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US schools usually charge per meal, and will usually let students run a negative balance rather than denying meals if a student can't pay that particular day.
A decade or so ago, my high school charged $2 for a lunch and a little under a dollar for breakfast.
For reference, prices today at my kid's school (just outside Portland, OR) are $2.75 for breakfast and $4.25 for lunch. For my 2 kids, who like to eat both meals at school so they can talk to their friends, that's:
$2.75 + 4.25 = $7/day
\* 2 kids = $14/day
\* 5 days/week = $70/week
\* 4 weeks/month = $280/month
\* 9 months/year = $2520/year
It's a bit less since they have a million days off (average of 3.6 days per month off), but it still adds up. There's also a service fee every time you add money to the account.
even if you brought food it'd be hard to make a lunch at home that costs significantly less than $2 (what it costs my kids for lunch every day - in Indiana) unless you're just bringing a peanut butter sandwich and a refillable bottle of water to school every day for lunch. You have a kid that wants a lunchable and juice pouch and some veggie straws or something for lunch it's cheaper to just have them eat school lunch.
I got seconds (second hot dog or piece of pizza, more pasta or whatever they had for the day, double veggies as they never ran out) and a milk for 2$ flat through summer 1998. Another milk was a quarter. Minimum 1200 calories, more if the lunch ladies thought you needed a coupla pounds.
This subsequently ruined me for food pricing because now outside of lentils and 4 scoops of peanut butter dinners I’m a bit more than that.
Actually, if you met financial criteria, lunch was a quarter, seconds another quarter and you got another milk. Used to get extra from a friend and I’d buy her lunches sometimes.
I was one of those reduced lunch kids. At the beginning of the school year my parents had to fill out a form outlining their income and I had to turn in it to the cafeteria office.
Then i would bring a check every two weeks for 4.50 and they would give me a punch card for 10 meals. Two weeks worth of lunches at 45 cents a piece. This was mid to late 80s.
Holy shit I had totally forgotten about the lunch ticket system.
I remember early morning before school began walking to the cafeteria where the lunch lady would be sitting at a fold-out table with a cash box and a pile of little tickets. I'd wait in the line of like 15 kids at most, hand her the $1.25 my mom gave me, she'd take a ticket from the pile, stamp it, and hand it across to me. God the things you don't realize you're gonna miss.
I’m glad they don’t have tickets anymore. We were poor and qualified for free lunch, but at my school the free lunch tickets were a different color from the paid lunch tickets. Plus I’d have to stand in line with everyone else, the lady would loudly ask where my money was and I’d have to tell her in front of everyone that I needed the free lunch tickets.
There were many times I just went without because it was so embarrassing as a kid.
Hey man, if it's any consolation I'm sorry you went through that. It wasn't to that point for me growing up but I had a few kids I can remember who were on that system. Ours weren't different, but we all know who got free lunch in our class and looking back it was probably hard for some kids.
It’s worth noting that many schools (at least in my area of the Midwest) have contracted out their food service to large (sometimes multinational) FOR-PROFIT corporations. So problematic!
>Because what the article implies is that children are being indebted for free school lunches
They're not free, that's why they're in debt. There are need-based programs that make them free, but if you don't qualify you have to pay. School lunches were made free for everyone as part of Covid relief, but that's not the case anymore.
Depends on what state you live in. Some blue states, like CA and MN, have started paying for all school meals for kids. I know there are other states that do this too. I’m in CA and I believe that using tax money to make sure all school-aged children can get a breakfast and a lunch is a fantastic use of our tax money.
NYC has free school lunch and breakfast. It’s cheaper to forgo figuring out who is made to pay and who is exempted, and it eliminates any bullying or discrimination based on free lunch eligibility.
It's not just the morally right thing to do, it's literally the fiscally conservative, deficit friendly option. Universal programs very frequently cost less to implement while working better.
