School lunch debt: Would we rather feed children or feed bureaucracy? | Opinion

A long time ago, when my children were little, I found out our babysitter, a low-income woman with a child of her own, had been taking them to the local park, where they all got a free lunch from the summer lunch program.

I felt badly about that, because I knew we didn’t meet the income guidelines for the program, so I went over and apologized to the park supervisor, who told me something very wise that I hadn’t expected to hear.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I could set up a system to verify everyone’s income, but then I wouldn’t have the money to buy food. So we just feed whoever shows up.”

Today might be a good time to revisit that wisdom.

Do we as a society want to spend money on food for our children, or on bureaucracy to make sure that only those children whose parents meet income guidelines can get a healthy, nutritious school lunch?

It’s a timely question and one that the Kansas Appleseed Foundation for Law and Justice explores in a new report titled: “One Year after the End of Universal School Meals: Kansas Schools and Families Feel the Burden of Meal Debt.”

The sad part of this is that we’ve already shown we can feed all our kids without breaking the national bank. During the COVID-19 pandemic, from March of 2020 through June of 2022, all students were eligible to receive free lunches.

Since that program ended, it’s been all downhill.

The Appleseed report compares school lunch debt before and after the pandemic — bear in mind there was none during it.

“Prior to the pandemic, Kansas school meal debt totaled $4.45 million. Since then, school meal debt has increased nearly 6 times to about $23.5 million,” the report says. “When school meal debt exists, children are the first to suffer the consequences as they face missing out on meals while still being expected to behave and perform at the same level as their peers.”

We can generally assume that most of the families that aren’t paying school lunch debt are struggling with the post-pandemic economy. Rents are up, food prices are up. In some cases, wages have risen for low-end jobs, but even that can be a mixed blessing.

The threshold for getting a free school lunch now stands at $39,000 in family income for a family of four. Those who make up to $55,500 — still well below the state’s median income, which the Census Bureau has estimated at $64,521 — are eligible for reduced prices on school lunches. At $55,501, it’s “No soup for you.”

Appleseed found that more than 40% of Kansas school districts have policies in place that seek to collect unpaid meal debt by one of three means: turning them over to collection agencies, taking the parents to court, or taking the money out of any tax refunds the family might be owed.

All those methods require staff time to administer and paperwork to be filed; some require lawyers to be consulted. And they add to whatever stresses the family is feeling that has them not paying school lunch charges in the first place.

It’s also largely ineffective, according to the Appleseed report.

“Of all the meal debts paid, only 22% are covered by the parents of the student who incurred the debt,” the report found, “Typically, school districts end up paying for meal debt through general funds or charitable donations, cutting into budgets set aside for educational purposes.”

The report also studies school meal policies across the state to see how schools treat children who have meal debts.

It’s ugly.

In most districts, it’s the children who are punished if their parents don’t pony up.

Appleseed’s analysis of school policies show that in 171 districts, students with unpaid debt receive an “alternative” lunch.

Instead of a hot and nutritious meal that their peers get, they might get a cold peanut butter or American cheese sandwich and maybe a box of milk.

Appleseed found several districts where children of debtors have to make a walk of shame to get their unappealing alternative lunch at the principal’s office.

“One school district’s policy removes the child from the cafeteria and provides a minimal snack. It states that the child will be brought to the principal’s office during mealtime and offered pretzels and fruit while there,” the report says. “Another has the alternate lunch delivered to the classroom where the student is to eat, away from their peers.

Needless to say, the children of the “alternative lunch” crowd are stigmatized by the school and by their peers. It’s not a long leap to assume they’ll have less enthusiasm for learning, and probably wake up every morning dreading everything about going to school.

Daily humiliation does that to kids.

That’s in 171 districts.

In 105, there’s either no written policy on feeding school lunch debtors’ children, or they simply ignored Appleseed’s requests for information

Only 10 districts reported that children of debt get the same lunch as the other kids.

That’s not good enough. We can do better.

We know that, because we already did, and not that long ago.

According to the Food Research and Action Center, nine states have adopted either a permanent or temporary policy that when it comes to schoolkids, everybody eats.

We ought to be one.