Groton weighs new student meal debt policy

Goal would be to get money from parents, not expose children to ‘lunch shaming’

Groton — To address the problem of parents falling behind on their children’s school lunch accounts without shaming students, the Board of Education is considering a new policy.

Food Service Director Ernie Koschmieder said the district loses thousands of dollars each year from unpaid lunches. By law, funds from the school food service account cannot be used to cover those losses.

“It’s not the kid’s fault,” Koschmieder said, noting that parents need to take responsibility.

Per the proposed policy, a student may charge up to $10 in regular meals after his or her account runs out of funds. At that point, an alternate meal will be provided. For lunch, this might be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Sunbutter and jelly sandwich, or cheese sandwich, all with milk and fruit. For breakfast, it might be cereal and milk.

But “if a kid comes through with a hot meal, we don’t take it away,” Koschmieder noted.

Parents currently receive notices from the child’s school about any shortfall, and if that fails to produce a response, they get a notice from the food service office.

“Ernie extends himself to find out if parents are struggling,” Assistant Superintendent Susan Austin said. “They can come to him.”

She added that the principal, teacher or social worker is discreet in handling the situation, and that it’s important that “nobody ever feels humiliated by the process.”

In other school districts, the practice of taking away a student’s hot lunch or otherwise bringing attention to lunch account shortages has become known as “lunch shaming,” though that term is not explicitly used in Groton’s policy.

Board of Education member Katrina Fitzgerald commented that every child has the choice between buying a hot lunch or alternate lunch or bringing a bag lunch from home, “so it’s not just kids who haven’t paid who get this lunch.”

But many argue that getting a cheese sandwich can be embarrassing for students. The Westerly School Committee recently decided that students who were behind on payments would not get a cheese sandwich in lieu of a hot meal, The Westerly Sun reported.

But in Westerly, unlike in Groton, students paid the same amount for the cheese sandwich as a hot meal.

The charge for the alternate meal in Groton is $1.75 for lunch and 75 cents for breakfast, whereas a regular meal is $2.80 for lunch and $1.50 for breakfast.

A student receiving reduced-price lunch pays 40 cents for lunch and 30 cents for breakfast. In the district, 43 percent of students get free or reduced-price meals.

The policy states that when students are consistently without meal money, the principal should encourage their parents to apply for free or reduced price meals.

It also instructs the superintendent or a designee to “develop regulations designed to effectively and respectfully address family responsibility for unpaid meals.”

The policy authorizes the superintendent to develop rules addressing what can be charged, the limit on charges per student, and the system for identifying and recording charged meals.

It goes on, “The District’s efforts to recover from households money owed due to the charging of meals must not have a negative impact on the children involved and shall focus primarily on the adults in the household responsible for providing funds for meal purchases.”

The Groton Board of Education heard the first reading of the policy at its regular meeting on Monday night and voted to send it to second reading. The board’s next regular meeting is on Sept. 25.