Student debt from unpaid meals is soaring after the vast majority of Connecticut schools returned to a paid lunch model at the start of the 2023 to 2024 school year.
A midyear meal debt report, conducted by the School Nutrition Association of Connecticut, revealed a collective debt of $366,403 held by nearly 50 districts in the state that participated in the survey.
The sample, which represents one-fifth of the state’s public school population, included districts with as few as 194 students to upwards of 7,000. The negative balance in each district ranged from $518 to $32,000, with an average debt of $3.85 per student.
Kristina Roberge, SNACT’s president who also works as the food service coordinator for Groton public schools, said her district has amassed $40,000 of debt between two elementary schools and one high school. By the end of the year, Roberge expects that debt to hit $80,000.
“A lot of these are military families who don’t qualify for free or reduced (price meals), and it’s a struggle on them,” Roberge said. “They’re serving our country, and we cannot feed their kids for free.”
In Connecticut, the school meal costs range from an average of $2 for breakfast to $4 for lunch. In recent years, updates to state law have ensured that every child can purchase a meal, regardless of what they might owe.
From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic through June of 2023, excluding a temporary funding lapse during the middle of the 2022 to 2023 school year, Connecticut schools provided free breakfast and lunch to all students.
Last session, the state legislature declined to finance a program that would make universal meals permanent. Instead, Gov. Ned Lamont directed $16 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds to cover the cost of breakfast for all students and offer free lunch to families who qualify for reduced-price meals during the 2023 to 2024 school year.
This fall, schools not covered under the federal Community Eligibility Program, returned to a paid lunch model.
After the switch, food service directors in the state said meal counts are down, stigma surrounding free lunch is up, and student debt is growing.
“Children need to eat. They need a good breakfast. They need a good lunch. They can’t learn without it,” Roberge said. “We obviously will always feed kids, but what scares me is the kids that won’t come up to get fed.”
‘It’s got to come from somewhere’
In some instances, directors said the debt stemmed from confused parents who did not know what was paid and what was not after meal programs changed. Other parents have simply refused to pay, knowing any negative balance will be “erased” at the end of the year.
In many cases, directors said the students with lunch debt come from families that make too much to qualify for free lunch, but too little to make ends meet.
In order to participate in Connecticut’s free lunch program, a family of four must make at or below $55,500 a year. Currently, 225,363 students in the state reach that threshold, according to CSDE data, but free meals advocates say thousands more are struggling.
The 2023 Asset Limited Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) report from the United Way of Connecticut determined that a family of four needs an income of $106,632 to meet the “bare minimum cost of household basics necessary to live and work in the current economy.”
According to the United Way, 28% of households in Connecticut live above the federal poverty line but below the ALICE threshold.
“There’s a lot of families that haven’t even filled out the free-reduced application because they’ve looked at the income guidelines and they know they won’t qualify,” Roberge said.
Food service directors said they feel as though they have been forced to become collections agents, sending letters, emails and phone calls home every week to families with negative balances.
School cafeterias largely operate on self-supporting budgets. Come June, directors said all outstanding debt will ultimately fall on the district’s general fund.
“I am pro-free meals for all, across the board, but this negative balance that we have, it’s got to come from somewhere. It’s got to come from the district,” Roberge said.
Michael Morton, the deputy executive director for communications and operations at the School and State Finance Project, said the burgeoning debt adds another layer of challenge to districts already facing less-than-ideal financial situations with the expiration of federal COVID-19 aid. Morton said these fiscal woes would grow under budget adjustments proposed by Gov. Ned Lamont.
“When we talk about, in this case, school lunches, if there is no room in district budgets, if the federal relief dollars have already been spent by that district or allocated to other purposes, then really you’re going to have districts in between a rock and a hard place,” Morton said.
Morton said the School and State Finance Project has seen a significant number of districts request more from municipalities to close gaps in funding, a cost that he said ultimately falls on taxpayers. He added that he is “not surprised at all” that schools are facing significant lunch debt.
