what the hell is School Lunch Debt?

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So I’ve come across this piece of news where a so called „Arbys foundation“ payed 1000000$ to schools so that they can pay off their student‘s debts.

Now what I am wondering about, what does that mean exactly? Because what the article implies is that children are being indebted for free school lunches, which seems to lack a lot of nuance and would be illegal if it was true.

Does it simply mean that the schools themselves have to come up to pay, or is it a matter of the city government?

PS: I am German therefore I may have screwed up with the grammar and possibly the vocabulary too.

In: Economics

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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