Bill would ensure students get fed, meal debt or not
If measure becomes law, it would be first in nation; governor hasn’t said if she will sign
There was a time, Paula Herrera said, when public school cafeterias in Santa Fe gave students who were behind in lunch payments a piece of cheese stuck between two pieces of bread and a small carton of milk.
“It was awful,” said Herrera, manager of the cafeteria at Gonzales Community School off Alameda Street. “We had to take the tray of food away from them and give them a cheese sandwich. It was like a stigma.”
Santa Fe Public Schools stopped the practice about four years ago. Herrera and other cafeteria directors in the district now make sure kids get fed, even though their parents may owe hundreds of dollars in food fees.
A bill approved by the state Legislature in its recent session would ensure that students in all New Mexico public schools get meals even if their parents are behind on payments. Districts could use non-federal funds to cover a student meal debt written off as uncollectable.
Also under the legislation, Senate Bill 374, schools would be prohibited from publicly identifying students who are behind in meal payments, and districts would be required to make sure eligible students are signed up for federally funded free or reduced-price lunches.
“We shouldn’t be penalizing the children for their parents’ debt,” said Sen. Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, a co-sponsor of the bill. “The key focus here is to ensure that children are thinking about their studies and not their stomachs. If a child is hungry, the last thing they will focus on is school work.”
If Gov. Susana Martinez approves the measure, the bill’s advocates say, it would be the first law of its kind in the nation.
“As with any legislation, she’ll review it thoroughly before acting,” said Martinez spokesman Michael Lonergan.
A recent study by the School Nutrition Association looked at 2014 data from more than 1,100 nutrition directors working in public schools and found that more than 70 percent of the directors reported their schools had student meal debt at the end of the school year. The report said that in some larger districts, the debt reached up to $4.7 million.
School nutritionists in New Mexico said the most any one parent might owe over the course of a year is $400. But if just 50 parents are behind by that amount, that’s $20,000 in debt for any one district. New Mexico has 89 school districts.
Those familiar with the issue say the reasons for non-payment can range from something as simple as an oversight to job loss.
Santa Fe school cafeteria workers are asked to remind children that their parents owe money for lunch.
A kindergartner at Gonzales Community School told Herrera he was afraid he wouldn’t get any food at the school because his parents couldn’t pay for his lunch.
“I said, ‘Don’t worry, dude, you are going to eat,’ ” Herrera said.
Angela Haney, director of student nutrition at Los Lunas Schools, said a cafeteria worker told “Susie” to remind her parents to pay her lunch debt. But another nearby child, “Sally,” thought the cashier was talking to her. She went home and told her mother she had to pay up.
“Sally’s mother called and she was not at all happy that her child was needing money for lunch,” Haney said. “So the situation stresses out not just the child you are talking to but any child in the immediate area who overhears this.”
Padilla said he has heard stories of cafeteria workers taking trays of food away from students as they stand in front of the cash register because their lunch payments are overdue. He said he has also heard of some schools putting students to work in the cafeteria to pay for lunch.
Santa Fe Public Schools has about 13,000 students and about 8,500 are enrolled in the meal program, said Judith Jacquez, director of student nutrition for the district. About 77 percent of the students are on the federal program for free or reduced-price lunches.
Workers in the cafeterias feed every child who comes in for a meal regardless of circumstance, Jacquez said.
“We are in this business to feed kids,” she said. “I would guess that most districts in the state find a way to feed kids. I don’t think any district would want to not feed children.”
Crystal FitzSimons, director of school and out-of-school programs for the antihunger organization Food Research and Action Center in Washington, D.C., said federal law mandates that all public school districts in the country come up with a plan to deal with unpaid school lunch fees, but she said the legislation on Martinez’s desk goes a step further by taking the burden of unpaid debt off students’ shoulders.
“This bill protects the kids,” she said.