Schools May Have to Absorb Students’ Unpaid Lunch Bills

New York Times ^ | February 8, 2011 | FERNANDA SANTOS

[reaganaut1]

Of the 2,200 students at Intermediate School 61 in Corona, Queens, 86 percent receive free cafeteria lunches. Some others pay a reduced price, and some are supposed to pay full price.

But not all of their parents pay what they are supposed to, and recently, the school’s principal, Joseph Lisa, has been spending a lot of time trying to collect money from them.

He has cornered them in the hallways. He has offered them gentle reminders after school meetings. He has called them and sent them letters suggesting payment plans for debts that might amount to $20 or $30.

“We give them little pieces of paper saying, ‘This week you owe $5, $3, 50 cents,’ but as soon as we collect it from one parent, there’s another who’s falling behind,” Mr. Lisa said.

The city used to pick up the unpaid tabs. Since 2004, it has absorbed at least $42 million in unpaid lunch fees.

But that is a luxury it can no longer afford, according to the Department of Education, which has weathered several rounds of budget cuts, with more still to come. So it has been telling principals to collect overdue lunch money or risk having it docked from their school budgets.

Of the city’s 1,600 schools, 1,043 owe a collective $2.5 million to the Education Department for meals served in the first three months of this school year. That puts them on track to be $8 million behind by the end of the school year.

New York City’s lunch money problem is costly and complicated, but it is not unique. The economic downturn has school administrators and legislators all over the country scratching for savings even as more parents are falling behind in lunch fees.

[proud American in Canada]

There wasn't soy in anything when I was a kid, and there were also no peanut allergies. There's soy in everything now, and the plants are related.

That's very interesting--I didn't know that.

[MrPiper]

I wonder how those Cheeeldren will handle credit when they grow older...

who needs credit when someone else is buying your food......

Life is wonderful in the good old USSA!

[joe fonebone]

so, the department of education is also responsible for:...

establishment and maintenance of restauraunt facilities...

clean up of garbage and trash from premises...

security of building and said occupants...

limosine and other transportation to and from facilty for all that attend...

and I thought schools were a place for learning....

[CJ Wolf]

It’s because we no longer give babies honey.

[nina0113]

who needs credit when someone else is buying your food......

Still assumes that there's food available to buy...I don't think that's a safe assumption long term.

[ArmstedFragg]

What part of “if they don’t pay, stop feeding the little #&@*s” isn’t clear?

[SeeSac]

Real Peanut Allergies are extremely rare. Most children do not have peanut allergies, their stupid parents just think they do.

Rare but can be deadly. Stupid.

[ArmstedFragg]

No, you can't. Too many children apparently have peanut allergies. I wonder why that is.

Parents conceived during the Carter administration?

[Fletcher J]

heh. True, and ironically it’s the 300 parents that *are* paying for the lunches that are branded as bums. Why worry over the small percentage that does pay? The Feds pay for free/reduced lunches, but if a “payer” doesn’t pay up, then it comes out of local school system’s funds.

Also, the reason the rate of free/reduced lunches is so high is that the federal government distributes a big chunk of educational dollars based on community “need”. So the more kids that are approved for free lunches, the more money the school district gets. My local district begs parents to fill out the free lunch forms if they can get approved, even if the parents fully intend to pay for lunch themselves anyway.

[conejo99]

I have a different problem. The school officials have ordered my kids to buy lunch and then billed me for it. Once the school was open for a half day only, so we just gave them a snack (juice and crackers) instead of a sandwich. School rules kick in and I start getting automated calls every day for each child telling me I owe money (but not telling me how much). Once we ran out of bread so we gave one of the kids pop tarts, crackers and juice. Once again the school ordered that a lunch be bought. In no case was the lunch actually eaten. What we gave was tastier and what they wanted anyway.

[familyof5]

Here we give the elementary kids a cheese sandwich and milk until they get their parents to pay up. The middle and high school kids don’t get anything. We make sure that the ‘poor baby’ crowd understands that it’s the parents job to feed their kids, not the school.