Governor Abigail Spanberger is signing a bill that would start collecting information on school meal debt.
Some wealthy school divisions don't bother collecting debt from students who can’t afford breakfast or lunch. They've got the money to pay for it, so they just make it part of their budgets. Other school divisions can't afford to do that, so they initiate debt collection on the families of students who can't afford breakfast or lunch. Liz Nigro at Voices for Virginia’s Children says the new law will help collect better data.
"Trying to get a better sense of who is paying for school meal debt and who is collecting," Nigro says. "And then I think also who are the students and families that are being impacted within those divisions because right now we just don't have a real thorough publicly available collection of this data."
The point of having that publicly available data is to move toward universal free school meals, says Delegate Cia Price, a Democrat from Newport News.
"Once we show the amount of debt that is owed and some of the troubling practices that might still be happening going after the debt, I think not only will it help show what the school districts are having to go through – the ones that don't want to go after the debt and even the ones that feel the need to go after the debt – I think it will make the case for universal school meals," Price says.
She says she’s hoping the shock value of those numbers will help persuade some reluctant members of the General Assembly about the need to offer universal free school meals.
