Meal Charge Policy

Students and/or their parents/guardians are allowed to pre-pay for breakfast or lunch.
Students are allowed to charge regular breakfast and lunch meals.
Students are not allowed to charge à la carte items.
The school lunch department will provide the main office with a list of students who charged or have an outstanding balance on a weekly basis.

Outstanding Balances

Students will not be denied a regular meal or lunch based on outstanding meal balances.
Students will not be served alternative meals or be asked to follow any differentiated processes as a result of outstanding meal balances.
Communication with parents about outstanding meal balances will be structured.
Payments on a student’s account will first be applied to any outstanding negative balances. Students will be allowed to pay cash for à la carte items or snacks when a negative balance is outstanding.
Parents/guardians will have the ability to request that charges not be allowed (this will be the only basis for denying a student meal charging privileges).
Student balances will carry over from one school year to the next.
The district will make reasonable attempts to return positive balances when a student graduates or otherwise separates from the district. After 90 days from separation, the balance will be closed and may be recovered by contacting the School Lunch Program office.

Prohibition Against Meal Shaming

The goal of the Saratoga Springs City School District is to provide student access to nutritious no- or low-cost meals each school day and to ensure that a pupil whose parent/guardian has unpaid school meal fees is not shamed or treated differently than a pupil whose parent/guardian does not have unpaid meal fees.

Unpaid charges place a large financial burden on our school. The purpose of this policy is to ensure compliance with federal requirements for the USDA Child Nutrition Program and, and to provide oversight and accountability for the collection of outstanding student meal balances to ensure that the student is not stigmatized, distressed or embarrassed.

The intent of this policy is to establish procedures to address unpaid meal charges throughout the Saratoga Springs City School District in a way that does not stigmatize, distress or embarrass students. The provisions of this policy pertain to regular priced reimbursable school breakfast, lunch and snack meals only. The Saratoga Springs City School District provides this policy as a courtesy to those students in the event that they forget or lose their money. Charging of items outside of the reimbursable meals (a la carte items, adult meals, etc.) is expressly prohibited.