Ankeny teachers raise more than $1,000 to pay for students' lunches

Walking around the lunchroom, teachers at Southview Middle School in Ankeny noticed something peculiar over the last few years.

Some students were not eating lunch.

The teachers learned that some of the students had negative lunch balances, leaving them sitting in the cafeteria empty handed — and with empty stomachs.

To help, Southview teachers started a lunch fund last spring and donated around $1,500 to make sure students were fed, said Misti Linn, an 8th-grade social studies teacher at the school.

“We know it’s going to help them through their day and be a more productive student, rather than think about how hungry they are,” Linn said.

In Iowa, the number of students receiving free and reduced lunch assistance has grown by 522 in the past five years, according to the Iowa Department of Education. Last year, 15 percent of students at Ankeny schools were receiving free and reduced lunch, an increase from 12 percent five years ago.

Linn said the teachers at Southview were enthusiastic about donating their money to the fund. The fund is at $1,300 this fall.

Linn said students who are hungry struggle to focus in class. In a survey she administered to a class, she said students reported they would think about eating all day if they missed lunch.

While she teaches 8th grade, she said long-term food insecurity also leads to higher rates of kids dropping out of high school.

“We just want to help those families,” Linn said.

The Ankeny school board passed the first reading of a policy that deals with how to handle negative lunch balances earlier this month. The school board decided to pull the item off the agenda for Monday’s meeting and will wait to take a vote in October.

The policy states that students in kindergarten through seventh grade would receive lunch, regardless of their balance. However, students in eighth grade and above would be denied food after two meals in the red. The district will send unpaid account balances to collections, after several notifications, according to the policy.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has mandated that every school district develop a negative lunch balance policy, forcing Iowa schools to reconsider how they handle students who cannot pay. The planned vote would have formalized this current practice into a school board policy.

But in the last four years, Ankeny's lunch debt grew from $5,000 to $43,000, in part, because it was providing hot lunch meals instead of a cheese sandwich alternative.

Linn said she hopes to petition the school board to explore and research ways all students can get fed.

She said she believes there are people in Ankeny who don’t qualify for free and reduced lunch, but still struggle to pay bills and provide meals.

As Ankeny and the school district grow, she said there’s an increasing need to be able to help at all economic levels.

While the teacher's fund is a quick fix, she said she doesn’t believe it will be sustainable and there will need to find a more-permanent solution.

“We have to remember they are kids. They’re not adults,” Linn said. “They don’t make choices with budgets.”