On Data Collection, Or, Help Us Learn More About "Alternate Lunch"

Regular readers will know that this is the third in a series of stories that have addressed the practice of serving “alternate lunches” to students whose parents owe the school for lunch money.

For those who are seeing this series for the first time, a quick recap:

From On Teaching Debt Collection To Kids, Or, Here’s The Outrage Of The Week:

“...One form of “lost dollars” has historically been the money owed by parents for school lunches that are essentially provided “on credit”. Basically what happens is a kid might forget his lunch money that day...and the school covers the money until they can collect the debt...

...With that in mind, it’s no surprise that schools would look for ever-more-creative ways to collect debts; but even considering all that I found myself shocked by this LA Times article entitled: “On school menus: cheese sandwiches, parental debt”...

...If a parent owes the district more than $5 in meal money...the district will basically...repossess lunch...

...Picture two second-graders in the cafeteria line. As they get to the yummy pizza, the first little girl gets her slice of pepperoni. But not the second girl.

She gets a cheese sandwich.

That’s right-this school district, and numerous others nationwide, have special school lunch “options” for those students who have parents that owe money-and in Calloway County, Kentucky, it only takes $3.00”

To make things worse, the story discusses the practice of finding nutritious, but unappetizing, foods that can be offered to the kids to shame them into getting the money from their parents.

Additionally, the story pointed to several independent sources that suggest using food as a tool for debt collection in the lunchroom is counteracting the lessons taught right down the hall in the classrooms by the USDA’s “Team Nutrition” program-a $500 million dollar annual investment in grants and other aid used by virtually all school districts to teach our kids healthier eating habits.

Of course, there’s a lot more than $500 million at stake-heart attack, stroke, and diabetes are all frequently traced to unhealthy diet, and the cost of those disorders runs into the tens, and perhaps hundreds, of billions of dollars annually.

Part two of the story (On Facts And Figures, Or, Over 187 Billion Served) is a dollars and cents, facts and figures kind of story-where the funding for school meals (more or less $37 billion) comes from, and where it goes, how many kids are served (about 9 million daily), and lots more detailed number crunching.

Did you know the School Lunch Program was not started out of an interest in serving America’s poor? Did you know it was originally conceived because of National Security concerns? That was also some of the ground we covered in part two; as well as the often unrecognized relationship between the Program and the Black Panthers.

We also talked about our desire to create a survey that you, the reader, might administer to your local school districts so that a national perspective might be obtained.

Finally, it was announced that the parents that are at the heart of all of this have contacted me, that they have created an email address (ForAllTheKids@gmail.com); and that they would enjoy your messages of support.

Having thus dealt with the old business; let us now move on to new business.

First, “informed sources” tell me that Fabian Nuñez, the Speaker of the California State Assembly, has become aware of this issue and may be investigating the problem in the near future. (To get an idea about where the Speaker stands on these sorts of issues, check out the video of the Speaker and Michael Moore discussing “Sicko” at its US premiere.)

To help get the ball rolling, I’d like to ask the community to take a second and encourage the Speaker with a quick email (use the “Contact the Speaker” link at the very bottom right corner or bottom center of the page) complimenting him on this interest and maybe even pointing out that he’s a generally nice guy-which, from a distance, he seems to be. (For purposes of disclosure, Nuñez is associated with the Hilary Clinton campaign.)

Next, we have a survey...in fact, we have two.
More about that in a minute.

But before we put up the surveys, I want to talk about the options for returning the results.

The survey will be on this page-so you can copy and paste the version you want to use; and then either print the questions or copy them to a digital device, like a phone, BlackBerry or PDA.

If you are text-savvy, the results won’t need to be typed-but for the rest of us, we have two ways to avoid the typing process after the survey is completed.

One is to fax the results to the parents at (206) 312-1612.

The other option is a little different, and I’ll take a second to walk through what you do.

There is a website in India called NowPos (NowPossible...) that allows you to create voice emails using a microphone attached to your computer; and this will allow you to “dictate” the results, and then send that email to the ForAllTheKids@gmail.com address. You’ll have to create an account to do this, but there is no charge for the service.

And finally, we discuss the surveys.

