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SALT LAKE CITY — The Canyons School District has proposed a new policy to pay for school lunches that officials hope will strike a balance between feeding students and holding parents accountable for overdue lunch funds.
Since 2014, the district's 34,000 students have been able to charge school lunches on an account if their lunch funds are in the negative. It's an unlimited amount for elementary students and up to $10 for high school students.
"That's important to us, you know. Students can't learn if they're hungry," said district spokesman Jeff Haney.
Providing nutritious meals for growing minds is a priority, he said, but the current policy causes the district to take a financial hit.
"Since we started allowing people to charge the meals — we haven't sent them to collection services and just asked them to pay. Last year, we had $16,000 in unpaid meals," he explained.
That's a debt of over $2 per student in the entire district. The Canyons School Board is considering a proposal to first work with parents facing hardship, then take further steps if necessary.
"We will come mid-June, after the end of school. If there are some accounts in the red, that's when we'll have to take some more aggressive steps to seek payment," Haney said. Aggressive steps mean reporting the debt to creditors for collection. Haney said that is a way to take care of the district spending and more importantly, take care of students.
"When children go through the line, there's not that trepidation in the child's mind of, 'What's going to happen when I get to the front of this line? Am I going to be able to eat?'" Haney said. "When they go up to get their food, we want to make sure they can get it, but we also need to make sure we are being fiscally responsible."
The board is still making some amendments to the proposal before it makes a decision on it.
