Ashland County students, families have accumulated thousands in school meal debt this year

ASHLAND — Students and families at public schools around Ashland County have racked up thousands of dollars of school meal debt in the 2022-2023 school year, the first without universal free lunches since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, the USDA began reimbursing school districts around the country for their meal costs, allowing every student, regardless of family income, to get free meals.

But Congress let the free meal program expire in 2022, ushering in a return to paid lunches, the free and reduced meal program, and school meal debt.

Meal debt accumulates when a student with insufficient funds in their account charges a meal to it. At Ashland City Schools, students currently have $23,705 in meal debt, the largest amount in the county.

Students are allowed to keep charging meals for a number of days before the district gives them an “alternative lunch,” interim superintendent Steve Paramore said.

“It is essentially a sandwich, just an essential meets the standards type of lunch,” he said.

When a student begins racking up debt, the district reaches out to the family to inform them of the USDA’s free and reduced meal program, which offers free or discounted meals to families that meet certain income requirements. Thirty-four percent of students at Ashland are on the program.

At Mapleton Local Schools — which has $1,720 in meal debt — 41 percent of students use the program. But when the school year started, parents called the district, confused as to why they suddenly had to pay for meals or register for the program, treasurer Katy Wiley said.

“I think they thought that (the universal free meal program) was going to be a thing forever and ever. I just, I don’t think that they understood it, that it was just for that two-year period,” she said.

Local schools can also prevent students with unpaid meal debts from graduating, which usually results in families paying or signing up for the free and reduced lunch program, Paramore said.

Meal debt is sometimes paid off by local donations, like at Hillsdale Local Schools where students currently have no meal debt because all $1,025 of it was paid off by Hayesville AmVets Post 1969 earlier in January, Hillsdale treasurer Rick Blahnik said.

Just a few miles south from Hillsdale, students at Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village schools had $2,094 of their $3,205 in debt paid off by donations in December. But by mid January, the debt number was already back up to $2,154.

“I expect to receive a lot of (this debt paid) because these are not the students that do not pay,” Loudonville treasurer Christine Angerer said.

Families looking to sign up for the free and reduced lunch program and stave off school lunch debt can sign up with a local district using the links below.