Basically what we are trying to do is get the “nuts and bolts” of how local districts treat the “alternate lunch” question and information about Federal meal reimbursement. There are also a series of questions that focus on whether Districts employ an outside contractor to manage their foodservice programs.

There are two versions of the survey, a 52 question version, and a 26 question version. It is estimated that the longer version will take about 30 to 45 minutes to complete, but the shorter version will provide the most basic information if a respondent is reluctant to offer that much time.

We encourage you to direct the survey to a School District’s food service director-alternatively, an assistant superintendent or other similar manager should be able to answer many of these questions. To quote from the survey itself:

“To begin, call your school district child nutrition service office or food service office and ask to speak with someone familiar with the process for handling past due payments on student meal accounts.”

The parents would also like to be informed if a District refuses to complete the survey. In that event, please send an email to the ForAllTheKids@gmail.com address with the details.

With all that said, here is the long version of the survey:

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ALTERNATE MEAL SURVEY (LONG VERSION)

We prefer this “Long” survey, as the extra questions and answers will help us to better understand what is happening in school districts around the country.

This is a series of questions designed to evaluate the nature of alternate meal service (meals served to students who have parents with negative meal payment accounts) in elementary school districts across the country. The survey should take about 30 to 45 minutes to complete. The questions will relate to the financial and operational aspects of your school’s food service operations, and we greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us gather the most complete information possible.

At the end of the survey we’ll ask for your name and contact information; but we won’t use your name without asking your permission first.

To begin, call your school district child nutrition service office or food service office and ask to speak with someone familiar with the process for handling past due payments on student meal accounts.

School District:_____________________________________________

City and State:_____________________________________________

1) Do you allow students to charge cafeteria meals to an account?

___Yes

___No – We do not allow meals to be charged to an account

2) Do you serve an alternate meal for

___Breakfast

___Lunch

___No alternate meal served






3) What do you charge for:

Alternate Meals Reduced Price meals Full Pay Meals

Breakfast $___________ $______________ $_____________

Lunch $___________ $______________ $______________

4) Please describe the alternate meals your school district serves.




5) Do you have more than one alternate meal?

___Yes ______ If yes, how many?

___No

___Don’t know

6) Do you use donated government commodities (food items) in your alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

7) Can any student purchase the alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

8) Is the alternate meal a regular menu item?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

9) Is the alternate meal policy different for younger students (Kindergarten, first grade) or Special Education students?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

10) Do alternate meal students make their own menu choices, or are the students served without choices?

___Students make their own choices

___Students do not choose

___Don’t know

11) Do non-alternate meal students make their own menu choices, or are those students served without choices?

___Students make their own choices

___Students do not choose

___Don’t know

12) How many choices are there for regular meal entrees?

_______Breakfast

_______Lunch

_______Don’t know

13) Please complete this sentence: “We start serving alternate meals after the student’s negative balance reaches

$__________.”

14) How many students are receiving the alternate meal?

________Breakfast ___Don’t know

________Lunch ___Don’t know

15) How much do you charge for the alternate meal?

$________Breakfast

$________Lunch

_________Don’t know

16) How do you identify the students who will receive the alternate meal? (Please check all that apply)

___Keypad entry

___Different lunch card for alternate meal students

___Check marks, stickers, or other alterations to lunch cards

___At the cash register or at the front of the line

___Don’t know

___Other (please describe below)



17) Does the regular meal, if served by mistake, get physically taken from the child if they should have been served the alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

18) If a regular meal is taken from a child, is it disposed of in the child’s presence?

___Yes

___No

___Meals are not taken from child

___Don’t know

19) What happens when a student, with a negative balance, who would normally get the alternate meal, brings cash to pay for one meal?

