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By Elisha Fieldstadt
Students at a Rhode Island school district who owe money on their lunch accounts will have the sole option of a sunflower butter and jelly sandwich until they are able to pay their balances, the district announced Sunday.
Warwick Public Schools, which has more than 9,000 pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, said the district-wide policy will go into effect on May 13.
“If money is owed on a paid, free, or reduced lunch account a sun butter and jelly sandwich will be given as the lunch choice until the balance owed is paid in full or a payment plan is set up,” said a post from the district on Facebook.
Public schools in Rhode Island are mandated by state law to provide lunches to students, but legislation that requires schools to provide hot lunches has not yet been passed.
Nearly 70 percent of school lunches are served for free or at a reduced price based on family income, according to the state. But some parents who commented on the announcement from Warwick Public Schools said even though they qualify for free lunches, their children still owed money because they had added something to their trays that wasn’t included with the free lunch, like milk.
Other parents noted that the policy of giving out jelly sandwiches to students who owed money would likely leave those children embarrassed and prone to bullying. “This is absolutely awful. Our schools shouldn’t be in the business of shaming children,” one person wrote beneath the Facebook announcement.
“Just give the kids lunch. … we cant spring for a chicken patty for a hungry kid? What if this is their only meal of the day?” another commenter to the post asked.
“A sunflower butter and jelly sandwich is really not a balanced lunch,” said Nicole Silber, a pediatric nutritionist. She added that in order for children — or anyone — to get the nutrients they need, their diets need to be more varied than eating the same sandwich every day.
“For a teenage male … one sandwich will not be sufficient calories for a meal either,” Silber told NBC News.
Warwick Public Schools did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News. District officials told The Associated Press that they implemented the new policy because the district is owed more than $40,000 on account of outstanding lunch payments.
The issue is not specific to Warwick. More that 75 percent of schools reported that they were owed money for lunches at the end of the 2016/2017 school year, according to the non-profit School Nutrition Association. And 40 percent of schools reported that the amount of students without adequate funds to pay for lunch had increased during the same school year.
The association said that schools found they were able to help parents and students by allowing them to pay outstanding funds online, reminding them about low balances and taking advantage of charitable donations.
Warwick Public Schools, meanwhile, refused a $4,000 donation offered to them from a local restaurant owner, Angelica Penta. “I have met with Warwick twice and the second time I left in tears after they refused to take a $4,000 check,” she wrote on Facebook.
Penta raised the money by setting up a donation jar at her restaurant, Gel’s Kitchen.
The district said in a statement that it didn’t take the donation because they didn’t want to be responsible for allotting which students the money benefited. “Each time these offers were made, Warwick Public Schools stated that the school department was not in the position to single out or identify specific students that should be selected for a reduction in their lunch debt while excluding others,” the statement said, according to NBC affiliate WJAR.
The statement recommended Penta “create a program to decide which students would be eligible to have their account reduced or expunged by the donations the business owner had available.”