DOE Yields Over School Lunches
CSA Helps Force the Issue: Principals Are Not Debt Collectors
by Yuridia Peña
The NYC Department of Education backed down from forcing school Principals to collect outstanding balances on unpaid school lunch money from parents who haven’t paid their bill after an outcry from Principals and the advocacy efforts of the CSA. The DOE has temporarily rescinded its plan to pay for the deficit from each school’s instructional budget.
“We publicly embarrassed them,” said CSA First Vice President Randi Herman. In an email from the DOE, Principals had been instructed to work with their network budget liaison to reserve tax levy funding from their budget in anticipation of an adjustment scheduled for Feb. 16 on a line entitled “Uncollected Lunch Fees Set Aside”. In other words, administrators who did not collect unpaid lunch money from parents would be docked from their own budgets.
“The Office of School Food [and Nutrition Services] needs to address its own budgetary problems without robbing NYC public schools of scarce instructional dollars,” said Dr. Herman at a Feb. 8 City Council hearing. Dr. Herman also appeared on Fox 5’s Good Day New York on Feb. 10 where she told anchor Rosanna Scotto that Principals are faced with a tough predicament; they are forced to become debt collectors or pay it back from operating budgets. Principals pointed out that it’s already difficult to get parents involved in their kids’ educations and that hounding them for unpaid lunch monies will turn away even more parents.
News reports stated that the DOE has spent $42 million since 2004 because of uncollected lunch money. Some schools already have thousands of dollars in unpaid lunch payments this year alone.
While the DOE had said that the current economic situation will no longer allow for the city to pick up the tab, after CSA, Principals, parents and education advocates pushed back, the DOE called for an indefinite delay in this plan. Principals are advised to gather outstanding balances by collecting meal forms, entering student data and collecting monies from families who do not qualify for free meals. About 75 percent of city students qualify for reduced or free lunch.
The reality is, “…a NYC Principal will never, ever, deny a meal to a child,” said Dr. Herman. All students receive a free breakfast; lunch costs up to $1.50 per day. (NYC qualifies for the federal government’s universal meal program, which provides subsidized meals to schools.) Families who are receiving benefits through public assistance programs may be eligible for free meals.