At least in MN what is actually happening is that the state is chipping in the amount that doesn't get covered by existing federal/state reimbursement for free/reduced meals. So it essentially treats all students as free now. But it only applies to 1 breakfast and 1 lunch per day, anything beyond that is full price.
I would like to add that you have to apply and qualify.
Which means parents who don't understand the paperwork don't qualify, even if they should financially qualify.
Or if the kid doesn't bring it home, they won't qualify.
There's also Community Eligibility Provision, which removes the need to qualify. We have it where I live.
FYI to anyone interested: look up your school at [https://frac.org/community-eligibility-database/](https://frac.org/community-eligibility-database/) and if the identified students percentage is over 25% then your school district can elect to use CEP, and eliminate this barrier. That limit was 40% up until late last year. There is a 1.6x multiplier on reimbursement, so by the time this figure is at about 60%, the school meals are fully federally funded.
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I was threatened with not being able to get a transcript or participate in the commencement ceremony because I had a negative balance at the end of 12th grade. For context, my mom died just before 9th grade and we had just barely avoided becoming homeless, and my dad was a teacher at the middle school in the same district.
Yes. At every school that I know of, students can bring their own food, for free, of course. Families who cannot afford the price of a school lunch are typically facing food insecurity at home also, so they may not be able to provide any sort of food at all. Thus, the students are forced to take on a debt to eat.
Usually bringing lunch is going to be more expensive. Other than a PB sandwich and reused soda bottle filled with water, you're not going to beat school lunch prices, they're already pretty cheap. For as crappy as they can be, they're also usually more nutritionally worthwhile than something you can bring from home (at least of equal cost).
Some states have made all school lunches free and that's been shown to be extremely effective, as it's literally cheaper than making kids pay for school lunch because it removes the administrative burden of keeping track of payments and debts and who is eligible for different levels of subsidized/free lunch.
When my kids were in Highschool they didn't like taking lunches. So my youngest would just go without making one, complain to the lunch staff, and come home with a bill for his meal. Usually $5 - $10 depending on how pitiful he was. 3-4 times a week.
When I asked them what was up with this the principle explained that the law says they must make sure every student has a meal. And they have some that do this every morning and afternoon, racking up 50 - 80 dollars a week in meal costs for their parents. In California that is 180 days, so just north of 2k per student.
now, we are int eh position to pay and my son was just lazy, but we are less than 5 miles from title-1 schools where the parents can't pay and these breakfasts & lunches are the only thing that kid may be eating that day. There are 41,794 students in K-5 schools in my school district, so that's 100k right there.
The debt is not owed by the child, but the parents. It’s up to the school to choose how they collect that debt but they are legally allowed to call the parents, send reminders via mail, and even send the debt to a collections agency.
>what the article implies is that children are being indebted for free school lunches
I don't think it's always the case that school lunches are free to the students. They're not exactly expensive, but some money, which is still significant for kids with no way of earning income and parents maybe unable or unwilling to pay.
One way of mitigating the cost is for the school to allow a student's lunch account to go in the negative, meaning they still get to eat but accrue debt that has to be repaid at some point. I don't know what happens if it isn't as I only ever brought my own lunch rather than buy, but there could maybe be other penalties for the kid.
Yes it sounds terrible and dystopian. Some of us don't like it, and others maybe think it's fine and appropriate.
You can deny lunch to kids who can't pay or let them go into debt. There's no Lunch Fairy who comes around and gives out free lunches, no bomber sales, no clawing money from corporations who'll just relocate if you try. So pick your least bad choice because that's what being a grown-up is most of the time. It has nothing to do with fine or appropriate, only realistic.
Pretty sure denying lunch is illegal, or at least frowned upon. Many schools deal with this by giving students in debt different lunches (like a plain cheese sandwich and milk), which has the added "bonus" of shaming them for being poor
You are assuming that the lunches are free. When I was in high school more than a decade ago, even a basic student lunch was 3-4 bucks. could be 7-8 for the nicer ones. Typically these are purchased using cash OR a student account that parents "refill" by writing checks to the school.