___The child can purchase a regular meal with a cash payment.

___The cash is applied to balance owed and the child is served an alternate meal at NO CHARGE.

___The cash is applied to balance owed and the child is served an alternate meal and charged for the alternate meal.

20) Do you charge Reduced Price students for their regular meals and/or alternate meals?
Regular Meals Alternate Meals

___Yes ___Yes

___No ___No

___Don’t know ___Don’t know

21) Are students with a negative balance given written notice before an alternate meal is served?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

22) If you give students written notice, how is that notice provided?(Please check all that apply)

___Email

___Letter (Standard mail, Certified mail, or Registered mail)

___Note sent home with child

___Don’t know

___Other (Please describe):






23) Sometimes Free meal students have a negative balance that was incurred before the Free meal application was approved. Do free meal students continue to get an alternate meal because of the old outstanding debt?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know


24) If a Free meal student is receiving the alternate meal, do they receive the meal until the negative balance is paid?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

25) Is there a time limit to how long a student can receive the alternate meal?

___Yes (If yes, what is the limit?____________________)

___No

___Don’t know

26) If there is a limit, what happens when the limit is reached?



27) Do you offer a payment plan to families with negative balances; and if yes, does the child get a regular meal once the family is on a payment plan?

___No payment plan offered

___Payment plan offered, child remains on alternate meal

___Payment plan offered, child returns to regular meal choices

___Don’t know

28) Is the alternate meal a reimbursable meal under the National School Lunch Program? If yes, how much money do you receive from your State and the Federal government for each reimbursable meal?
Federal reimbursement State reimbursement

Full Pay $______________ $______________

Reduced Pay $______________ $______________

Free Lunch $______________ $______________

___Alternate meal not reimbursable

29) Do you get reimbursed by your State and the Federal Government, if you DO NOT CHARGE the student’s account for the alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

30) If you serve an alternate meal, is the meal a nutritionally complete meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

31) When all students have received their lunch, are leftover hot food items or other non-spoiled food items thrown away?

___Yes

___Don’t know

___No
(If the answer is no, please describe how the food is re-used below)




32) At what dollar amount do you notify parents that their account balance is getting low?

$______________

___Parents not notified.

33) How do you notify parents of a negative balance?
(Please check all that apply)

___ Advance written notice

___Written notice after student reaches negative balance

___Letter (Standard mail, Certified mail, or Registered mail)

___ By telephone

___Don’t know

___Other (please describe):



34) Please describe how you reach out to families who are potentially eligible for Reduced Price or Free meals.





35) Please describe how you reach out and communicate with families who are NOT PAYING their cafeteria balances.





36) Which, if any, of these methods have you used to collect debt owed for meals? (Please check all that apply)

___ Demand Letters

___ Credit Bureau reporting

___ Collection Agencies

___ Small Claims Court

___ None of these methods

___ Don’t know

___ Other (please describe):




37) If you have an alternate meal, were any of these legal measures attempted to hold parents accountable before the alternate meal program began?

___Yes

___No

___No alternate meal program


38) What is the current total debt for meals owed in your school district?

$_____________________


39) What happens with the debt owed when the student transfers out of your school district (due to promotion/graduation or moving away)?






40) What was last year’s write off for debt by your school district for unpaid meals?

$______________________

41) Do you have a school board policy for collecting unpaid debt?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

42) Do you do any of the following to try and get parents to pay the past due balance? (Please check all that apply)

___ Withhold report cards

___Withhold transcripts

___Not allow children to participate in graduation ceremonies

___Not allow children to participate in 6th grade camp

___Don’t know

___Other (please describe below):




43) If parents pre-pay in advance for their child’s meals, do you give them a discount (Dollar amount Discount, Percentage Discount, Free Meals)?


Dollar amount Discount Percentage Discount Free Meals

Full Pay $______________ ______________ _________

Reduced Pay $______________ ______________ _________

___No Discount Given

44) At the end of the school year, some parents who pre-pay for meals have a positive balance. What happens to that money? What happens if their child is graduating or leaving the district and the money is not requested?






45) Does your District have a written alternate meal policy?

___Yes (If yes, is it a School Board policy? _____ Yes ______ No)

___No

___Don’t know

46) Does your District have written or verbal directives for staff on how and when to serve the alternate meal?

___Written Directives

___Verbal Directives

___No Directives

___Don’t know

47) Does your District employ a food services consulting or management company?

___Yes (If yes, what is the Company’s name/s_________________________)

___No

___Don’t know

48) If you employ a food services consulting or management company, how many consultants do you have and how much are they paid?

