The school district of Cherry Hill has rejected an offer to erase more than $14,000 in school-meal debts with a donation from a local supermarket chain, a district spokeswoman said.

The offer came from Steve Ravitz, whose family operates a chain of five ShopRite and one PriceRite market in South Jersey.

Ravitz, 72, announced his offer recently in a local Facebook group. District officials said they were not able to reach him through phone calls to the company’s headquarters in Cherry Hill, but would have rejected the offer.

“The district is not accepting donations toward meal debt,” Barbara Wilson, a school spokeswoman said Tuesday.

The debate over the district’s meal-debt policy has metastasized into the national spotlight. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, called Cherry Hill’s meal-debt policy “cruel” in a tweet Monday.

Cherry Hill passed a plan to punish students with more than $75 in lunch debt by potentially limiting participation in some extra-curricular activities, including senior prom if efforts to bring the accounts current are not successful. The new plan scrapped an earlier proposal to cut off meals for students who owed more than $20.

In a plan she announced on Monday, Warren said she would use a wealth tax to increase school funding by hundreds of billions of dollars, to — among other things — cancel student lunch and breakfast debt and provide free meals.

“Our new policy is an extreme outlier in New Jersey as other districts continue to follow the state statute ... that requires meals to be ‘withheld,’" district Superintendent Joseph Meloche said in a statement Tuesday. "In Cherry Hill, all children who want a meal are fed. Unfortunately, there is a discussion going on outside of our community that is dramatically different and not representative of what is going on within our community.”

Jason Ravitz, Steve’s son, who is also an executive in the family supermarket business, said his family’s markets regularly give back to the needy and are still based in Cherry Hill. Ravitz is a deputy mayor and member of the township committee in Voorhees, a neighboring town.

"I am a little distressed at the school board, implying we never made a formal offer,” Ravitz said. “For them to push back in the media, trying to be a good guy, makes them look worse.”

The Cherry Hill school district had $14,343 in meal debt in the last school year from more than 300 students who owed more than $10. The $3 million food program turned a $200,000 profit in the last school year despite the lunch debts.

Local officials said they were mandated to take action by a state policy that calls for cutting off meals after $20 of debt.

Cherry Hill officials have forgiven more than $25,000 of delinquent payments in previous years before the debt rose again.

CORRECTION: The amount of lunch debt that could trigger restrictions on students is $75. An earlier version of this article was incorrect.

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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