This article has been published on www.jimmyventura.blog/blog
Link to my Go Fund Me Fundraiser to pay off AZ School Lunch Debt: (Click Link Here)
"You don't want to take food away from a child," said Lindsay Aguilar, RD, SNS, and Administrative Dietitian-Coordinator for Food Services at Tucson Unified School District."
Students with a negative balance beyond two meals on their accounts used to receive a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The courtesy meal program was designed to make sure every child was fed, according to Aguilar.
Around the time outrage over anecdotal reports of students stamped because of a lunch debt or children forced to wash dishes to work off their account balance, TUSD ended its courtesy meal program.
Link to Go Fund Me Fundraiser for School Lunch
“Even the peanut butter and jelly became an awkward moment for all parties involved,” Aguilar said. (3)
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 widespread economic and structural inequities that have historically existed in the U.S.
It also has a very real effect on children — whether causing them to go hungry (since school meals are the only meals some children eat in a day), hurting their self-esteem, or both.
"Adults are supposed to understand debt. Pay your light bill or your electricity gets turned off. Pay your car note or it gets repossessed. Pay your rent or you get kicked out into the street.
Adults know this. Kids don't. So is it reasonable to expect junior high students to understand a school policy that denies them school meals because their parents have unpaid bills with the school? It depends on who you ask.
I heard about two students who did not qualify for free or reduced meals, and who were denied school meals because their parents had accumulated school debt. The parents had been warned of the consequences, but still didn't pay their bill.
What's Legal
This raised some legal, moral and social questions involving the school's administration of the program: whether to feed the two students or not and how to go about collecting unpaid funds from parents. Also, what is a school's responsibility in the distribution of federal resources?
To my surprise, the school was within their legal rights to deny the students and hold their parents accountable, according to the National Education Association's (NEA) sources. While the school is responsible for a student's safety while they are at school, parents are responsible for a child's basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Thus, when a parent knowingly allows their child to go without food for a certain period of time (the time limit differs from state to state) then it could be interpreted as child neglect.
Most schools will give a child a peanut butter sandwich and carton of milk or something when they have forgotten their lunch money or can't pay for a meal. However, when charging lunches becomes chronic, most schools put their foot down in some way.
To my surprise, the school wa
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