_______________ Number of consultants

$______________________ Total paid per year for all consultants

___None employed

49) If you employ a food services consulting or management company, do they receive additional fees/payment for each meal served?

___Yes (If yes-total cost per meal for all extra fees $_________)

___No

___Don’t know

50) Please describe these aspects of your school district:

Grade levels taught: _____________________

Number of schools: _____________________

Number of students: ________________________

Number of School Days per year ______________________

Number of meals served per day______________________


51) Who is the contact person for your district for any follow up questions?
(Please provide Name, Title, Email and Phone Number)









52) For the Person Giving The Survey - What Is your contact information?
(Please provide Name, Title, Email and Phone Number)








Thank you very much for your assistance in conducting this meal survey in your school district.

If you want to share the results of your survey, we would be very interested in receiving the information. You can email us the responses you received or scan and email the results of your survey to:

forallthekids@gmail.com

Fax the survey to us at (206) 312-1612

Please email us if a school district refused to answer the survey questions.

If you have further questions, please contact:

Alice, Bill or Cyndi at (206) 312-1612 (Voice Mail)

Sincerely,

Alice, Bill & Cyndi
CARES Parents – Chula Vista, California
Child Advocates Representing Equality for all Students

And now, the shorter version of the survey:

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ALTERNATE MEAL SURVEY (SHORT VERSION)

This is the “Short” version of the survey. If you want to take additional time (15 minutes) to get more detailed responses from your school district, please use the “Long Version” of our survey.

This is a series of questions designed to evaluate the nature of alternate meal service (meals served to students who have parents with negative meal payment accounts) in ELEMENTARY school districts across the country. The survey should take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

The questions will relate to the financial and operational aspects of your school’s food service operations, and we greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us gather the most complete information possible.

At the end of the survey we’ll ask for your name and contact information; but we won’t use your name without asking your permission first.

To begin, call your school district child nutrition service office or food service office and ask to speak with someone familiar with the process for handling past due payments on student meal accounts.


School District:_____________________________________________

City and State:_____________________________________________


1) Do you serve an alternate meal for

___Breakfast

___Lunch

___No alternate meal served

2) Please complete this sentence: “We start serving alternate meals after the student’s negative balance reaches

$__________.”




3) What do you charge for:

Alternate Meals Reduced Price Meals Full Pay Meals

Breakfast $___________ $______________ $______________

Lunch $___________ $______________ $______________

4) Please describe the alternate meals your school district serves.





6) Do you have more than one alternate meal?

___Yes ______ (If yes, how many?)

___No

___Don’t know

6) Can any student purchase the alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

7) Is the alternate meal a regular menu item?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

8) How many students are receiving the alternate meal?

________Breakfast ___Don’t know

________Lunch ___Don’t know



9) How do you identify the students who will receive the alternate meal?
(Please check all that apply)

___Keypad entry

___Different lunch card for alternate meal students

___Check marks, stickers, or other alterations to lunch cards

___At the cash register or at the front of the line

___Don’t know

___Other (please describe below)

10) Does the regular meal, if served by mistake, get physically taken from the child if they should have been served the alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

11) If a regular meal is taken from a child, is it disposed of in the child’s presence?

___Yes

___No

___Meals are not taken from child

___Don’t know

12) What happens when a student, with a negative balance, who would normally get the alternate meal, brings cash to pay for one meal?

___The child can purchase a regular meal with a cash payment.

___The cash is applied to balance owed and the child is served an alternate meal at NO CHARGE.
___The cash is applied to balance owed and the child is served an alternate meal and charged for the alternate meal.

13) Is the alternate meal a reimbursable meal under the National School Lunch Program? If yes, how much money do you receive from your State and the Federal government for each reimbursable meal?
Federal reimbursement State reimbursement

Full Pay $______________ $______________

Reduced Pay $______________ $______________

Free Lunch $______________ $______________

___Alternate meal not reimbursable

14) Do you get reimbursed by your State and the Federal Government, if you DO NOT CHARGE the student’s account for the alternate meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

15) If you serve an alternate meal, is the meal a nutritionally complete meal?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know

16) When all students have received their lunch, are leftover hot food items or other non-spoiled food items thrown away?

