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
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.
>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.
School lunches for students cost money in most places. They’re not free. Parents send money with their kids or otherwise deposit in their kids’ account so they can pay for lunches every day.
Some parents can’t afford regular lunches. We’ve decided that kids going hungry at school is probably not a great policy so most places will allow kids to continue to eat and their account will just go negative. Among poorer students, this simply means their accounts will just build a bunch of debt, which their parents may or may not be held responsible for depending on the situation.
>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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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