At a lot of schools, they have a policy. If a student's account runs dry, rather than deny them lunch, the student can run the balance negative (up to a certain cut off) and get a basic lunch. That's how this happens.
Not all school lunches are free in the U.S.
By default they aren’t.
There is national policy that covers free lunch for students from families earning less than 130% of the poverty limit. And tiered reduced priced lunches for those from families earning between 130-185% of the poverty line.
While a great step, there are gaps. Not every family will qualify as soon as they’re eligible, some can still face financial difficulties even if numerically it seems they don’t based on that metric, some don’t have access to or know how to submit documentation to qualify, or for a huge number of reasons, some students won’t get that benefit or will owe money.
School districts can choose to allow these students to still get food but start a tab against their debt.
Exactly. Plus there's kind of a stigma to getting free lunches, at least in the 90s. Students would be embarrassed or ashamed to accept a free or discount lunch and would just pay full price anyways or bring their own or just not eat or eat leftovers friends gave them.
I live in NYC and we have universal free school meals. Breakfast and lunch. It’s easier and cheaper to just hand out the food and it eliminates a potential trigger for bullying and discrimination.
When I went through in the 2000s, it was all automated and discreet. Everyone punched in their student ID to pull up their account to get charged. Those with free or reduced status had it attached to their account and handled automatically.
Also, census tracts with a certain average income will qualify for universal free lunch for all their students, regardless of the specific family income. This reduces the stigma and simplifies paperwork.
"free school lunches" \*Cries in American\*
The US doesn't have free school lunches. You have to pay. If kids don't have lunch money for that day/week they still get to eat but they get a debt added to their file their parents eventually have to pay. So the implication that children are being indebted to eat is 100% true.
Arbys is raising money to aid those families and pay the debt off for them.
For the curious, [here are the income guidelines for NC](https://www.ncdhhs.gov/income-eligibility-guidelines-2023-2024-0/download?attachment) (pdf warning).
"The US" does not have a single way of doing things in schools, because schools are run at the local and state level, with only some federal influence.
As a Canadian this whole thing about school lunches confuses me. No elementary schools around here (BC) have them, kids bring food from home. Same with high school. We had a cafeteria, but I’d say 90% brought their own food from home. Was in school Mid 90s-late 00s.
American school provide lunch, but there is a fee for it. But the food is basically produced in bulk, where they pick a meal for that day and only serve those items. For example, a meal may be a piece of chicken, some potatoes, some beans, a piece of fruit, a slice of cake or serving of custard, and a serving of milk.
They will often publish the school lunch menu weekly so that parents know what will be served.
But some kids don't want to eat what is on the menu, so parents send a packed lunch with the kid. If the kids brings their own lunch then they aren't charged for the school lunch.
As others have said, the school can't force the kid to eat, but they can make sure that every kid has something to eat.
Families that can afford to pay do, and families that can't afford to pay don't. The school knows pretty well which families can and can't afford to pay. They know because some kids are always dressed nicely in new clothes and shoes and arrive with clean hands and faces and hair, and some kids are always dressed in old, worn clothes and shoes and maybe only get a bath once a week. Basically it's the "haves" and the "have nots".
It sucks, for the kids because they know and they are teased about it.
But regardless of their wealth, every kid gets something to eat. For some it may be the only meals they get.
Most schools within the USA require school lunches to be paid for by either the students or the students' parents. As schools cannot deny students food by law, they instead require parents pay the cost of the lunches at a later date (debt). The cost per meal depends on the school, and how they handle the debt also depends on the school. Some schools will simply pay for the cost themselves if parents do not pay, but other schools will try their hardest to go after parents with lunch debts. Most often by they force parents to pay by withholding transcripts, which can seriously stunt scholarship and college applications.
Low income families are able to qualify for free lunch vouchers depending on the school. Depending on the setup, either the school or state or federal government will pay the lunch bill for these families. But the requirements to get on free lunch waivers can be obtuse and if you miss the paperwork deadlines, you do not get free lunches.