___Yes

___Don’t know

___No (If the answer is no, please describe how the food is re-used below)







17) Does your District employ a food services consulting or management company? If yes, who?

___Yes (If yes, what is the Company’s name_________________________)

___No

___Don’t know

18) If you employ a food services consulting or management company, how many consultants do you have and how much are they paid?

_______________ Number of consultants

$______________________ Total paid per year for all consultants

___None employed


19) What is the current total debt for meals owed in your school district?

$_____________________


20) What happens with the debt owed when the student transfers out of your school district (due to promotion/graduation or moving away)?





21) What was last year’s write off for debt by your school district for unpaid meals?

$______________________

22) Does your District have a written alternate meal policy?

___Yes (If yes, is it a School Board policy? _____ Yes ______ No)

___No

___Don’t know



23) Do you have a School Board policy for collecting unpaid debt?

___Yes

___No

___Don’t know


24) Please describe these aspects of your School District:

Grade levels taught: _____________________

Number of schools: _____________________

Number of students: ________________________

Number of School Days per year: ______________________

Number of meals served per day: ______________________

25) Who is the contact person for your district for any follow up questions?
(Please provide Name, Title, Email and Phone Number)



26) About the person answering the survey - what Is your contact information?
(Please provide Name, Title, Email and Phone Number)





Thank you very much for your assistance in conducting this meal survey in your school district.

If you want to share the results of your survey, we would be very interested in receiving the information. You can email us the responses you received or scan and email the results of your survey to:

forallthekids@gmail.com

Fax the survey to us at (206) 312-1612

Please email us if a school district refused to answer the survey questions.


If you have further questions, please contact:

Alice, Bill or Cyndi at (206) 312-1612 (Voice Mail)

Sincerely,

Alice, Bill & Cyndi
CARES Parents – Chula Vista, California
Child Advocates Representing Equality for all Students


So that's where we are for today-we have news about Speaker Nuñez' interest (and please do send him an encouraging email), we have several options for retuning the survey results, we know to whom we should direct the surveys, and of course, we have the surveys themselves.

So if you feel that punishing children with a "government cheese sandwich" because their parents owe money is a bad idea, and you’d like to help a group of parents who want to stop the practice nationwide; here’s an opportunity to get the ball rolling, and if you could help, they (and I) would be most appreciative.

On Facts And Figures, Or, Over 187 Billion Served

A story has recently made itself known in this space that has become more than a one-day event, and as a result we will be doing some follow-ups.

The complexity of the story requires that we discuss the nuts and bolts of the larger environment within which the story is contained, and we will do that today.

The story: the substitution of an “alternate meal” to force payment from parents of school kids who owe the school for unpaid meals.

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s perhaps because you saw my earlier story describing the practice, or, for that matter, onecrankydem’s.

Since then, there have been new developments.

To begin, the parents who started all of this in the first place have contacted me with additional information. For a variety of reasons (including my desire to offer the Chula Vista Elementary School District a chance to respond) we won’t be discussing that today, however. I’m also trying to get more information by contacting experts in the child nutrition, education, and mental health communities (yes, actual reporting!), and through a search of the available literature.

The parents have also begun the process of creating a survey that we will use to develop a larger data collection program to really understand how the “alternate lunch” programs work nationwide; and I’ll be asking for your help with this effort soon. So stay tuned.

With that addressed, let’s move forward.

In order to properly build “the rest of the story” we need to create a foundation upon which our project may be built, and that will be the focus of today’s conversation.

“It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the States, through grants-in-aid and other means, in providing an adequate supply of foods and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, and expansion of nonprofit school-lunch programs.”

--National School Lunch Act of 1946, Section 2 (emphasis added)

School lunches as national security?
What’s that all about?

It’s about the roughly 10% of World War II Selective Service registrants who were rejected for service because of the apparent effects of malnutrition or underfeeding; this according to Major General Lewis B. Hershey in his testimony to Congress in the run-up to the passage of the Act.

How much of an impact does the National School Lunch Program have? In the 2004-2005 school year almost 95% of schools (98,000 plus) participated in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which means 29.1 million kids had access to meals served under the auspices of the program every school day. The USDA reports that over 187 billion lunches have been served since 1946.

