Arlington Public Schools ended the 2024-25 school year with nearly a quarter-million dollars in uncollected debt for student meals.
School Board members authorized the transfer of $248,523 in funding to cover the shortfall on Thursday. Of that total, about 80% was from students who have graduated, while the remainder was from students classified as inactive, according to a staff report.
APS receives funding through the National School Lunch Program, which requires that school divisions make reasonable efforts to collect unpaid debt for meal services. Arlington policies allow for several collection methods, but not for suing parents to recoup the costs.
Under the school system’s food-service policies, students who are behind on meal payments can still receive meals, but they can’t choose additional a la carte items.
“Arlington Public Schools does not deny any student a reimbursable meal because of a negative account balance,” School Board Chair Bethany Zecher Sutton said.
Students also are not prohibited from engaging in extracurricular activities and are not required to do school chores if there is a negative balance, which is the case in some school divisions.
Under federal law, school systems must reimburse any uncollectible meal debt into the food-service program fund at the end of every school year. Federal funds cannot be used to make the reimbursement.
In other news from the July 24 meeting:
Cell-phone policy tweaked
School Board members made several tweaks to the school system’s existing restrictions on student cellphone use during the school day.
The changes are aligned with a new state law that went into effect July 1.
Among the provisions enacted by School Board members, county policy will be that no student will be suspended or expelled solely for violating phone-use regulations. However, students could be suspended or expelled if there is disruptive behavior — such as harassment or bullying — connected to enforcement of the policy.
Calendar now includes a reminder about floating holidays
Hoping to avoid a repeat of a springtime controversy, School Board members added language to the 2025-26 school calendar noting that a number of holiday dates may change in coming months.
“Religious and cultural observance days may vary each year and can sometimes shift even after the school calendar is adopted,” the new caveat says. “Because of these potential changes, schools are encouraged to avoid scheduling events on the day before or after these designated observance days.”
The calendar now specifies Rosh Hashana (September), Yom Kippur and Diwali (October), Eid al-Fitr (March) and Eid al-Adha (May) as holidays that may vary from the specific dates listed.
During the 2024-25 school year, APS officials had anticipated that the Islamic Eid al-Adha commemoration would not take place on a weekend. Because the actual date of the observance each year depends on lunar calculations, it ultimately fell on Friday, June 6.
That put school leaders in a bind, as there had been many end-of-year events, including a major national music festival, slated for that day.
The possibility that school and activities would be canceled that day angered one group of parents, while the prospect that the school system would not mark the holiday angered another group.
Eid al-Adha represents “one of the holiest days in Islam,” said Nouha Shwehdi, who spoke to Board members in May when the issue played out. “The importance of this religious day for Muslims cannot be minimized.”
Board members ultimately voted 4-1, with Bethany Zecher Sutton in opposition, to hold classes and activities on June 6.
A similar case involving Eid al-Adha had occurred several years before, but that year, there had been enough advance notice of the correct date of the observance to mitigate impacts of the change.
Photo via Obi/Unsplash
