At the end of a typical academic year, the total amount of money owed to Cheshire Public Schools in student meal debt would be around $1,000, Superintendent Jeff Solan said.

But with nearly four months left in the current school year, the amount owed to the district has soared to more than $19,500, which Solan described as "astronomically high."

Cheshire is among several school districts in Connecticut that have seen huge increases in student lunch debt in 2023-24. The totals, school officials and advocates said, underscore the financial struggles many families are facing as the state has moved away from providing free lunch for all.

A midyear meal debt report compiled by the School Nutrition Association of Connecticut found a collective debt of $366,403 owed to nearly 50 school districts that participated in a January survey. The negative balance for each district ranged from $518 to $32,000, with an average debt of $3.85 per student, according to the report.

Some school districts said in interviews that their student meal debts were even higher than the figures reported by the SNACT.

A similar spike in student meal debt occurred in the months before the Connecticut General Assembly approved $60 million to continue the universal free meals program for the rest of 2022-2023 school year, according to Lucy Nolan, the policy director at End Hunger Connecticut! The state had administered federal aid to the schools, allowing them to give every student free breakfast and lunch. But many districts ran out of the funds by the end of 2022 and reverted to charging for meals, prompting the additional aid.

Connecticut school districts had offered universal free meals throughout the pandemic but stopped doing so prior to the start of the current school year. Gov. Ned Lamont's proposed budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year includes $11.2 million in funding to extend the current meals program through the end of the next school year.

Hamden Public Schools decided to offer free meals for the remainder of the year since it is owed $69,875 in unpaid lunches as of last week, according to Tom Ariola, the district's chief operating officer.

Ridgefield Public Schools has seen its student lunch debt climb to more than $54,200 this year, Jill Browne, the district's finance director, wrote in an email last week.

Other districts reported smaller meal balances but still said these amounts were drastically higher than in recent years.

Amity Regional School District No. 5, for example, had accumulated $5,307 in student meal debt as of Feb. 12, Superintendent Jennifer Byars said. A year ago, the district's negative meal balance was $589.

"So we have essentially had a tenfold increase," Byars said.

The student meal debt for Southington Public Schools stood at $11,900 as of last week, according to Superintendent Steven Madancy. Southington has 4,642 students, or about 73.4 percent of the district, who do not qualify for free or reduced-price meals under federal guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Before the pandemic our student meal debt was not an issue," Madancy said. "In the past we had also been fortunate to have individuals donate funds to pay off any student meal debt."

The surge in meal debt has coincided with the state opting for a more modest meals program that only grants free lunch to students eligible for reduced-price meals in non-Community Eligible Provision schools that participate in the federal National School Lunch Program. The state's program also provides free breakfast to all students in non-CEP schools that participate in the federal School Breakfast Program.

The CEP allows school districts in low-income areas to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications, the USDA's website states. Connecticut school districts eligible to provide free meals to all of their students through the CEP for the current school year include New Haven, West Haven, East Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Danbury, Torrington, Middletown, Hartford, East Hartford, Manchester, according to state Department of Education data.

Additionally, seven school districts and three educational agencies only offered free meals to students at some of their schools during 2023-2024 because they were not eligible to participate in the CEP district wide, data shows. These districts include Hamden, Greenwich, Glastonbury, Stafford and Windsor Locks.

Nolan said providing free meals for all removes the stigma that students who receive free or reduced-price meals can be subjected to under the state's current system. Lunch participation among those students, she added, actually has decreased since the state went away from universal free meals.

"One of the reasons we fought so hard for free-meals-for-all was because free or reduced-price kids don't eat meals when they aren't free to everybody," Nolan said. "When the meals were available to everybody ... there wasn't any stigma."

Newtown Public Schools had amassed $20,211in student meal debt, Superintendent Christopher Melillo said. About 3,600 students in Newtown do not qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

Melillo said offering no-cost meals to all students would be "difficult to fit into a sustainable budget," as the district already is dealing with "high increases due to benefits, contractual obligations and learning loss."

Studies show that students who participate in school breakfast programs have better academic performance, behavior and attendance, as well as decreased tardiness, according to the Food Research and Action Center. School officials said they notice similar results from students who participate in school lunch programs.

