Ms. MillCreek 1.0 runs the nutrition services for a school district of 22,000 students. I like to call her the head lunch lady. Her district uses the system where parents pay to load up a card that the student uses to pay for lunch. That way, the district does not have to handle cash in food services. Her approach is to send several notifications to the parents when the account is running low. If the parents still don't pay and the account runs out of money, they give the child a cheese sandwich, piece of fruit and carton of milk only until such time as the parents load up the account or fill out the paperwork for the free or reduced lunch program.
Her program has to cover all of its fixed, variable and labor costs out of the revenue of selling food and she gets no money from the district. In addition, she has to give everything over a certain amount to the district general fund, so that in a sense, she is a revenue generator for the district. People skipping out on the bills is a direct hit to her bottom line, so they do take enforcement action. A couple of years ago, she was out $ 35,000 on parents skipping out on paying the lunch cards for their kids, so the school board directed the cheese sandwich approach, and to send the deadbeat parents to collection. You should all be happy that your taxes are not subsidizing deadbeat parents who can afford to pay for school lunch.