“Overall, what we’re seeing with district budgets is significant shortfalls. We’re seeing challenges to maintain the level of service and programs that they’ve been offering,” Morton said. “The needs of students are still there. They don’t expire magically when the money goes away.”
Covering the cost
A number of districts have turned to community fundraisers to pay off debts in the past. Some food service directors said that at the end of the year, they give families with a positive account balance the option to donate the remainder of their funds to a family in need.
Facing a $20,000 deficit in his district, Shelton Superintendent Ken Saranich requested at a Jan. 24 meeting that the Board of Education hire a part-time collections agent to solicit funds from families with outstanding balances of $100 or more.
Saranich also asked the board to implement a districtwide policy that would suspend all students with debt at or above $100 from participating in paid extracurricular activities, including field trips, until their negative balance is paid. According to the meeting minutes, Saranich said this system is already in place at Shelton High School.
A 2021 law ended the practice of “lunch shaming” in Connecticut. Per state statute, schools cannot take any action “publicly identifying or shaming a child for any such unpaid meal charges, including, but not limited to, delaying or refusing to serve a meal to such child, designating a specific meal option for such child (such as offering a cheese sandwich as an ’emergency meal’), or otherwise taking any disciplinary action against such child.”
Saranich did not respond to requests for comment from the Courant.
After hearing about the situation in Shelton, Black Lives Matter 860 announced plans to launch a fundraiser to pay off lunch debt for any child who owed more than $100 prior to Feb. 1.
After evaluating the cost, Ivelisse Correa of BLM 860 said the organization is pausing efforts until they can find a fiscal sponsor.
“I wanted to cry when I saw the numbers,” Correa said. “We are looking for groups in the area to help because we can’t do this by ourselves at all.”
Correa explained that when they learned Shelton’s debt was $20,000, they came to the realization that “If this is just Shelton and they’re such a small district, what about the rest of the state?”
Correa described the superintendents’ proposal as “truly evil.”
BLM 860 has been a strong advocate for universal free meals in Connecticut, a program that Correa said would bring much-needed financial relief to parents and improve nutritional and behavioral outcomes for students.
During a historic rise in homelessness at a time when so many families are living paycheck to paycheck in the state, Correa said all students should have access to free food at school.
“This is a struggle that we have never seen throughout history. Or at least in modern history,” Correa said. “I don’t think people understand. … This is really heartless. This is clearly a statewide issue. You’re not paying for some rich person’s kid. You’re probably paying for your neighbor’s kid.”
‘This is something the state has to take on’
End Hunger Connecticut!, the organization behind the School Meals for All campaign, is focusing its legislative efforts on extending Connecticut’s current meal program through June of 2025, End Hunger CT! Policy Director Lucy Nolan said.
Given the short session in a non-budget year, Nolan said advocates believed legislators would be more apt to renew the state’s current $16 million program than committing to a $90 million investment to subsidize all meals statewide.
Nearly 50 lawmakers have signed on to sponsor H.B. 5008, a bill that would guarantee no-cost breakfast for all students and free lunch for children who meet the federal requirements for reduced-price meals.
In a promising sign to advocates, Gov. Ned Lamont proposed adding $11.2 million to continue this program in his Fiscal Year 2025 budget adjustments.
Although Lamont’s proposal might appear to leave a $4.8 million gap, Chris Collibee, the director of communications for the Office of Policy and Management, said that while the state initially budgeted $16 million for the 2023 to 2024 school year, the actual cost for the program is $11.2 annually.
Nolan stressed that passing universal free breakfast and lunch is “a goal that has not gone away.”
“Everyone is very committed to that. But we also understood that there are limitations this year,” Nolan said.
Nolan said she believes the cause is amassing the support needed to push the policy across the finish line in 2025.
“This should not be a community-by-community issue,” Nolan said. “This is something the state has to take on.”