In most if not all schools, you can bring in a lunch from home. If you are smart about it, bringing a lunch from home can be very cheap (and it helps with picky eaters). However, as schools cannot deny students food, there is absolutely nothing stopping a misbehaving child from ordering lunch every day no matter how expensive it is for the parent. Some families also are simply too poor to afford to pay for all of their children's meals, even at home.
The exception to this rule is California. It’s the second school year of free school lunches for all students. [link](https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/sn/cauniversalmeals.asp)
Depending on where you live and what income level you're at school lunches generally aren't free, but rather than let kids go hungry they just give them the food, but will also keep track of how many meals they got and students will run up a negative balance.
The consequences for this varies, but the majority of schools that do this will not let kids graduate with their diplomas if they owe the school money.
Note there are programs that will give reduced cost lunches or even free ones to low income families, but like with every welfare program in the US, it's very possible to make too much to qualify for help while still struggling to make ends meet because the poverty line is waaay below the cost of living in a lot of areas.
Silly German, doing things that make sense like making sure every student has food without worry.
Here in ‘Murica, we charge kids for their school provided meals. That way they can be in debt before our schooling system even teaches them negative numbers.
Kids can still bring their lunch to school, can't they? They were never required to buy a school lunch from my memory, in fact through middle school bringing your lunch was the norm. High school was where kids started buying instead of brown-bagging.
Teacher here. Students who’s parents make below a certain income get free or reduced lunch and breakfast. If not parents have to pay for such. If they don’t pay there is a debt.
With that said: all students in my state (CA) now get free lunch and breakfast regardless of income. Unfortunately for me my son hates school food.
Answer: 'Murica!
Yes, it can be changed as you are seeing with some states (hint: the one that typically lean democrat/liberal). But ever since Reagan in the 80s made such a big deal about welfare queens, it's stuck in the public conscious that people shouldn't get anything free because they are just going to take advantage of it rather than work. For schools however, it puts them in a lose-lose situation of either having to say no to feeding a kid at school (which has terrible optics to it, never mind...yeah, denying a student a meal during the day) or dealing with the cost as a burden on the already limited school budget. So a lot of schools end up recording the debt and then sending it to collections if the parent's don't settle it. The problem is, there actually are some deadbeat parents out there who always seem to have a new truck or the latest phones all the time, yet can't seem to pay their kid's lunch bill (I've personally seen examples of this) so it's not entirely without merit. But the reality is that to fix it, it's really a federal and state budgeting issue more than a district level issue. The current federal reimbursements are quite low and barely pay for just the food cost let alone staffing, prep, utilities, maintenance, etc of the food programs. So most districts are running deficits when it comes to their food programs and parent's not paying for the meals adds to that issue.
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US schools usually charge per meal, and will usually let students run a negative balance rather than denying meals if a student can't pay that particular day. A decade or so ago, my high school charged $2 for a lunch and a little under a dollar for breakfast.
For reference, prices today at my kid's school (just outside Portland, OR) are $2.75 for breakfast and $4.25 for lunch. For my 2 kids, who like to eat both meals at school so they can talk to their friends, that's: $2.75 + 4.25 = $7/day \* 2 kids = $14/day \* 5 days/week = $70/week \* 4 weeks/month = $280/month \* 9 months/year = $2520/year It's a bit less since they have a million days off (average of 3.6 days per month off), but it still adds up. There's also a service fee every time you add money to the account.
The service fee is a nice example of “it’s expensive to be poor”.
Can they not bring food and talk to their friends while eating…?
even if you brought food it'd be hard to make a lunch at home that costs significantly less than $2 (what it costs my kids for lunch every day - in Indiana) unless you're just bringing a peanut butter sandwich and a refillable bottle of water to school every day for lunch. You have a kid that wants a lunchable and juice pouch and some veggie straws or something for lunch it's cheaper to just have them eat school lunch.
Lunchables are $4.95 at my grocery store
That's not lunch. That's a snack. But it should be avoided at all cost. It's ultra processed food.
