FAYETTE COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — Earlier this month, LEX 18 told you about a fudge shop owner in Lexington making it his goal to pay off school lunch debt in Fayette County.
Now, new numbers we obtained through an open records request show the extent of the debt in FCPS.
According to data from the district, total outstanding charges are $35,760.87 across 11 schools.
One of the schools with the largest amount of school meal debt is Maxwell Elementary School. It's more than $5,000. The school is just a block away from Dahlhus Fudge, where Adam Dahl is raising money through TikTok to pay off school lunch debt.
"Even locally, I think a lot of people are surprised to find out a lot of schools in Lexington still have student lunch debt," he told LEX 18.
So far, he says he's raised more than $1,300 from TikTok, as well as cash and online donations.
Dahl says he was surprised to learn the total amount of school lunch debt at FCPS.
"I didn't expect that number to be that high," he said. "Like that's a very steep mountain to climb, and for the district to be able to come up with that money, it shouldn't, it shouldn't happen."
LEX 18 reached out to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy to learn more about school lunch debt. Jessica Klein told Evelyn Schultz, two programs help pay for meals for school children nationwide.
There is the National School Lunch Program, which provides free and reduced meals for many kids across the country. There's also the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, and most FCPS schools qualify.
"That's the program where schools, if they meet a certain threshold of students who are low income, they can provide those free school meals across the school," said Klein.
According to the FCPS website, nine schools in the district are non-CEP, so students at those schools may qualify for free meals based on family income.
"School nutrition directors are having to do this calculation of um what programs they they're able to participate in, and a lot of that has to do with the reimbursement rates of these programs as well," Klein explained.
She told LEX 18, Kentucky lawmakers could help by increasing the reimbursement rate in CEP at the state level, allowing more schools to participate.
Klein also expressed concerns about federal funding. She says potential budget cuts in Washington, D.C. could impact meals for over 360,000 Kentucky kids.
For now, it's community members like Dahl who are taking on the challenge of school lunch debt.
"I don't want my daughter, my daughter's friends or any of the kids in my school that I love, to go without lunch or have to be worried about what their lunch deficit's going to be," he said.
Dahl says other businesses have also gotten involved in his project. He's also creating a team to participate in the Lunch Lady Hustle 5K in May to continue raising money to pay off lunch debt.
FCPS District Spokesperson Dia Davidson-Smith provided LEX 18 with the following statement:
"All but nine of our campuses participate in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows all students, regardless of income, to receive free breakfast and lunch. At the nine campuses that are not CEP-designated, students who qualify for free meals based on federal guidelines also eat for free, while those who do not qualify are charged. When students without sufficient funds on their account receive a meal, their account goes into a deficit, as FCPS continues to provide them with a full meal. Families are expected to cover the charges for these meals, but if they do not, the district must absorb the cost within the general budget."
LEX 18 obtained the following FCPS policies through an open records request:
