Sandwiches of Shame? Schools Crack Down on Parents Who Don't Pay Lunch Bills

April 16, 2009 — -- Facing a budget crunch, a large school district in Albuquerque, N.M., is using a controversial method to collect money -- call it the "cheese sandwich policy."

The district, which has 89,000 students, racked up big debts because many parents in the district stopped paying for their kids' hot school lunches. School officials decided to crack down on parents with unpaid tabs by cutting off kids from the hot lunch line and giving them an alternative lunch -- a cheese sandwich, a fruit or vegetable and milk.

The school board said the policy has been effective in getting delinquent parents to pay, but many parents are outraged, saying it stigmatizes their kids.

Katrina Tapia, a 7-year-old Albuquerque public school student, encountered the new policy in January, saying she was pulled out of the cafeteria line by the lunch lady and given a cheese sandwich.

The first-grader said she was embarrassed and didn't tell her friends why she was pulled out of line.

"Because I thought they would, like, you know, laugh at me," Tapia said. "'Cause they get their lunch and I don't."

Katrina's mother, Elenita Chee, is angered by what happened to her daughter.

"It makes me upset to know that they treated my little girl like that. And if anything, they should have gone after me instead of my kid," she said.

Program Effective

Brad Winter, CEO of the Albuquerque Public School System, said the program has been remarkably successful and has cut the district's school lunch debt from $140,000 to $85,000.

Winter said the school is not trying to punish or separate one group of kids from another.

"I think that we do a very good job of not creating a stigma because of the sensitivity that everyone is trained for," Winter told "GMA." "And what we were trying to do is find how do we pay this debt out. Because we cannot carry this debt."

Albuquerque is not the only school system taking action. Similar policies are in place in Hillsborough County, Fla., and Lynnwood, Wash.

What About Low-Income Kids Lunches?

Nancy Pope, director of the New Mexico Collaboration to End Hunger, said many kids affected by the program are from low-income families and need the hot lunch.

"In New Mexico, one in four of our children do not know where they're getting their next meal," Pope said. "A USDA-paid-for hot nutritious lunch is the only meal that many of our children receive."

And while the hot school lunch meets the U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional standards, the alternative lunch does not.

"It is very close, though," Winter said.

In Katrina's case, her mother had applied for the federal free lunch program and was waiting on the paperwork when the district cracked down on her daughter.

"She is an innocent little girl, and all she is doing is going to school," Chee said. "It makes me very angry, because I do everything best to be a parent. And the last thing I want is my kids to be getting hurt -- especially at school, where I think they're safe."

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., plans to introduce a bill that would guarantee every school child breakfast and a hot lunch, regardless of their parents' income. If the bill passes, it would automatically eliminate all alternative lunch programs.

"Look, the notion that you are going to pull the child out of line, you know, and say, 'I'm sorry, your parents didn't pay, you're behind, so here, here is a lousy alternative lunch instead; you can't be with the rest of the kids' -- let me tell you something, that's a traumatic experience for a kid that shouldn't happen," McGovern said.

Whether the bill passes or not, some school districts,such as the district in Chula Vista, Calif., have already abandoned their alternative lunch programs. They now seem to realize there are more effective ways of collecting lunch debt, such as using automated telephone calls to remind parents to pay their bills.

However, Albuquerque's public schools stand by the alternative lunch policy.

But there's good news for Katrina. The paperwork on her mother's application finally has gone through and she now receives a free hot lunch under the federal progam -- so she doesn't have to eat cheese sandwiches anymore.