Quite a few people on social media are upset about the alternative lunch served at Post Falls High School this week.
After sharing this story, we wanted to find out what alternative lunches look like at other school districts in our area.
This is lunch from Lake City High School in the Coeur d'Alene school district. Spokesperson Scott Maben said the district does not provide alternative meals.
He said that's because no matter how much money is in a student's account, they all get the same lunch. This includes the daily entree and no limit to the fruit and salad bar.
Turns out, the same goes for the Spokane, Mead and Central Valley school districts.
All three serve the same meals to students with or without lunch money. The only limitation is if a student cannot pay for lunch, they cannot have any extras, such as chips or sparkling juice.
Maben even wanted to make it clear, none if its students are offered less food because they do not have lunch money.
But that's not the case in the Post Falls School district,which does provide alternative lunches.
This is the snap shot of an alternative lunch at Post Fall High School we showed you earlier this week.
At the time, Superintendent Jerry Keane explained students who run out of lunch money are not allowed to pick their entree. The district serves them either a cheese sandwich or peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But they can have as many vegetables as they choose.
Keane told KREM 2 over the phone, the hope is by serving a different lunch, this will prompt the student to take responsibility of making sure they have money in their lunch account.
"The hope is that the student will say 'ok, we got to get out money into the district so I can pick a different entree if I want'," Keane said. "That's the goal. Obviously it's very difficult because we're talking about children here. We're not trying to--we don't want to be in the collections business that is the bottom line. But we are required by federal and state law to make sure we don't have outstanding balances to a certain amount."
Keane said the district is re-evaluating its lunch policies.
But on Friday Keane confirmed the district will now allow three meal charges to all students who are in the negative, not just kindergarten through eighth grade.
He also confirmed the district currently has $7,076.99 in unpaid lunch accounts.
In an email, Keane wrote: "We do not provide students with less food when they are served an alternative lunch. As I stated the other day, the meal we provide students, whose accounts are not up to date, has the same nutritional value as all lunches served. We provide them unlimited fruits and vegetables. They just don’t get to choose their entrée...Families who are in financial difficulty can easily apply for free and/or reduced lunch. We highly encourage this and provide multiple communications regarding the availability and how to fill out the required federal forms. We also provide multiple communications to parents if they happen to fall behind on their lunch accounts."
You may also remember the Coeur d'Alene girl who uses her lemonade stand to raise money for school lunch debt.