A growing number of school districts are complaining that families who are supposed to pay for school lunches are not paying their bills and are creating quite a backlog of monies owed. There are full pay, reduced rate, and free lunches for those who can provide the documentation that they are too poor to pay.
My thoughts are who should pay? Should we be going by the families income? That’s how it’s done now, however I’d like to point out that families with little or no income are already getting free food. I know several who get food vouchers from the state and they are able to shop at the more expensive food stores and not have to worry about coupons or having to buy only what’s on sale. I have to shop at cheaper grocers and I only buy what’s on sale and very often the food is near expiration or of poor quality. A girl I know who is a single mom getting no help from the deadbeat dad, just went on the dole and she eats angus steaks and doesn’t even look at price while I can only afford reduced and sales items.
Should the schools pay for it if they are closed campus which most are these days? When I was young we could go home for lunch if we didn’t live too far, or if we did live far we could go to lunch anywhere we wanted.
Bottom line is that the kids have to be fed and not all parents make sure that this happens. The schools usually won’t let a child go hungry, payment or not. It helps the schools bottom line, because if the child is hungry they won’t do as well with their learning and schoolwork and the school would probably loose some funding with too many kids with very low grades.