Why unpaid US school lunch debt can prompt a call to child welfare services

Earlier this year, administrators at South Mebane elementary in North Carolina sparked outrage – and a rushed community fundraising effort – after they issued a terse warning to parents in a school newsletter: students with lunch debt would not be allowed to attend an upcoming dance.

Community members donated more than $4,000 in three days to ensure no students were excluded. But while the newsletter raised worries that students in the Alamance-Burlington school system might be singled out for money problems, the district’s meal policy contains a far more serious warning to families: repeated failure to pay for school meals can result in a referral to child welfare services for neglect.

A Guardian investigation shows that hundreds of thousands of students across the country attend school districts with policies that say parents whose children accrue school meal debt or guardians who otherwise fail to provide for their children’s lunch can be reported for neglect to authorities, including child protective agencies with the power to remove minors from their homes and separate families. The Guardian found dozens of individual districts, across 10 states, with policies referencing a referral to social services or law enforcement in their meal debt regulations.

Those policies take different forms. In Louisiana – the only state to mandate that schools notify social services over failure to pay for school meals – elementary schools are required by law to report families after denying a child three meals in a single school year. Nearly half of school districts in North Carolina, where students racked up $3m in meal debt during the 2022-2023 school year, include language about contacting social services in their meal charge policies, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For several years, district policy empowered Sayreville public schools in New Jersey to call the police to perform a welfare check when a student accrued $90 of debt; that regulation was later dropped.

Many of the two dozen districts contacted for this story did not respond to requests for comment. Several others, including the Alamance-Burlington district, said they do not refer families to social services over unpaid meal charges, even if such a consequence is included in written policies. It’s also up to child welfare agencies to determine if an abuse or neglect referral merits investigation.

The Guardian has not found a single case of a family being reported to CPS for school meal debt, but records of child welfare cases are generally not public. Many parents don’t know exactly why they wind up in front of authorities. Even school officials can be in the dark. Richard Labbe, superintendent of Sayreville public schools in New Jersey, for example, said he presumes schools in his district have reported families to the state department of child protection and permanency as a result of school investigations stemming from unpaid meal debt. But his office does not track such data.

Pay up, parents

Unpaid school meal charges are considered a debt to the federal government, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association. Last year, some US senators introduced an ultimately unsuccessful bill that proposed wiping out school lunch debt. But until that happens or unless districts can use local funding or charitable donations to cover the debt, federal policy says that schools must make an effort to collect it. It is one of the worst parts of a school nutrition director’s job, Pratt-Heavner said.

In 2016, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) started requiring that districts create a written policy clearly explaining all the possible consequences of not paying for meals. District policies referencing child welfare or protective services often came as a response to that memo. In North Carolina, many districts pull language directly from a meal charge policy created by the North Carolina School Boards Association (NCSBA) in the same year. That policy states that principals may refer families to social services if the failure to provide meals or lunch money appears to indicate neglect.

The policy wasn’t written with the intent that a family be referred to social services simply because they owe the school money, said Kathy Boyd, a senior staff attorney at the NCSBA. She added that she would be horrified if anyone interpreted the policy that way.

Rather, it was meant to remind principals that they have a bigger responsibility than just collecting meal debt. It also serves as a fair warning to parents.

“A parent needs to be aware that if you’re neglecting your child, we have an obligation,” Boyd said. “We’re mandatory reporters. [Failure to provide school meals] could be a sign of neglect. We may have to report you. It’s not intended to be a threat in any way, but it is a potential outcome if you are refusing to provide food or money for your child.”

Trish Gladish, food services director at Barr-Reeve Community schools in Indiana, said her district created an unpaid meal charges policy that includes language about social services a few years ago, after a family racked up more than $1,000 in unpaid meal charges and told her they had no intention of paying. That one family’s debt would have paid for about a week’s worth of groceries for the small district’s meal program.

Gladish says the district has not called social services over unpaid meal debt, and her office works with families who are legitimately struggling to pay their bill. The district’s total meal debt hasn’t risen above $200 since implementing the policy.

A spokesperson for New Orleans public schools, which manages the school meal program at nearly a dozen charter schools in the city, said the district serves meals to all students regardless of whether their parents owe money.

But the meal charge policy posted on the district’s website says that students not enrolled in the free and reduced-priced meal program can charge up to $10 before getting served an alternate meal of cheese sandwiches. If parents haven’t paid the debt or provided lunch within five working days, school principals will “view the non-compliance as parental neglect” and notify a counselor or child welfare supervisor for appropriate action.

In 2019, three districts in Louisiana reported denying meals to students. Last school year, only one did. Ascension Parish public schools denied 207 meals to students as young as four, according to data provided by the Louisiana department of education. But an Ascension spokesperson, Jackie Tisdale, said it offered children alternate meals and that the district had not referred any families to social services.

Fearful families

Even if schools don’t file neglect reports over unpaid meal debt, having that as a written policy can cause real harm, said Keyna Franklin of Rise, a New York-based advocacy group for parents affected by the child welfare system.

“It’s stressful to parents and kids,” Franklin said, particularly in communities that are already facing disproportionately high rates of child welfare referrals. “The kids aren’t going to say they’re hungry because they don’t want to get their parents in trouble.”

Schools are a significant source of child welfare referrals, with teachers and school administrators playing a critical role in identifying abused children. But abuse and neglect are rarely clear cut. Administrators often have discretion about what to report but few guidelines about what constitutes mistreatment. An outstanding school meal tab may not be enough to justify a formal complaint in one educator’s assessment and setting, but be sufficient grounds for other people, schools and situations.

Professionals daily make judgments about what crosses the line, said Kelley Fong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services. Child welfare agencies then go out and investigate those cases and in most instances decide there isn’t evidence of maltreatment.

Yet Fong added that the process of being investigated by CPS can have ripple effects on families. When an abuse or neglect report stemmed from school, parents are much more hesitant to engage with school staff in the future. Some of the struggling moms Fong spoke to in her research said they were afraid to tell schools they were experiencing food insecurity, out of concern that it could be considered neglect.

Fong said many educators and mandatory reporters that she talked to viewed CPS as a tool for getting parents to comply with school policies.

“If you think about carrots and sticks, CPS is maybe the primary stick that they really have to get parents to do what they want.”