the case:
“Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch,” read the letter, which was signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District. “This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care.”
This letter is just one of many recent examples across the country of students and families being penalized for failing to pay their debt from school meals.
In Rhode Island, two school districts began using collection agencies to recover school lunch debt. In one district, the debt had reached $90,000.
What does this issue reveal about American families? And what impact does it have on students?
From Eater:
Some states are seeing school lunch debt soar into the millions of dollars, but the exact amount of lunch debt schools nationwide have accumulated collectively isn’t known because the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t collect or provide that data. As an issue that disproportionately involves marginalized families — those in poverty, living paycheck to paycheck, or even undocumented immigrants afraid to participate in the federal free lunch program — lunch debt magnifies the CONTINUE READING:From Hot Meals to PB&Js: The Realities Of School Lunch Debt - 1A
