Georgia School Board Hires Collection Agency to Collect on Unpaid Lunches
 

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BRANTLEY COUNTY, Ga. -- The school board in Brantley County, Ga., has hired a collection agency to recoup the cost of unpaid school lunches, saying it's thousands of dollars in the red.

School officials said the the board is roughly $25,000 in debt as a result of unpaid $1.25 lunches.

Some parents said they're on the fence about the collection agency.

"If they can't afford it, they can't afford it," grandparent Robin Batten said. "I wouldn't think so to force them."

"I think parents should be responsible," parent Leah Wainwright said. "I pay for my kid's lunch. Why shouldn't everybody else?"

Brantley County school nutrition director Cindy Ham said this is a last resort, but a necessary one.

"OMD Circular 887 -- it's a federal guideline -- requires that there's no indebtedness to the school nutrition program," Ham said.

Glynn County, a much larger neighboring district, had upwards of $40,000 in unpaid student lunches. Instead of reaching out to a collection agency, it took a more creative approach.

The Glynn County School Board said in a statement: "While we considered implementing a collection agency, at the beginning of the 2010 calendar year, we chose to provide those students with outstanding lunch debt a cheese sandwich and carton of milk for lunch. In doing so, we were able to feed children in need and encourage parents to pay back their debt."

The school board said it reduced its debt by nearly half.

Sounds fine to me. If a parent can't afford $1.25 to feed their child, then they should probably just go ahead and sign custody over to the state.

They should hire bullies...they always get lunch money.

Do they offer the free lunch program for low income families there?

WIN. This made me laugh.

I really hope you're joking.

You think the state of Georgia is properly taking care of the kids already in foster care?

If I were the school I think I might have tried to do something creative like ask (all) parents if they would like to donate a few extra dollars to the school lunch program so children who cannot afford a lunch can still have one.

Wow. In VA, if you don't have lunch money, you're hungry until you get home.

You're kidding right? You do realize that for these kids there's probably not much food at home either?

wow. in ohio, not only is there a free lunch program, and a reduced lunch program, there are free and reduced breakfast programs (each depends on household income and # of people in the household). but there are voluntary non-profit programs(often run by teachers) that collect food to make sure kids have something to eat over the weekend. in a lot of district, kids eat lunch on friday, and then dont have anything to eat until they get back to school on monday.

sad, all the way around.

There's free and reduced price lunch in Georgia too. It's a federal program, so I bet every state has got it.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Governan...lityManual.pdf

I don't think it requires much supporting documentation to qualify.

Some parents who owe may have recently fallen on hard times, but some people are deadbeats and choose not to pay for things they could pay for, particularly when they learn nothing happens when they don't.

Other parents could chip in to cover them, or the parents who haven't paid could make paying to feed their own children a higher priority, either with cash or by doing the paperwork to document that they truly can't afford to.

Just racking up charges isn't the answer, but they were probably kind of taught in previous years, by the district's failure to aggressively pursue the debt, that they didn't have to. Now they do.

$1.50 is a pretty cheap lunch...is that what school lunches cost, or is that the reduced rate? If reduced, these parents have already shown that they don't have much in the way of funds.

1.50 was what it was at my high school. Not reduced.

Cheap stuff. And I still love it. As creepy as it sounds, I wish I had high school friends who could bring me those 1.50 lunches.

Absolutely untrue. Virginia has always had the free and reduced breakfast-lunch program.

Here is the program in the Arlington public school system and it is in every school system in VA: http://www.dcmassc.org/Job%20Support...hool_lunch.pdf

Correct (in general) and Virginia realized that decades ago.

I don't even know if my high school had a cafeteria. I remember buying bagels and just-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip Otis Spunkmeyer cookies from the DECA-ran student store, but I don't think I ever went into the cafeteria.

I now understand why the food our schools serve is such crap. $1.50 doesn't buy anything healthy. Maybe one apple.

ETA: Has anyone else watched that Jamie Oliver "Food Revolution" show that is all about rehabing our country's school lunch guidelines? It's really interesting. It's a movement he's bringing from England, where he WAS able to change the country's school lunch program.

I loved the cheesy spaghetti and side buns. That was always my favorite lunch. I used to sop the cheesy sauce with the bun. YUM.

I also loved the pickles, honeybuns and sugary purple punch that we could buy from the "snack store."

for realz?