Agreed, just pointing out that the processed crap snack costs more than these School lunches
That's pretty good. My high school charged $2 for a lunch back in the mid-90s.
I got seconds (second hot dog or piece of pizza, more pasta or whatever they had for the day, double veggies as they never ran out) and a milk for 2$ flat through summer 1998. Another milk was a quarter. Minimum 1200 calories, more if the lunch ladies thought you needed a coupla pounds. This subsequently ruined me for food pricing because now outside of lentils and 4 scoops of peanut butter dinners I’m a bit more than that. Actually, if you met financial criteria, lunch was a quarter, seconds another quarter and you got another milk. Used to get extra from a friend and I’d buy her lunches sometimes.
I was one of those reduced lunch kids. At the beginning of the school year my parents had to fill out a form outlining their income and I had to turn in it to the cafeteria office. Then i would bring a check every two weeks for 4.50 and they would give me a punch card for 10 meals. Two weeks worth of lunches at 45 cents a piece. This was mid to late 80s.
I think it was around $3 when I was in high school in the early 2010s.
Holy shit I had totally forgotten about the lunch ticket system. I remember early morning before school began walking to the cafeteria where the lunch lady would be sitting at a fold-out table with a cash box and a pile of little tickets. I'd wait in the line of like 15 kids at most, hand her the $1.25 my mom gave me, she'd take a ticket from the pile, stamp it, and hand it across to me. God the things you don't realize you're gonna miss.
I’m glad they don’t have tickets anymore. We were poor and qualified for free lunch, but at my school the free lunch tickets were a different color from the paid lunch tickets. Plus I’d have to stand in line with everyone else, the lady would loudly ask where my money was and I’d have to tell her in front of everyone that I needed the free lunch tickets. There were many times I just went without because it was so embarrassing as a kid.
Hey man, if it's any consolation I'm sorry you went through that. It wasn't to that point for me growing up but I had a few kids I can remember who were on that system. Ours weren't different, but we all know who got free lunch in our class and looking back it was probably hard for some kids.
I had free lunch also and kept getting in the back of the line so I wouldn’t have to announce it in front of other kids. ~180 times a year, K-12.
I'm paying about $7 to $8 a day at my son's middle school. I could save about $3 if he didn't buy a drink but I'm a bit of a softie.
It’s worth noting that many schools (at least in my area of the Midwest) have contracted out their food service to large (sometimes multinational) FOR-PROFIT corporations. So problematic!
>Because what the article implies is that children are being indebted for free school lunches They're not free, that's why they're in debt. There are need-based programs that make them free, but if you don't qualify you have to pay. School lunches were made free for everyone as part of Covid relief, but that's not the case anymore.
Depends on what state you live in. Some blue states, like CA and MN, have started paying for all school meals for kids. I know there are other states that do this too. I’m in CA and I believe that using tax money to make sure all school-aged children can get a breakfast and a lunch is a fantastic use of our tax money.
NYC has free school lunch and breakfast. It’s cheaper to forgo figuring out who is made to pay and who is exempted, and it eliminates any bullying or discrimination based on free lunch eligibility.
Exactly! The administrative cost of figuring out the have nots from the haves is saved.
I think you meant it costs us ***Jobs***^TM
It's not just the morally right thing to do, it's literally the fiscally conservative, deficit friendly option. Universal programs very frequently cost less to implement while working better.
Michigan also. Free lunch.
ThAtS cOmMuNiSm!
At least in MN what is actually happening is that the state is chipping in the amount that doesn't get covered by existing federal/state reimbursement for free/reduced meals. So it essentially treats all students as free now. But it only applies to 1 breakfast and 1 lunch per day, anything beyond that is full price.
I would like to add that you have to apply and qualify. Which means parents who don't understand the paperwork don't qualify, even if they should financially qualify. Or if the kid doesn't bring it home, they won't qualify.
Or they chose not to because of the stigma.
