Anyone who works in schools knows the importance of properly-fed kids. Data show food insecurity correlates with lower test scores, increased absences and lower high school graduation rates. Districts are committed to feeding kids, but when families don’t pay for school meals, the meal cost falls back to district coffers.
“You're going to see a lot more school districts that are having to rely on general fund from for their child nutrition; reserves are draining very quickly,” said Heather Plain, nutrition director for East Idaho’s Bonneville School District, and public policy co-chair of the Idaho School Nutrition Association.
Child nutrition is a federal program. Districts get $0.28 per tray served, and make up the difference at the cash register - or from federal reimbursements for low-income students. Per-meal costs are as low as possible, and most districts aim to break even on food service.
But Plain said it's an incredibly difficult balancing act.
“Food costs are super high. Parents don't want to pay $3.85 for lunch for their high school student, but you can't go anywhere in town and get a meal for $3.85. Certainly not one that meets all the nutritional requirements of the US Department of Agriculture school nutrition program," she said.
In Idaho, each school district manages its own meal debt, and there’s no statewide accounting of how much debt exists. Some districts meet federal low-income thresholds and get all meals for all students paid for.
Individual schools may also qualify for universal free meals. In the Twin Falls School District, for example, 13 of 16 schools qualified for subsidized meals this year. District Spokesperson Eva Craner wrote by email, even with only three schools running cash registers, meal debt this year is already approaching $5,000. The district ended last year with nearly $67,000 in unpaid meal debt.
In the state’s two largest districts, West Ada had $178,000 in meal debt last June. A grant from nonprofit ‘Hoops 4 Hunger’ covered about 30% of the debt and more dollars were recovered from families through the summer.
Boise Schools last year had nearly $100,000 in meal debt, but that deficit was paid by the Boise Schools Foundation and other donors.
Districts are happy to accept donations from the public, but small districts, like McCall-Donnelly, don’t have fundraising foundations.
“Our meal balance debt is close to $30-some-thousand,” said MDSD superintendent Tim Thomas. That total isn’t just from the most recent school year. McCall-Donnelly, like most districts, absorbs the debt in its general fund each year but still tries to collect what’s due. Many districts allow the use of outside collection agencies, though that’s rarely done.
“We're working with families to figure out payment plans,” Thomas said. “And we understand that there's a high probability that we're probably not going to collect all of that debt.”
But any amount they can get back is less pressure on an already-strained budget,
“We've reduced our staffing levels here,” Thomas said when asked what the consequences of meal debt are to his district, noting that its just a piece of overall budget stress. “We've reduced teaching positions and some classified aid positions [after] last school year,” Thomas said.
To try and prevent the debt spiral, the McCall-Donnelly School District Board of Trustees last month approved a new policy, capping meal debt at $20 per student. Other districts cap debt, though typically between $40-$50 before any action is taken. In most districts, action is a call home and no change in the lunch line. McCall-Donnelly went further, establishing an alternative meal that costs the district less to produce.
“We wanted to make sure that there was some option for those kids, but not the full meal charge option,” Thomas said.
‘Alternative meal’ policies are not new, but have fallen out of favor in many districts because of the shame associated with getting something different because you can’t pay. Bonneville School District’s Heather Plain said it used the practice until about eight years ago.
“At that time we would have kids come through, They knew they owed money and they would just about get to the cashier, and then they would run. They'd take their food and run. And I said, That's not what we're trying to create here. We want to feed kids. I don't want kids to worry about their balances,” she said.
The policy was also a huge stressor on cafeteria staff, she said, and was worth ending. But meal debt quickly doubled after they stopped the policy.
Thomas says the McCall-Donnelly board struggled with the decision to implement alternative meals. That board meeting and vote was not streamed or recorded, according to the district.
“We've always supplemented our federal food service fund,” he explained of how the district would implement the policy. “We use it as salad bars and healthy fresh fruit options, which are above and beyond what the typical lunch is. And so we're still going to provide them options, but not necessarily options to our ‘above and beyond’ food choices.” he said.
So what can be done? Districts are trying to reach parents as soon as a meal account balance goes negative. McCall-Donnelly this summer sent about 80 letters to families with meal debt from the previous school year, district Director of Finance Penny Lancaster said. Only three of those letters generated a payment.
Plain said Bonneville hired one person to handle debt-related parent contact for the whole district, trying to take the burden off individual school food program directors.
Many districts can send families with large balances to collections, but that tactic is rarely used, according to everyone I spoke with for this story.
More communication is important. Some families got used to free meals at school during the COVID-19 pandemic, and still have to be reminded that program ended three years ago.
Families are also encouraged to fill out applications for free or reduced lunch benefits. This year, the threshold for a family of four starts at $59,478 in income. But simply filling out the form is a stigma for some, Plain said. And putting more responsibilities on families is not always a solution.
“The biggest thing we're advocating for our children is universal meals for all. That's what we saw when we came back from COVID, “ Plain said of the federally-funded universal feeding. “It absolutely took down all the walls of the haves and have-nots and the stigma, and all kids could just come and eat.”
That’s what the Boise School District has done, funding breakfasts for every student in every school. Spokesperson Dan Hollar wrote by email that the program is a way to ensure every student starts the day ready to learn.
It has cost Boise Schools about $2.2 million to make that change, and universal feeding for many districts would require new funding from local, state or federal sources.
“A lot of times we talk to our local representatives and they're not super concerned because it's a federal program,” Plain said of her role with the Idaho School Nutrition Association. “So we go to the federal level. And you know, it just depends on which administration is in, the interest that they take in it,” she said.
Districts will continue to work to educate families about what options are available. Boise Schools still had $96,482 in meal debt last year, even without running cash registers at breakfast. But that total is down 62% from the year before, the district says, thanks in large part to getting more students and more school sites qualified for federal meal subsidies.
