Forgot your lunch money? Forget eating
More kids fail to pay for meals
By John Sullivan
Times Herald-Record
June 10, 2009 6:00 AM

WASHINGTONVILLE — The days when kids who forgot their lunch money breezed by the kind-hearted cafeteria lady with just an impish smile are fast coming to an end.

School cafeterias are cracking down on kids who don’t pay for their lunches as districts grow more mindful of costs, food service officials say.

“I’m seeing a lot more school food service directors wanting their charge policies implemented, and if they don’t have one, to get one going in order to cut down on these costs,” said Carol Beebe, executive director of the New York School Nutrition Association, a trade group for cafeteria workers.

“Charge policies” are the rules cafeterias impose on kids who can afford to pay for their lunches but regularly don’t. In most cases, kids get three strikes, with ample warnings to their parents in between, before being cut off.

The crackdown applies only to teens in middle school and high school — forgetful elementary school students still get a cheese or peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich to tide them over — and it does not apply to kids on free and reduced-price lunch programs.

Targeting the older age group makes it easier to appeal to parents about the need for responsibility, Beebe said.

“(The parents) need to take responsibility for making sure their kids don’t go hungry, and if they don’t have the money, we have the means to help them,” she said, referring to the free and reduced-price lunch program that is subsidized by the state.

Food service officials in some Orange County schools say they have started seeing an increase in kids not paying.

“What I’ve seen this year is a little bit of an increase in the number of delinquencies and that might have to do with the economy,” said Robert Gellman, director of food services at Washingtonville High School.

At the same time, the cost of providing meals keeps increasing, thanks to global food demand, as well as healthy school initiatives that require cafeterias to buy more expensive ingredients and reduce the number of unhealthy extras that bring in revenue.

The sale of so-called “a la carte items” — anything from an extra chicken patty to chips and ice cream bars — also have dropped as parents get tough on kids to stick to budgets, said Aldis Ansons, food director for Monroe-Woodbury School District, which saw sales of such items drop 20 percent this year.

Cafeterias don’t receive any money through school taxes, making them wholly dependent on food sales to stay afloat.

“It is not the school’s responsibility to pay for the meals of kids whose parents can pay for it,” she said.

jsullivan@th-record.com