Request By:
Ms. Ann Howser
Director, Food Service
Newport City Schools
8th and Washington Avenue
Newport, Kentucky 41071
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As the director of food service for the Newport City Schools you have asked the Office of the Attorney General to advise you on a problem regarding students who either fail to pick up their weekly meal ticket or who lose this ticket before the end of the week. As background to this problem you noted that children may purchase a weekly school lunch ticket or this ticket is given free or at a reduced cost to those students who are eligible under the federal National School Lunch Act. You further noted that the problem you have referred to is not experienced in the elementary grades in that these students' tickets are kept in the lunch room and given to them as they get in line for lunch. The problem is focused on the Junior and Senior high school students who either will not accept the responsibility of picking up their free lunch room ticket or fail to maintain possession of them for the week.
Section 9 of the National School Lunch Act states, ". . . any child who is a member of a household which has an annual income not above the applicable family size income level set forth in the income poverty guidelines shall be served meals free or at reduced cost." By a United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service Instruction, No. 791-1, a school is prohibited from denying free or reduced price meals as disciplinary action to children certified as eligible for such meals. Instances where lunches had been denied to children as punishment for disciplinary infractions was the stated background which prompted this instruction. Thus, the policy of this instruction is that any disciplinary action which results in the denial of free or reduced price meals to eligible children is contrary to the federal law.
Your question in regard to this matter is whether a school policy of refusing to serve any child a meal unless a ticket is presented when the student receives the breakfast and/or lunch tray is a disciplinary measure when the failure to have the ticket is due to the student not accepting the responsibility of picking up the ticket or losing it before the week is over.
Each local board of education is responsible and accountable for the control and management of all school funds. KRS 160.290(1). Thus, the school board is accountable for the use of the federal funds received for the free or reduced price meals. The board, through its staff, must have a means by which it can assure against the abuse of federal law. Moreover, an audit trail should be possible, indicating a precise correlation of the number of free meal tickets distributed and the number of free meals served. Requiring students who are eligible to receive the free meal tickets to pick them up and to use them is not an unreasonable request under the circumstances. We do not view the denial of a free meal due to the failure to follow established, orderly administrative procedures for obtaining and using free lunch tickets as a prohibited disciplinary action instructed against in FNS Instruction 791-1.
We must caution you that this opinion represents only the views and resulting conclusion of this office. It has no binding effect in that the issue in question involves a federal instruction and a federal agency having the responsibility to carry out the intent and provisions of a federal law. We must advise you to discuss this matter with appropriate federal personnel.