Existing law requires each school district or county superintendent of schools maintaining kindergarten or any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive, to provide one nutritionally adequate free or reduced-price meal for each needy pupil during each schoolday, except as specified. Existing law authorizes a school district or county office of education to use funds made available through any applicable federal or state program or to use its own funds to provide the required meals.

This bill would enact the Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act of 2017. The act would require certain local educational agencies, as defined, that provide school meals through the federal National School Lunch Program or the federal School Breakfast Program to ensure that a pupil whose parent or guardian has unpaid school meal fees is not shamed, treated differently, or served a meal that differs from what a pupil whose parent or guardian does not have unpaid school meal fees would receive under that local educational agency’s policy. The act would prohibit school personnel and volunteers at a local educational agency that serves nutritionally adequate meals to pupils during the instructional day from allowing any disciplinary action that is taken against a pupil to result in the denial or delay of a nutritionally adequate meal to that pupil. The act would require a local educational agency to notify a parent or guardian of the negative balance of a pupil’s school meal account no later than 10 days after the pupil’s school meal account has reached a negative balance. The act would require a local educational agency, before sending this notification to the parent or guardian, to exhaust all options and methods to directly certify the pupil for free or reduced-price meals. The act would require a local educational agency to reimburse school meal fees paid by a pupil’s parent or guardian when fees were paid or unpaid fees debt accrued when a pupil would have been determined to be eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. To the extent that these provisions would place additional requirements on local educational agencies, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.