The Cherry Hill school district considered a proposal this week to not serve lunch to a student with more than $20 in unpaid food service bills.

While the board for the 11,000-student school district in Camden County did not act on the proposal from an assistant superintendent, criticism of the measure was swift and harsh. The proposal was first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The plan called for a tuna sandwich with a beverage and side dish to be the only meal served to a student with $10 or more of debt and cut meals off entirely at $20. At the same time, the district is increasing lunch prices.

Elementary and middle school students will be charged $3 daily for lunch and the cost will be $3.10 in the township’s three high schools.

“While that might seem like a lot, as we raise our school lunch prices, and one meal is $3, by like that second meal or day two, for a family that might not qualify (for reduced lunches) or is food-insecure, we’ve already got a problem," said Laurie Neary, a school board member. "So, does that become a recipe to grow the problem versus curtail the problem.”

Assistant Superintendent Lynn Shugars said the district had $14,343 in unpaid meal debt in the last school year from more than 300 students who had a debt of more than $10. The $3 million food program turned a $200,000 profit in the last school year despite the lunch debts. But Shugars said she believes the accounts in arrears will continue to grow without action.

If a student has a lunch debt, letters are sent home every 10 days by the district to not only notify the family of the debt, but also give them information about how to receive financial help and apply for reduced or free lunches if they qualify, Shugars said.

“We are happy to work with parents. We want people to apply for free and reduced lunch because it’s good for us as it is good for them,” Shugars said.

Other options they considered were making a call to parents if they came in with no money for lunch, but because of the size of the district, they decided that would be too difficult to manage. Another option was to give the students a lunch, but once they exceeded the predetermined amount of debt set by the board, they would not be given a meal, Shugars said.

“We have not been adhering to our own policy because we have not stopped serving lunch to the students and that is part of the reason why we have some of the balances that we have accumulated so far,” Shugars said.

Representives from Aramark came to the meeting at Shugars request to present to the board what the lunch would look like — not just a tuna sandwich. Kids can pick milk or juice and it comes with cucumber sticks or carrot sticks and is served on whole wheat bread.

“We opted for tunafish over peanut butter because we know that our little ones would probably very happily eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until the end of time,” she said.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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