There's also Community Eligibility Provision, which removes the need to qualify. We have it where I live. FYI to anyone interested: look up your school at [https://frac.org/community-eligibility-database/](https://frac.org/community-eligibility-database/) and if the identified students percentage is over 25% then your school district can elect to use CEP, and eliminate this barrier. That limit was 40% up until late last year. There is a 1.6x multiplier on reimbursement, so by the time this figure is at about 60%, the school meals are fully federally funded.
In some states it still is. Massachusetts passed free breakfast and lunch for everyone.
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I was threatened with not being able to get a transcript or participate in the commencement ceremony because I had a negative balance at the end of 12th grade. For context, my mom died just before 9th grade and we had just barely avoided becoming homeless, and my dad was a teacher at the middle school in the same district.
Hope you and your dad ended up okay. That is an incredible indictment of the current system.
Can’t they pack meals? Surely that’s cheaper. In Canada our highschool cafeteria was the same price as the food court in the mall next door.
Yes. At every school that I know of, students can bring their own food, for free, of course. Families who cannot afford the price of a school lunch are typically facing food insecurity at home also, so they may not be able to provide any sort of food at all. Thus, the students are forced to take on a debt to eat.
Thanks for clarifying.
When I was in school, you could bring a lunch but there were no refrigerators or microwaves for us. So, that really limits what you can bring.
Usually bringing lunch is going to be more expensive. Other than a PB sandwich and reused soda bottle filled with water, you're not going to beat school lunch prices, they're already pretty cheap. For as crappy as they can be, they're also usually more nutritionally worthwhile than something you can bring from home (at least of equal cost). Some states have made all school lunches free and that's been shown to be extremely effective, as it's literally cheaper than making kids pay for school lunch because it removes the administrative burden of keeping track of payments and debts and who is eligible for different levels of subsidized/free lunch.
Most places *in the US*
When my kids were in Highschool they didn't like taking lunches. So my youngest would just go without making one, complain to the lunch staff, and come home with a bill for his meal. Usually $5 - $10 depending on how pitiful he was. 3-4 times a week. When I asked them what was up with this the principle explained that the law says they must make sure every student has a meal. And they have some that do this every morning and afternoon, racking up 50 - 80 dollars a week in meal costs for their parents. In California that is 180 days, so just north of 2k per student. now, we are int eh position to pay and my son was just lazy, but we are less than 5 miles from title-1 schools where the parents can't pay and these breakfasts & lunches are the only thing that kid may be eating that day. There are 41,794 students in K-5 schools in my school district, so that's 100k right there.
The debt is not owed by the child, but the parents. It’s up to the school to choose how they collect that debt but they are legally allowed to call the parents, send reminders via mail, and even send the debt to a collections agency.
Ultimately the debt is owed by the school, to the food service company.
>what the article implies is that children are being indebted for free school lunches I don't think it's always the case that school lunches are free to the students. They're not exactly expensive, but some money, which is still significant for kids with no way of earning income and parents maybe unable or unwilling to pay. One way of mitigating the cost is for the school to allow a student's lunch account to go in the negative, meaning they still get to eat but accrue debt that has to be repaid at some point. I don't know what happens if it isn't as I only ever brought my own lunch rather than buy, but there could maybe be other penalties for the kid. Yes it sounds terrible and dystopian. Some of us don't like it, and others maybe think it's fine and appropriate.
You can deny lunch to kids who can't pay or let them go into debt. There's no Lunch Fairy who comes around and gives out free lunches, no bomber sales, no clawing money from corporations who'll just relocate if you try. So pick your least bad choice because that's what being a grown-up is most of the time. It has nothing to do with fine or appropriate, only realistic.
Pretty sure denying lunch is illegal, or at least frowned upon. Many schools deal with this by giving students in debt different lunches (like a plain cheese sandwich and milk), which has the added "bonus" of shaming them for being poor
So it looks like someone has already made that choice for you.
