what the hell is School Lunch Debt?

885 viewsEconomicsOther

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

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.

You are viewing 1 out of 17 answers, click here to view all answers.