Cash expenditures (not counting commodity donations) for the NSLP were $7 billion in fiscal year 2005.

There’s also a School Breakfast Program, and about ¾ of the schools that participate in the NSLP also are involved in the Breakfast program.
More about this later.

From the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s “National School Lunch Program Fact Sheet”:

“How does the National School Lunch Program work?
Generally, public or nonprofit private schools of high school grade or under and public or nonprofit private residential child care institutions may participate in the school lunch program. School districts and independent schools that choose to take part in the lunch program get cash subsidies and donated commodities from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for each meal they serve. In return, they must serve lunches that meet Federal requirements, and they must offer free or reduced price lunches to eligible children. School food authorities can also be reimbursed for snacks served to children through age 18 in afterschool educational or enrichment programs.”

Cash subsidies, you say?
Tell us more...

I will, but as so often happens, I’ll tell the story backwards.
Why?
Because in order to understand cash subsidies, you need to know about the different types of lunches.

So here’s how it works. All kids are permitted to purchase meals under the two programs (breakfast and lunch), but...

...If you are a family of four, earning less than 130% of the poverty level ($21,580), your kids can have Free meals.

...If your family receives Food Stamps, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), or participates in the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), your kids also receive Free meals.

...If your family of four earns less that 185% of the poverty level ($30,710) your kids can purchase the Reduced Price meal.

All students with family incomes above the 185% level can purchase the Paid meal.

For every Free lunch served the USDA pays the District a subsidy of $2.40.
The subsidy is $2.00 for each Reduced Price lunch; Paid lunches garner an “administrative subsidy” of $.23 each.

Of the 29.5 million students participating in the NSLP, 17.5 million were receiving Free or Reduced Price lunches.

The National PTA estimates that some of these kids get half their daily nutrition at school.

The Districts are not limited in the amount they can charge for Paid lunches (the average nationwide is $1.80 for the '06-'07 school year); but they are limited to charging no more than $.40 for the Reduced Price lunch. Districts, obviously, cannot charge for the Free lunch.

“Snacks” are also subsidized under the Act; and in 2004 it was $.61, $.30, and $.05 for each of the three categories.

Additionally, the Districts receive “USDA commodity foods” worth $.1675 per meal-and possibly even “bonus” commodities in some circumstances (see "Government Cheese" for more details).

Additional subsidies exist, but we’re not bureaucrats, so we’ll move on.

How many people know that the School Breakfast Program and the Black Panther Party are linked in history?

The Federal Breakfast Program was initiated as a pilot project in 1966, but was not established nationwide until 1975.

In the meantime the Black Panthers had been operating their own program (feeding as many as 10,000 every morning in Oakland alone); and it has been suggested that the Panther’s program shamed the Federal Government into making their Breakfast program permanent. (Are you a history buff? Here’s Huey Newton writing about the program in 1969.)

The Breakfast Program today has grown into about half the size of the Lunch Program (82,000 schools, 9.6 million students served, $3 billion in budget).

Reimbursement rates are $1.31, $1.01, and $.24 for the three categories of meals.

There is a second means of operating a school lunch program-the Provision 2 process. This is a method of funding that places all meals in one reimbursement category-and provides all meals for all students at no charge.

The reimbursement rate is designed to be lower than if the District collected cash for meals; but the administrative savings created by not handling cash or verifying family income eligibility every year can offset the rate difference-making this an excellent choice for many districts. (Districts must verify income eligibility once every four years.)

Nutrition is a component of the Programs we have not addressed. The Guidelines for the Programs can be seen here.

That’s a lot for one night, so I’ll leave with a final note:

The parents that are trying to get this practice stopped nationwide have established an email address for those of you who would like to touch base-and they’d love to hear from you.

Drop them a line at ForAllTheKids@gmail.com.
They will appreciate it.

Next time: are these programs effective-and lots more.
Stay tuned.

On Teaching Debt Collection To Kids, Or, Here’s The Outrage Of The Week

There have been efforts in the past to teach “life skills” to students in the public schools, and of course among those skills is the lesson of financial responsibility.