You are assuming that the lunches are free. When I was in high school more than a decade ago, even a basic student lunch was 3-4 bucks. could be 7-8 for the nicer ones. Typically these are purchased using cash OR a student account that parents "refill" by writing checks to the school. At a lot of schools, they have a policy. If a student's account runs dry, rather than deny them lunch, the student can run the balance negative (up to a certain cut off) and get a basic lunch. That's how this happens.
Not all school lunches are free in the U.S. By default they aren’t. There is national policy that covers free lunch for students from families earning less than 130% of the poverty limit. And tiered reduced priced lunches for those from families earning between 130-185% of the poverty line. While a great step, there are gaps. Not every family will qualify as soon as they’re eligible, some can still face financial difficulties even if numerically it seems they don’t based on that metric, some don’t have access to or know how to submit documentation to qualify, or for a huge number of reasons, some students won’t get that benefit or will owe money. School districts can choose to allow these students to still get food but start a tab against their debt.
Exactly. Plus there's kind of a stigma to getting free lunches, at least in the 90s. Students would be embarrassed or ashamed to accept a free or discount lunch and would just pay full price anyways or bring their own or just not eat or eat leftovers friends gave them.
I live in NYC and we have universal free school meals. Breakfast and lunch. It’s easier and cheaper to just hand out the food and it eliminates a potential trigger for bullying and discrimination.
When I went through in the 2000s, it was all automated and discreet. Everyone punched in their student ID to pull up their account to get charged. Those with free or reduced status had it attached to their account and handled automatically.
Also, census tracts with a certain average income will qualify for universal free lunch for all their students, regardless of the specific family income. This reduces the stigma and simplifies paperwork.
"free school lunches" \*Cries in American\* The US doesn't have free school lunches. You have to pay. If kids don't have lunch money for that day/week they still get to eat but they get a debt added to their file their parents eventually have to pay. So the implication that children are being indebted to eat is 100% true. Arbys is raising money to aid those families and pay the debt off for them.
The US *does* have free and reduced-cost lunches if the family income-qualifies AND completes the form at the beginning of every school year.
And the qualifying income limit is about 1/3 of the true poverty line.
For the curious, [here are the income guidelines for NC](https://www.ncdhhs.gov/income-eligibility-guidelines-2023-2024-0/download?attachment) (pdf warning).
and the qualifications are bogus leaving many many families still struggling to afford to feed their kids, hence the whole lunch debt issue.
I'll offer you a glimmer of hope in the form of Minnesota, which made school breakfast and lunch free for all students. Took effect just this year.
8 states do that! California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Vermont.
Pennsylvania does universal free breakfast now, but not universal free lunch.
"The US" does not have a single way of doing things in schools, because schools are run at the local and state level, with only some federal influence.
okay fine school lunch debt is a lie, there's no such thing because the world is magical and anyone in need always gets help... better?
As a Canadian this whole thing about school lunches confuses me. No elementary schools around here (BC) have them, kids bring food from home. Same with high school. We had a cafeteria, but I’d say 90% brought their own food from home. Was in school Mid 90s-late 00s.
You’re assuming that kids have food at home. Many of them do not.
I’m not assuming anything. I’m just stating that I’ve never known school lunches to be a thing in BC.
American school provide lunch, but there is a fee for it. But the food is basically produced in bulk, where they pick a meal for that day and only serve those items. For example, a meal may be a piece of chicken, some potatoes, some beans, a piece of fruit, a slice of cake or serving of custard, and a serving of milk. They will often publish the school lunch menu weekly so that parents know what will be served. But some kids don't want to eat what is on the menu, so parents send a packed lunch with the kid. If the kids brings their own lunch then they aren't charged for the school lunch. As others have said, the school can't force the kid to eat, but they can make sure that every kid has something to eat. Families that can afford to pay do, and families that can't afford to pay don't. The school knows pretty well which families can and can't afford to pay. They know because some kids are always dressed nicely in new clothes and shoes and arrive with clean hands and faces and hair, and some kids are always dressed in old, worn clothes and shoes and maybe only get a bath once a week. Basically it's the "haves" and the "have nots". It sucks, for the kids because they know and they are teased about it. But regardless of their wealth, every kid gets something to eat. For some it may be the only meals they get.
