In schools across the country, there is such a thing as a free lunch. Breakfast, too, in many cases. But it still comes with a price — for the school districts themselves, when there’s a gap of time between a student’s enrollment in the federal lunch program and the flow of reimbursements back into school coffers.
In the East Hampton School District, anonymous donors have stepped up to start wiping out about $7,000 in school-lunch debt that the district has incurred over the last few years. The school board accepted $2,750 in donations on Feb. 7 and $250 on Jan. 17, totaling $3,000 so far.
“The donations are very much appreciated. They go first to help families that are the neediest,” Sam Schneider, East Hampton’s assistant superintendent for business, said by phone on Tuesday. “The free lunch program is a terrific program that allows students who have food insecurity at home to be able to come here and receive a meal without any shame involved. . . . We don’t want to see any student be hungry.”
The donations will offset lunch debt first for students who incurred it before they became eligible for free lunch. The remaining donations will cover debt incurred by kids who get reduced-price lunch, and then for all other students who have outstanding cafeteria balances.
Districtwide, 51 percent of John M. Marshall Elementary School students are enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program. At the East Hampton Middle School, 44 percent of students are enrolled, and 42 percent at East Hampton High School. Extensive research has shown for many years that kids perform better academically when they have been getting proper nutrition.
Applications for the program are accepted throughout the school year. “If families are unsure about whether or not they qualify, fill out our application . . . and we’ll work with you to figure it out,” Mr. Schneider said.
The district’s free and reduced lunch application can be accessed in both English and Spanish at bit.ly/3E8eS9z.
Adam Fine, East Hampton’s superintendent, said the recent donations are the first he’s seen in his tenure with the district. He also said the district’s current level of debt is actually lower now than it used to be, before the pandemic.
“Being in a place like East Hampton, we’ve received such creative donations from the community that we’re incredibly grateful for,” Mr. Fine said. “Things catch people’s eyes, community-wise, and they reach out to the schools, which is great.”
Social media trends may have something to do with this phenomenon. The publication Education Week reported in December that Sarah Stusek, a film producer with more than 88,000 followers on TikTok, had paid $1,700 to cover the cost of student lunch debt at the Mount Vernon Community School in Virginia. A flood of TikTok-ers following in her footsteps then collectively donated another $3,000, which Ms. Stusek distributed to other schools in need.
Education Week reported at the time that school-lunch debt is expected to “balloon” in 2023, now that pandemic programs providing free lunch to all have ended. There’s an advocacy movement underway to urge the federal government to reinstate that program. The group All for Lunch, for example, has paid off outstanding cafeteria balances at 133 schools so far. The organization, which started in 2017 in Suwanee, Ga., estimates that 75 percent of schools nationwide carry this type of debt.
“We’re big proponents” of the free-lunch-for-all campaign, Mr. Fine said. “We’re hoping for that. It would really be a good thing.”
Locally, donors also stepped up in 2021 to help the Springs School establish a program called Susan’s Lunch Drawer, to feed children who did not or could not bring their own lunch to school. (Springs does not have cafeteria service as East Hampton does.) Established by the family of Susan Bennett, a longtime school employee who died that year, Springs received more than $10,000 in donations for the lunch cart.