I can imagine that these classes, especially for a student forced to take them first thing in the morning, can be like a daily session of discussing Hawley/Smoot in Ben Stein’s high school economics class. So, so dull that they make you nod your head in….zzzzzzz…

For some school districts, however, a more direct method of financial education has been employed-a method that will be our outrage of the week.

There is no question that the public schools are, financially speaking, stuck between a rock and a hard place; and just like a person living on a fixed income, every lost dollar hurts.

One form of “lost dollars” has historically been the money owed by parents for school lunches that are essentially provided “on credit”. Basically what happens is a kid might forget his lunch money that day, or a parent might have bounced a check for the prepayment of meals for the next month, and the school covers the money until they can collect the debt.

Now, debt collection is a highly regulated business. Federal law says you can’t just go around threatening violence to collect a debt, for example. State laws are even more restrictive: California says you can’t put a fake name on an envelope containing a collection notice or force a debtor to accept collect calls; New York says collectors are prohibited from:

“…communicating with you in a manner which simulates a judicial process or which gives the appearance of being authorized or issued by a governmental entity…”

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that schools would look for ever-more-creative ways to collect debts; but even considering all that I found myself shocked by this LA Times article entitled: “On school menus: cheese sandwiches, parental debt”.

The article describes the Chula Vista (a suburb of San Diego, California) Elementary School District’s “alternate meals” plan, which works something like this:

If a parent owes the district more than $5 in meal money, the district will send a letter home, put a sticker on the child’s hand, and eventually, hire collection agencies.

If all that fails, the district will basically…repossess lunch.
How is that possible, you ask?

Picture two second-graders in the cafeteria line. As they get to the yummy pizza, the first little girl gets her slice of pepperoni. But not the second girl.

She gets a cheese sandwich.

That’s right-this school district, and numerous others nationwide, have special school lunch “options” for those students who have parents that owe money-and in Calloway County, Kentucky, it only takes $3.00.

Life’s tough enough for a kid in school: the pressure to have the right clothes and shoes, the need to fit in, and above all-making sure you avoid being humiliated in front of everyone. Here’s a piece of the LA Times article:

“…The cheese sandwich, they say, has become a badge of shame for the children, who get teased about it by their classmates. One student cried when her macaroni and cheese was replaced with a sandwich. A little girl hid in a restroom to avoid getting one. Many of the sandwiches end up untouched or tossed whole in the garbage. Sometimes kids pound them to pieces…

…A year ago, he said, a cafeteria worker took away Christopher's pizza and forced him in front of his friends to pick up a sandwich instead. A similar incident occurred when Christopher was in the third grade. "The kid was humiliated," said his father, who added that he did not realize he owed money, $7.50...

…One Chula Vista third-grader, whose mother requested that the girl not be identified, said students sometimes ostracize the cheese sandwich kids, switching tables and talking behind their backs. "Some kids say they're not the kind of kids you want to hang out with," she said.”

There are a bunch of other reasons why this is a bad idea, and an explanation of why the tactic is popular below; but first, a required disclosure.

Those of you who are regular readers will recall two stories that I recently did about The Yes Men, and you may already be suspicious that this is the third.

If this were a missile silo, I’d be telling you: “This is not a drill”.
I have no surprise twist coming.
This is a real story.

Now back to the news…

When we left off, we had discussed the stigma that I contend attaches to a kid when they get the “special” sandwich (or the peanut butter and crackers, or whatever) and everybody else gets the pizza; but maybe I’m just overreacting in my assessment.

To be sure I’m not; let’s examine how others might view the practice.

Washington State’s Department of Social and Health Services offers online information for foster parents, including a discussion of disipline and punishment that offers these comments:

…”Punishment is defined as imposing external controls by force on children to change their behavior. It includes…Imposing suffering, for example by withholding food…Personal or emotional attacks like name-calling, ridicule, and insults…Many forms of punishment are against the law.”… (emphasis in original)

…”It's not hard to understand why parents sometimes want to use punishment. There are many reasons, including…

The misbehavior often stops immediately
Children often show remorse during punishment
The parent gets to blow off steam
The parent feels in control
The parent hasn't let the children "get away with it"
The parent was raised that way”

