Why Do We Have School Lunch Debt at All?
A
Google search for “paying school lunch debt” reveals a long list of recent news
stories about good Samaritans paying off the school lunch debt of children
whose families cannot afford it.
A Fredonia, New
York man paid off $2,000 in school lunch debt in his area,
helping 140 families. A Rigby, Idaho tattoo
shop raised $1,200. Nationally, a charity called School Lunch Fairy has raised nearly
$150,000 to pay off the school lunch debt of children in need.
These
stories are heartwarming, and the people who donate are angels. But let’s look
at the bigger picture: Why is there school lunch debt in the first place?
In
2008, Mark Winne wrote in his book Closing
the Food Gap that he knew how to end hunger. I was impressed. What
could it be? I figured the answer must be terribly complex.
But
it wasn’t. End poverty, Winne wrote.
This
ties back to the work of Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate in economics who found
that hunger was not due to a lack of food,
but a lack of a right to
food. If you lack the ability to buy food or grow your own food, and nobody
gives you food, then in a capitalist economy, you are not legally entitled to
food.
Or,
in this case, if your parents cannot afford food, then children are not legally
entitled to eat at school.
Letting
children go hungry in the richest country on earth is wrong. Period. That’s the
moral one.
Now, speaking practically, providing free and reduced cost lunch to children of low-income families serves several purposes at once.
It
provides for children’s physical needs as an end in itself, while helping them
focus on learning while at school. It provides jobs in food service for adults.
It even creates demand for commodities to help keep prices up for farmers.
Going
one step further, the National School Lunch Act was actually passed as a matter
of national security after the Great Depression and World War II. Lawmakers
considered undernourishment a liability if it meant young people weren’t
healthy enough to fight the next Hitler.
Whatever
the reason, ensuring children have enough to eat during the school day is also
an economic stimulus and a matter of public good. We all do better if we live
in a nation where children grow up healthy, educated, and well nourished.
But
we already have the National School Lunch Program, which offers children of
low-income families free and reduced price lunch. So why is there still an
epidemic of school lunch debt?
For
one thing, qualifying for free or reduced price lunch usually involves
some burdensome paperwork, so families who should qualify for it
don’t always receive it. In other cases, bureaucratic errors can
saddle families with thousands in debt for lunches they thought were covered.
The
Trump administration is actually making that
problem worse by no longer automatically enrolling children in
families that qualify for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, for school lunch
assistance.
We
live in a nation where food is plentiful but millions of
children experience hunger and food insecurity. Feeding our
kids shouldn’t fall only to kind strangers and acts of charity.
Instead,
a nationwide epidemic of school lunch debt points to a systemic problem that
requires a systemic solution. Our kids deserve
universal school lunch — and real plans to end poverty in the
richest country on earth.
Jill Richardson is
the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and
a member of the Organic
Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author
of Recipe for
America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.
