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

There’s no free lunches at schools here. There is a certain amount that welfare will pay towards school lunches for kids whose parents qualify for food stamps from the government. But the rest of the kids pay cash. My kids have been out of school for a good 10 years, but back then they each had a number and an account that I would have to put money in. If the account was empty they could have lunch for like 3 days, after that they only got a peanut butter sandwich or a cheese sandwich and a cup for water. Until I paid more money. 

Of course I had 1 kid that would not give me the slips from the school so I had to try to remember when I needed to put money in but since there are other things they could buy like ice cream or extra drinks, the money did not run out consistently at the same time. So that was fun to try to keep up on.

I’m guessing that the school lunch debt is either referring to those bare bones lunches it gives kids when they don’t have any money or maybe there is a lunch program for kids that consistently cannot afford regular lunch?

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