As schools around the country reopen following winter break, their students are being reminded of the lunch debt they’ve racked up this school year – an ugly reality that follows the end of federal assistance that paid for school meals for more than 50 million American students during the pandemic.
Community organizations, social media influencers and national nonprofits are trying to help fill the void with donations to cover the more than $19 million in debt students have accrued just halfway into the school year. Some states are picking up where the federal free meals for all left off.
It doesn’t seem to be enough: Plenty of kids face going without school lunches or getting smaller, alternative school meals when they go back to school this winter because of their negative balances. With Congress’ decision to let a pandemic aid provision expire in June, advocates and experts are looking at solutions.
It all comes with urgency as school meal prices rise and families struggle to pay rent and feed their children.
More: Congress let COVID-era relief expire. Millions of kids already have fallen into poverty.
Results from a new national survey published Wednesday, conducted by the School Nutrition Association, shows 847 schools had amassed $19.2 million in lunch debt. Schools with the highest rates of unpaid lunch debts were located in the Midwest, Mountain Plains and in those areas with lower free and reduced rates, the survey shows.
Debt varies across the country, with the median reported unpaid lunch debt of those schools coming in at $5,164, adding up to the millions owed. Across the state of North Carolina, lunch debt exceeded $1 million as of Nov. 1. One Wisconsin school district surpassed $14,000 in school lunch debt by October. And in Georgia, a nonprofit called All For Lunch paid $130,000 to wipe the debt of several schools across several metro area counties in December.
More: Are school lunches free this year? What to know now that pandemic-era meal program is ending
Universal school meals can promote academic achievement, keep kids healthier and reduce “lunch shaming” of students who have unpaid meal debt and can’t afford their school lunch, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the national School Nutrition Association.
According to the national campaign No Kid Hungry, run by the nonprofit Share Our Strength, “students who eat school breakfast have been shown to achieve 17.5% higher scores on standardized math tests and attend 1.5 more days of school per year” on average.
Several community groups and even social media influencers are donating to help schools cover students’ debt and supporting initiatives that could lead to policy change.
For instance, the nonprofit Tusk Philanthropies’ Solving Hunger is funding four organizations focused on promoting policy change related to universal free healthy school meals. The organization is funding campaigns in Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Vermont.
In another, Sarah Stusek recorded herself calling Mount Vernon Community School in a viral TikTok video to pay off the Virginia school’s nearly $1,700 lunch debt.
Students accumulated the debt after the federal government ended pandemic aid ensuring universal school meals for all students last June. The Alexandria school district said its policy is to allow students to continue to be fed school meals even if they accumulate debt.
Following that deed, Stusek wanted to help more schools. So she opened a Venmo account and asked for donations via TikTok to pay debts at other schools. A viewer matched the debt of the previous school and sent her $1,700, she said, and she paid two more schools.
“It’s wonderful (Sarah) is doing that, and that so many community organizations have stepped up to help address this,” the School Nutrition Association’s Pratt-Heavner said. “But it’s unfortunately a short-term solution and one of the reasons Congress should provide school lunches.”
In recent years, new state legislation has emerged to ban lunch-shaming – preventing schools from feeding kids who can’t pay or have with debt smaller alternative meals, thereby broadcasting that they haven’t paid up.
After pandemic-era waivers granting universal schools meal expired at the start of the school year, some states effectively extended them this school year, including Massachusetts, Nevada, Vermont and Pennsylvania.
California, Maine and now Colorado are the only states with laws ensuring permanent universal meal programs for all children, regardless of parents’ income.
A few districts, including Chicago and New York City, also offer free meals to kids.
More: California to provide free breakfast, lunch for students in first statewide meals program
More: Parents go into debt to pay for kids’ breakfasts, lunches
More: With the end of universal free lunch in most Wisconsin school districts, what options remain?
Kids are accruing debt in part because schools are having a hard time getting kids to sign up for the federal free and reduced-price school lunch program. Some kids don’t qualify but still can’t afford meals.
A survey by the National Center for Education Statistics shows student participation in school meal programs is down from last school year by 23% nationally, with the largest drop in the Midwest at 31%.
The October survey shows that of the 88% of schools that operate USDA school lunch and breakfast meal programs, one in four reported “it was much more or a little more difficult for their school to operate meal programs” during this school year compared with last.
Why? Schools told the School Nutrition Association that increasing costs, staff shortages, menu item shortages, menu items being discontinued and unpaid meal debt are some of their top challenges.
Free school meals for all: These are key to Biden’s plan to cut hunger, improve Americans’ diets
The School Nutrition Association, which represents 50,000 people who provide school lunches, wants Congress to reinstate the universal meal programs that provided free meals to all American school children regardless of their parents’ income during the pandemic.
The repercussions of the end of pandemic-era provisions that once allowed all kids access to free food are only “at a a tipping point as rising costs, persistent supply chain issues and labor shortages jeopardize their long-term sustainability,” the group’s president Lori Adkins wrote, in response to the results of their survey.
Contributing: Alia Wong, USA TODAY
Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter at @kaylajjimenez.
School lunch debt returns as federal meal program comes to a halt – USA TODAY
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