Yes. Most of the students at my school went off campus for lunch, brought from home and ate with friends around the grounds, or bought from the student store.

I know we had a cafeteria. I just don't know if food was served there.

When I was in middle and high school (although it was in Gwinnett County, not Brantley) the school let us charge lunch to our accounts. In middle school you could do it however many times you wanted to, but in high school you could only do it three times before you had to pay at least one of those lunches off. Then my junior year the price for all lunches increased from $1.50 to $2.25, and they stopped letting you charge, and if you owed any lunch money you weren't allowed to graduate. The price of breakfast went up too, but idk how much because I rarely ate breakfast at school. But we had really good cafeteria food. It was food court style and also had a hot lunch area. It was definitely wayyyy better than the crap my college serves now.

Ok you're right. I'm thinking in high school. In high school, you couldn't get free lunch unless you worked in the cafe.

Absolutely untrue. The free and reduced lunch program is grades K-12.

Perhaps you did not attend a public or non-profit private school.

Mine was the "Chicken Ring Things" which was chicken rings (god knows what kind of chickens come in rings?), mashed potatoes, and a roll with milk.

RE: Whoever was talking about school food reform. A recent study (I can find it if you care to know) found that McDonalds food quality was far more stringent then the common public school provided lunch. Don't trust the government.

I used to work for McDonald's PR agency. They have extremely high standards. They also have their own regional meat suppliers so they can closely monitor the operations. I trust McDonald's way more than I do most other fast food restaurants, and even more than some dine-in restaurants. They are a very well-operated company. They are also a well-respected employer.

I miss square pizza.

TACO DAYS! But my high school was over 6,000 kids 1,000+ on a portable/trailer campus and 5,000+ on the main campus (still w/ portables/trailers) so if we GOT lunch and the time to eat it we were lucky.

I miss sloppy joe

Our basic school lunch is $2.50 but my girl usually spends $3.50 because you can get all kinds of stuff ala carte. Our reduced lunch fee is $1.50. Then there are free lunches. As previously noted, that is a federal program and if a school accepts federal funding, they have to include that program.

When I was in high school, we had funding problems and they eliminated lunch altogether. They shortened our school day so that we were out of school by 1:30 or something like that. We had a 10 minute "nutrition break" at the end of 3rd hour. We could bring stuff to eat then or buy stuff at the school store. I was selling candy bars for 3 years to pay for a trip to Mexico City with my Spanish class and I sold TONS of candy bars during nutrition break.. enough to pay for my whole trip!

Our schools recently went to a new vendor for lunch who only serves healthier food. My son stopped buying lunch at all, even though what I make him is just as healthy as what's available. He always hated the lines for lunch anyway.

Who Georgia should hire to collect lunch money

























http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3023/...a5b336bf09.jpg

I went to a private high school. Parents would actually volunteer to work in the kitchen. Not the standard school food fare. Was mostly pretty good.

Thank you - I saw that post and was like, "Ummm...no." I know that DC also offers free and reduced lunches.

In New York we offer free and reduced lunches and breakfast. I believe lunch was $1.50 in elementary and middle school. I went to a private high school, I'm not sure the cost of lunch because I brown-bagged it. We were required to buy our own beverage though; it was not permitted to bring your own.

I do occasionally long for the terrible, lukewarm stuffed crust pizza they gave us on the first day of school (we always had free lunch on the first day of classes).

Yum. Stuffed crust pizza wasn't "invented" until after I graduated. :( That would've been awesome.

I miss fiestados (Mexican pizza) and (showing my age) Pac-Man pizza, which was pita pizza with a wedge cut out for the mouth and a pepperoni for the eye. :D

Then again, that was back in the day when they actually made the food on school grounds. I think they get premade food from some service now, which means the food is probably as shitty tasting as some of the stuff I had in college.

Oh, we loved chicken fried steak day - real homemade yeast rolls! Fluffy as clouds, so good with butter . . .

This makes me really sad, I'm not going to lie. My home county is pretty impoverished, and there were a lot of kids on the free and reduced lunch/breakfast plan. It always made me a little sad to know that these kids were ONLY getting food at school most of the time.

My favorite school lunch was turkey gravy over mashed potatoes with a roll. The potatoes were soooooo fake but I loved them sooooooo much - I bet if I tried to eat it now I'd throw up all over my shoes!