DCS School Nutrition Press Release
Davidson County Schools: SCHOOL NUTRITION PRESS RELEASE
OCTOBER 29, 2022
Understanding that the USDA universally free meals program provided to all students for the previous two years would no longer be in effect, beginning in July 2022 we communicated this shift to parents on several occasions. These communications encouraged families to apply for free/reduced meal benefits due to federal school nutrition guidelines that do not allow students to carry a negative balance on their school meal accounts.
Schools used the first quarter of this school year to prepare for implementation of the policy that does not allow high school students to carry a negative balance on their meal accounts which was adopted in 2011. Prior to the universal nutrition benefits provided during the COVID-19 pandemic, the same process was utilized in high schools. If a student is not eligible for benefits, there must be some form a payment each and every day. If the student cannot pay for the meal, since no charges are allowed per federal guidelines, the school must have a financial means to cover the charge. During the first quarter of this school year, schools allowed these charges to be added to the student's school accounts. Unfortunately, these meal charges escalated rapidly, causing concern for school administrators.
In addition to the free/reduced meal application process, other options exist to assist families that struggle to consistently pay for student meals. The district further welcomes citizen contributions to locally established “Angel Funds” which assist in covering meal costs, “back pack programs” which send non-perishable foods home to food insecure families over the weekends, and to individual DCS schools which have always provided supplemental snacks to students using funds raised and contributed for this purpose.
Admittedly, discarding food as a means of addressing this complex issue was not the correct approach, and we regret that it was not considered more carefully before being communicated to child nutrition staff. It is not the expectation that meals will be thrown away; prior to the COVID-19 pandemic universally free benefits, our high schools were able to successfully implement this same policy. We are committed to reviewing the school nutrition no-charge policy adopted in 2011, reinstating some of the strategies that enabled us to manage this successfully before, and consider other recommended best practices for balancing a no-charge policy expectation by USDA with the goal of ensuring all children have the opportunity for access to a healthy meal during the school day.