The Centers for Disease Control offers a score card to help elementary schools measure their “School Health Index”; and items 5 and 6 on the list of score card items are-you guessed it!-lunchroom related:

“N.1. Prohibit using food as reward or punishment
N.2. Fundraising efforts supportive of healthy eating”

The State of Wisconsin has intervened to prevent the practice of withholding food as a form of discipline in school settings, as reported by the Winona Daily News:

“The state has ordered a military-style private school to stop punishing students by serving them smaller lunches and is withholding money for food programs until the problems are corrected…

…The state has halted its share of the money for lunch and breakfast for low-income students until the La Brew Troopers Military University School stops withholding food as punishment, Helen Pesche, child nutrition program consultant for the state, wrote in a letter to the school dated May 21…

… The letter said that inspections at the school found students were sometimes punished by being served lunch without either meat or a substitute and a vegetable and fruit…

… A DPI report said one day when inspectors visited the school, 24 students were served lunches that did not include a sloppy joe on a bun and canned fruit, like their peers ate. Instead, the report said the children were given a slice of white bread, half a cup of mashed potatoes and a half pint of milk…

…Withholding food is unacceptable for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, a federally assisted program that subsidizes school food, the report said…”

The State of Illinois also frowns on this type of “food punishment”.
Consider this policy goal from kidseatwell.org's “evaluation tool” for Illinois schools:

“School personnel are encouraged to use nonfood incentives or rewards with students…and do not withhold food from students as punishment.”

Is this practice intended as punishment?
Here’s another quote from the LA Times, discussing what happened when peanut-butter-and-jelly was the “special sandwich”:

"It seemed to be one of the children's very favorite meals, so that wasn't productive," said Beth Taylor, nutrition director for the Johnston County School District in North Carolina, where such sandwiches were tried. Taylor said switching to vegetable and fruit trays changed everything. Among last week's menu items for students with lunch balances: crunchy cole slaw, fried squash and steamed cabbage. "The outstanding debt has been reduced to nothing," she said.”

Did everybody catch that admission by Ms. Taylor?
It was serving healthy food that turned the problem around.

Who thinks these kids will grow up to have eating disorders?
Who thinks opening a 24-Hour Fitness in Johnson County, North Carolina will pay off big one day?
Who thinks with policies like this in place buying stock in “Stroke, Inc.” or “Heart Attack & Co.” would be a great investment, if it were available?

With all that in mind, why would a school district pursue such a practice?
Because humiliation works.

The LA Times article reports that Chula Vista reduced its debt in this category by more than $230,000 from 2004 to 2006. Of 18,000 meals served by the District daily, up to 400 are of the “special sandwich” variety.

In its defense, Chula Vista points out that the “unlimited salad bar” is available to all students, but I suspect the salad bar does not reduce the impact of the “cheese sandwich equivalent” on the little kid to whom it is served.

Before closing, I want to offer one more learned opinion regarding the "food as punishment" idea. A learned Opinion that comes to us from the Unitred States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit (the case originated in the eastern District of Wisconsin).

The Court has been called upon to offer an opinion as to whether food substitution is an acceptable form of punishment for prisoners in Wisconsin’s Secure Program Facility at Boscobel (a Maximum Security Facility, previously a Supemax). Food substitution means a “nutri-loaf” will be the only food offered during the period of a prisoner’s punishment, and the court found that the punishment was a violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment”.

To put all this in perspective, we have on the one hand a highly effective policy borne out of the school districts’ need to collect money; and on the other hand the opinions of Washington State’s foster parent educators, the Centers for Disease Control, the courts of Wisconsin and the nutrition educators of Illinois who all feel this is a terrible idea.

If all that wasn’t enough, we have a United States Court of Appeals that won’t even allow this type of punishment in a Maximum Security prison.

As we all know, kids have a ton of barriers in their way when they are being educated, and there is no good reason to create another one when the punished child didn’t even commit the “crime”. Just because…

…The misbehavior often stops immediately
Children often show remorse during punishment
The district gets to blow off steam
The district feels in control
The district hasn't let the children "get away with it"
The district was raised that way…

…doesn’t mean it’s OK to abuse kids who have little, if any, control over the “bad” behavior of their parents.