Most schools within the USA require school lunches to be paid for by either the students or the students' parents. As schools cannot deny students food by law, they instead require parents pay the cost of the lunches at a later date (debt). The cost per meal depends on the school, and how they handle the debt also depends on the school. Some schools will simply pay for the cost themselves if parents do not pay, but other schools will try their hardest to go after parents with lunch debts. Most often by they force parents to pay by withholding transcripts, which can seriously stunt scholarship and college applications. Low income families are able to qualify for free lunch vouchers depending on the school. Depending on the setup, either the school or state or federal government will pay the lunch bill for these families. But the requirements to get on free lunch waivers can be obtuse and if you miss the paperwork deadlines, you do not get free lunches. In most if not all schools, you can bring in a lunch from home. If you are smart about it, bringing a lunch from home can be very cheap (and it helps with picky eaters). However, as schools cannot deny students food, there is absolutely nothing stopping a misbehaving child from ordering lunch every day no matter how expensive it is for the parent. Some families also are simply too poor to afford to pay for all of their children's meals, even at home.
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The exception to this rule is California. It’s the second school year of free school lunches for all students. [link](https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/sn/cauniversalmeals.asp)
8 states, not just California!
Depending on where you live and what income level you're at school lunches generally aren't free, but rather than let kids go hungry they just give them the food, but will also keep track of how many meals they got and students will run up a negative balance. The consequences for this varies, but the majority of schools that do this will not let kids graduate with their diplomas if they owe the school money. Note there are programs that will give reduced cost lunches or even free ones to low income families, but like with every welfare program in the US, it's very possible to make too much to qualify for help while still struggling to make ends meet because the poverty line is waaay below the cost of living in a lot of areas.
Silly German, doing things that make sense like making sure every student has food without worry. Here in ‘Murica, we charge kids for their school provided meals. That way they can be in debt before our schooling system even teaches them negative numbers.
My kids are in German public school and we pay €3,50 for lunch each day.
I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Kids can still bring their lunch to school, can't they? They were never required to buy a school lunch from my memory, in fact through middle school bringing your lunch was the norm. High school was where kids started buying instead of brown-bagging.
Yes, but that requires having food *at home* to bring, which a surprising amount of families really don’t have.
Teacher here. Students who’s parents make below a certain income get free or reduced lunch and breakfast. If not parents have to pay for such. If they don’t pay there is a debt. With that said: all students in my state (CA) now get free lunch and breakfast regardless of income. Unfortunately for me my son hates school food.
ELI5 add on question. Why are Americans okay with this? Can't the system be changed?
Answer: 'Murica! Yes, it can be changed as you are seeing with some states (hint: the one that typically lean democrat/liberal). But ever since Reagan in the 80s made such a big deal about welfare queens, it's stuck in the public conscious that people shouldn't get anything free because they are just going to take advantage of it rather than work. For schools however, it puts them in a lose-lose situation of either having to say no to feeding a kid at school (which has terrible optics to it, never mind...yeah, denying a student a meal during the day) or dealing with the cost as a burden on the already limited school budget. So a lot of schools end up recording the debt and then sending it to collections if the parent's don't settle it. The problem is, there actually are some deadbeat parents out there who always seem to have a new truck or the latest phones all the time, yet can't seem to pay their kid's lunch bill (I've personally seen examples of this) so it's not entirely without merit. But the reality is that to fix it, it's really a federal and state budgeting issue more than a district level issue. The current federal reimbursements are quite low and barely pay for just the food cost let alone staffing, prep, utilities, maintenance, etc of the food programs. So most districts are running deficits when it comes to their food programs and parent's not paying for the meals adds to that issue.
Surly there can't be a tonn of parents driving around in brand new expensive vehicles that are not paying for $4 lunches. That doesn't make sense.