A $2.25 school hot lunch is an affordable expense for many local families. But it becomes an outstanding and escalating debt for dozens of other families who don’t make enough to afford the lunches, but earn too much to be eligible for the federal government’s free lunch assistance program.
When families don’t pay for their students’ lunches, the school district is left with the bill.
That unpaid lunch tab for students, particularly at Horace O’Bryant School, has been concerning school district administrators since the end of last year, when unpaid lunch bills at HOB totaled more than $20,000 and represented the lion’s share of the unpaid balance in the school district.
“Essentially, what we’ve found is that it’s become a sort of culture within two school buildings, where word spreads and the attitude among parents is, ‘You don’t have to pay for lunches. There’s nothing they can do if you don’t pay,’” Schools Superintendent Mark Porter told the school board last August.
At the time, Porter went on to tell the board members it’s not a case of low-income families who can’t afford school lunches not being properly enrolled in the federal government’s free-and reduced-price lunch program.
“What we’re finding instead is that this issue is about families whose incomes do not qualify them for assistance simply refusing to pay for lunches,” Porter said last year.
The start of the new school year brought renewed lunch bill concerns, and HOB School is currently in arrears by about $8,000, Principal Christina McPherson told Keys Weekly.
“At the most recent school board meeting, the administration and school board decided that any student whose family owes more than $50 will only get a cheese sandwich for lunch. And families that owe more than $100 will be taken to court,” McPherson said on Dec. 9.
She also emphatically refuted Porter’s claim of a “culture” that makes non-payment an acceptable practice and said only a handful of the families that owe for lunches can easily afford the bill.
At the request of Keys Weekly, McPherson tallied the number of families who owe for school lunches this year.
“We have 58 families that owe $50 or more and 23 that owe more than $100 to make up our $8,000 debt,” the principal said, adding that “maybe five or 10 of those families can actually afford to pay, and by all means, they should be held accountable. But these other families, I know they can’t afford their bill.”
McPherson said many parents of unpaid students don’t speak English and often hesitate to apply for assistance due to immigration concerns.
“And most of the other families are single-parent households,” she said. “There are some really sad and tragic stories with some of these families. I know they’re not just refusing to pay.”
And then someone wanted to help.
“Then I got a call from a former Key West High School student, who said he and his wife wanted to pay off the lunch debt for HOB,” McPherson said.
When Cayman Elston heard the total amount, he instead decided to help by establishing a Go Fund Me titled, “Let’s pay the student lunch debt for HOB School.”
As of Dec. 11, the page had raised $1,875 with a goal of $7,500 and a stated mission of paying off the neediest students’ debts first, Elston wrote.
But Porter was less enthusiastic than McPherson when school board member Sue Woltanski alerted Porter to the Go Fund Me page.
“While I am appreciative of the community’s support, I remain concerned that such well-intended efforts will endorse ‘bad behaviors’ on the part of some students/families,” Porter said. “Board-approved efforts to address the more significant unpaid balances are in the notification stage, with implementation intended to take place after the first of the year as we begin the second semester.”
In the meantime, Elston’s fundraising efforts continue, as Florida Keys schools join other school districts throughout the nation that are facing unpaid lunch bills that range from $2,500 to $850,000, according to CNN reports.
