Lunch money: The costs of ballooning lunch debt in Laconia schools

LACONIA — In the three months since school started, students in the city's district have accumulated $15,400 in school meal debt — and climbing. About 340 students, a fifth of the district, have balances in the negative, though individual debt ranges from cents to hundreds of dollars.

Lunch debt has weighed on the district, and the education system more broadly, since long before the pandemic. By comparison, the district had just over $30,000 in debt when schools closed in March 2020. But that total was accumulated over several years, and this year the balance for all students started at zero.

Complications from the transition out of pandemic relief aid has accelerated the issue — and the causes are more nuanced than simply the ability of families to pay. 

“It can be difficult because the kids aren’t the ones paying the bill,” said Laconia’s Food Service Director Tim Goossens. “But we feed kids.”

Solutions have been elusive for the district despite determined efforts to make contact with families and prevent the issue from accelerating further.

Students have a meal account where their family can load money that is charged when they get a meal from school. Kids from the families with the fewest resources automatically qualify for free lunch because of their eligibility for supplemental nutrition assistance program, or SNAP, benefits. This, Laconia School District Business Administrator Diane Clary said, represents the vast majority of students in Laconia receiving free meals. 

Other families who feel they do not have the financial resources to pay for school lunch can apply to receive free or reduced lunch through the National School Lunch Program. If their application shows they meet the income requirements, the school gets extra funding to cover their meal costs in part or in full.

For the past two school years, the federal government funded free school lunch for all students through its universal lunch program. That expired this year, and for the first time since the start of the pandemic, students and their families were responsible for getting money into meal accounts to pay for school lunch. Though meals were free, applications for the free and reduced program continued through the pandemic.

This year, there are two trends behind the ballooning debt. First, despite no meaningful change in the actual need for the program, the district has seen a drastic drop in the number of applications for free and reduced lunch.

“Last year, we had 114 students found eligible for free and reduced lunch who were not directly certified” through SNAP, Goossens said. “This year we had four applications submitted, and only two of those were actually eligible for the program.” Because they haven’t applied, many families who’ve had school meals subsidized since before the pandemic could now be on the hook for lunch charges that they can’t or aren’t paying.

Additionally, many families, whether they could be eligible for reduced lunch or not, simply haven’t put any money in their students’ meal accounts all year. No matter how much a student accrues, the district doesn’t restrict or change their access to meals. 

As a result, “we’re accumulating between $300 and $320 per day in debt,” Goossens said. “It adds up quickly.”

Goossens described a disconnect between the felt and actual consequences when families allow students to rack up lunch debt. 

For each individual family, Goossens said, “it can feel like students are still getting a free lunch without consequences.” 

In reality, the burden of unpaid balances falls on far more shoulders than just the students whose accounts run into the red.

Lunch charges help the district cover the food and labor costs of providing school meals. When students don’t pay for lunch or apply for aid, the district has to eat those costs. 

“At the end of the year, the general fund compensates the debt,” Clary said. “So that’s taking money away from other education needs.” 

Furthermore, when students who need it don’t apply for free or reduced lunch, it paints an inaccurate picture of the school’s demography and can result in fewer resources being allocated to the district.

The percentage of the school population receiving free or reduced lunch, known as the school’s eligibility rate, serves as a benchmark for other federal programs and funding. Schools that demonstrate more need, who will receive more funding, are those that have higher eligibility, and 50% is often a key threshold.

With the lack of applications submitted this year, several Laconia schools’ eligibility rates have fallen about 5% — which, according to Clary, is more attributable to a decrease in applications than a decrease in need. 

Laconia schools’ eligibility hovers right around that 50% mark, so when people neglect to apply for assistance and the rate drops, it can have a meaningful impact on how much federal aid the district receives.

“It has a trickle-down effect,” Clary said, “because free and reduced eligibility is a denominator for so many things.”

Clary noted, for example, that Laconia schools provide breakfast, lunch, after-school snack and after-school supper; snack and supper used to be free for students because they were covered by federal money. Now, because Laconia High School’s and Pleasant Street School’s eligibility rates have declined in recent years, they are no longer allocating the money to cover those meals, and the district must use other grant money to ensure they are still free for students. 

While each state, and each district, have different rules and procedures around payment for lunch and how debt is handled, a surge of ballooning student meal debt this year is hitting districts across the country.

Locally, while other districts have seen slight increases in debt, the issue is dogging Laconia in particular.  

Gilford School District, whose school board voted to opt out of free meals for the 2021-22 school year, “also struggled to get free and reduced applications filled out, causing some debts to incur,” according to Business Administrator Amie Leigh in written communication with The Daily Sun. But this was not a drastic hit: “We are not much higher in debt totals for lunch accounts than we usually are,” she said.

Franklin’s current lunch debt is about $800 higher now than it was in March 2020, further in the school year. Meal debt is something that Franklin School District has always had to be attentive to, said Business Administrator Jefferson Braman, and the increase is not drastically out of the ordinary for the district. Franklin’s eligibility for free and reduced lunch has held relatively stable from where it was before the pandemic.

Braman said the district has had success through contacting families about their debt and working with parents to get free and reduced applications submitted.

Laconia district staff throughout the fall have attempted to contact families with debt and families who may be eligible for free or reduced lunch. Families are notified if a child has a low balance, again when their balance becomes negative, and continuously and more directly as the debt grows. Once contact is made, they can either remind families of the importance of paying the debt or, if applicable, help them fill out an application. But there hasn’t been much response from families. 

“There’s a sense of apathy to it,” Goossens said. 

“People largely just aren’t responsive,” Clary continued. “Of the families reached out to by the district about their debt, maybe 10% respond or answer the phone. Most of those people don’t end up being eligible, if they do end up applying.” Even if families with debt successfully apply for free or reduced meals mid-year, the debt accrued by that student isn’t retroactively covered. 

The district has also sent out letters and other notifications to families about the impact of unpaid debt and a lack of applications, Goossens said. While there have been responses from some parents, such as a flood of free and reduced applications, they were largely from families who do not have debt and are not eligible for the program.

The two-year break of the pandemic could mean that some families are out of practice with the meal system or, if their kids are young, that they have never encountered it before. But given their efforts to work with families that have debt, for the problem to continue to accelerate is frustrating for district staff. 

“Other than what we’ve tried, there’s no good answer,” Clary said.