"Unfortunately for many of our families, their main, stable food comes from schools," said Joseph Macary, Vernon's superintendent. "If we want students to learn, there are certain physiological things we need to do, and one of them is to be well fed. There's so much research on the brain which shows that if it's not well fed, well-maintained, and healthy, you're not going to learn."

Macary said Vernon students did not owe any money in unpaid meal dues. Three of the district's seven schools provide free breakfast and lunch to all students through the federal Community Eligibility Provision, though state data shows Vernon is eligible to participate in the CEP district-wide.

New Milford Public Schools has been providing free breakfast and lunch to all students this school year, including the 67 percent who do not qualify for it, Superintendent Janet Parlato said. This was made possible, she said, through the state Department of Education's Paid Lunch Equity Allowance, an exemption that allows districts to use excess funds in their nonprofit school food service accounts to offer no-cost meals to students who are not eligible for free or reduced-price meals.

In Greenwich, Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones said the district has built funds into its budget to cover any meal debt owed by families who do not qualify for free or reduced-price lunch but still fall below the poverty line.

The district also works with its community partners, such as United Way of Connecticut, to help families who are struggling to pay.

"The greatest challenge is that the federal guidelines are not adequate to meet the needs across the country," Jones said. "To utilize the same income guidelines for a place like Greenwich versus a low cost-of-living area in another state is not reasonable. The guidelines need to be addressed at the federal level."

Many school officials and food security advocates said these guidelines don't reflect the high cost of living in Connecticut. They pointed to the many struggling families who are unable to qualify for free or reduced-price meals under the current federal income eligibility guidelines as a reason for the rise.

Byars said she believes Amity's rise in student meal debt could have resulted because "there is a population that does not qualify for federal free/reduced meals who still struggle just above that threshold with food insecurity."

To qualify for a free or reduced-price meal during the current school year, a family of four members must earn a gross annual income of $55,500 or less, according to guidelines from the USDA, which administers the School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program.

But a September 2023 report from the United Way of Connecticut found that, for 2021, a family of four needed to earn about $126,000 to meet the cost of basic expenses in Connecticut.

"There is a huge gap of families who can't afford the school meals but they're not getting them," Nolan said.

In testimony submitted to the state Department of Education, Solan, Cheshire's superintendent, said that the income requirements for free and reduced-price meals were "not adjusted for regional cost differences" and were "simply way too low" for Connecticut families.

"Rather than simply providing free breakfast for all as some have advocated, we respectfully request that you consider a substantial increase in the income threshold for Connecticut to ensure that students who need access to free or reduced-price meals have it," Solan wrote.

Some school officials in Connecticut have expressed frustration over their inability to collect mounting dues from students and their families, according to Solan.

Shelton Public Schools Superintendent Ken Saranich recently proposed retaining a collections agency to recoup nearly $20,000 in student lunch debt. He also recommended that the city Board of Education suspend any child whose family owes more than $100 from extracurricular activities, such as field trips or dances, until the deficit is paid in full.

Nolan, though, said that Saranich's suggestion amounted to "lunch-shaming" and was illegal under state law.

"Is that really something that kids are supposed to be responsible for?" Nolan said. "To me, it's insane. Why are we making the kids responsible for the parents' inability to pay for the meals?"

A bill passed by the state legislature in 2021 prohibited schools from publicly identifying or shaming a child for unpaid meal charges, including refusing to serve the child a meal, providing the child with an alternative meal option or taking any other disciplinary actions against them.

Kristina Roberge, the food service coordinator at Groton Public Schools, said she worried that the large sum owed to the district in student meal debt could constrain the types of services it is able to provide. As of Monday, Groton schools had a negative meal balance of roughly $33,000, which Roberge called "definitely higher than normal."

"These funds ... have to come out of the district's budget, which means the district has less for other things," Roberge said, adding it could be positions or field trips.

Roberge also serves as the president of the SNACT, whose members have called on the state legislature to continue providing universal free meals to students. In a meeting with U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, in Washington D.C. last week, Roberge said she stressed the importance of a free-meals-for-all approach.

"These students are our future and we have the means to feed them," Roberge said she told Courtney. "That's just as important as getting bussed to school; it's just as important as getting Chromebooks and it should be part of their school day."