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Orginally Adopted: 16 June 2014
Modified: 23 September 2025

CAG- Child Nutrition Program Financial Rights & Responsibilities(LCSD)

Purpose

To explain how the District and its schools will notify parents regarding; meal prices, payment methods, money owed for student meals, and procedures for providing meals if student accounts are delinquent.

References

 42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq. 

Definitions

Collection Efforts: the means that the District uses to collect delinquent lunch balances including, but not limited to, contacts to parents by phone, mail, or other efforts by the school or by a collection agency.

Delinquent Account: a student meal account that does not have adequate fund to cover meal charges.

Free Meal: a meal served to students whose parents have qualified, based on federal standards requiring income review and documentation, for free meals, which receive the highest federal rate of reimbursement.

Parent: a student's parent, legal guardian, or person acting as the parent for school purposes.

Paid Meal: a meal served to students whose parents have not qualified for reduced-price or free meals.

Reduced Meal: a meal served to students whose parents have qualified, based on federal standards requiring income review and documentation, for reduced-price but not free meals.

Policy

The District and its schools follow federal and state laws and guidelines for the Child Nutrition Program.

The District shall annually send information to parents providing designated meal prices, qualification requirements for free/reduced price meals, payment options, and delinquent meal account procedures.

Procedures

The District annually sends information about the Child Nutrition Program to all students’ households regarding meal prices, qualifying for free/reduced price meals, payment options, and delinquent meal accounts. 

The Board of Education sets student meal prices annually.

Free/Reduced Price Application Forms

District and/or Schools shall provide applications and/or links to online applications for free/reduced-price meals to parents.

District and Schools will provide paper applications for parents who do not have access to online forms.

Students qualifying for the Special Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Family Employment Program (FEP) or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), also qualify for meals at no charge, once the school receives notice of qualification, and parents do not have to complete or submit a free/reduced-price form.

Schools will send households an email/letter informing parents of a student's eligibility status.

Parents should contact Child Nutrition at the district office if the family has not received such a letter before school starts.

Eligibiity Verification and Payment Price

Schools must verify at some point in each student's meal service, that the meal is reimbursable or non-reimbursable.

Students/families qualifying for free meals have no payment due from date of approved application.

Students/families qualifying for reduced-price meals are charged no more than $.40 for lunch or $.30 for breakfast.

Students/families not qualifying for free/reduced-price meals pay the price determined by the Board of Education.

Schools provide parents with several payment options including:

Online payments using debit or credit cards for one or all of their students, allocating funds to individual student accounts.

Mail or hand delivery of checks, money orders, or cash to the school.

Parents should clearly indicate the account(s) to which the funds should be credited.

Schools must credit meal payments from parents to students' accounts before the meal period.

Schools will apply payments to the purchase of the current day's meal first and the payment of past due accounts second.

Delinquent Accounts

Schools will identify family or student accounts that do not have adequate balances to pay for student meals. 

No student who is unable to pay for a school meal (or who receives a school meal at a reduced cost) shall be publicly identified or stigmatized by any District employee or volunteer. 

Schools will contact parents, as parents have directed, on an automated system, by phone, text, email, or note home to allow parents to indicate how they wish to make payments. 

Communications regarding a student’s debt for school meals shall be directed only to the student’s parent (and not to the student). 

Schools may ask students to take home notifications addressed to parents. 

Parents are responsible to fund student meal accounts. 

No student may be required to perform chores to pay for a school meal unless such requirement applies to all students (i.e. the requirement applies whether or not any payment in money is made for the school meal). 

The District may send student meal accounts that are in the negative to a collection agency. 

The District will make two attempts in writing to parents before the negative balance is sent to a collection agency.