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No More Lawsuits For School Lunch Debts

Assemblywoman Karines Reyes, D-Bronx, speaks on the Assembly floor on behalf of limits to ways school districts can collect unpaid school lunch debts.

Legislation to prevent school districts from filing a lawsuit against parents or guardians over unpaid school lunch debts is being sent to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his approval.

Earlier this week, the state Assembly passed A.6527A by a 118-30 vote with Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown voting against the proposal. Companion legislation passed the state Senate in early June by a 63-0 vote.

“This bill states it doesn’t matter how much income a family has, if they don’t want to pay for school lunches for their kids they can get a free ride,” Goodell said. “What a horrible message to convey to kids that you can ignore the rules and regulations, that you don’t have to pay for things that you buy, that you use, that you consume — just blow it off. That’s a horrific message. Of course, everybody in this chamber knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

New York joined dozens of other states in 2018 to prohibit meal shaming. Beginning with the 2018-19 school year, all schools that require students to pay for a school breakfast or lunch meal had to develop a written plan making sure a student whose parent or guardian has unpaid meal charges is not shamed or treated differently than a child whose parent or guardian does not have unpaid school meal charges.

The 2018 legislation required schools to provide students with the reimbursable meal of their choice and specifically identified other prohibited actions to keep children from being embarrassed if their parents or guardians had unpaid school lunch debt.

Schools were directed to provide parents with a repayment option and were prohibited from using a debt collector to recover the money.

Assemblywoman Karines Reyes, D-Bronx, said since 2018 there have been prominent cases nationwide of school districts filing lawsuits or threatening to take the families of students with unpaid meal fees to court to collect fees.

“I just find it ironic that we talk about not paying for food and getting free stuff when we have a lounge a few feet away from here that provides an endless amount of snacks that we don’t have to pay for and we are talking about children who sometimes, the only meal they’ve got is in school,” Reyes said.

The 2018 bill requires schools to provide a carryover each year in free and reduced school lunch lists each year, provides 30 days of free and reduced lunch eligibility to students who transfer into a school district, and pushed school districts to encourage families eligible for free and reduced lunch programs to make use of the programs.

Goodell’s opposition wasn’t focused on students on free and reduced lunch programs, but rather on students whose families don’t qualify for free and reduced lunch.

“So what happens when a wealthy family doesn’t pay for school lunches for their kids?” Goodell asked. “They’re just ripping off the school. But who they’re really ripping off are all the school taxpayers in that local district. So although senior citizens and everyone else, the working families that are struggling to pay that school tax bill, they have to pay higher taxes in order to cover the costs of lunches being provided to families that can pay but simply won’t. That’s the wrong message to send to kids and it’s the wrong message to send to parents and it’s the wrong message to send for taxpayers.”

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