School officials in Goffstown and New Boston say they are no longer pursuing legal action against families over school lunch debt.
“At this point, the school district has been in touch with families of all outstanding lunch accounts, and at this point, no small claims court actions are needed to resolve remaining school lunch debt,” Superintendent Brian Balke said in a video posted to the school website Sunday. “Please understand that a small claims court filing would be a last ditch effort to try to engage families to try to get them to the table so we can connect them with resources. But at this point, this is no longer necessary.”
Balke said the district “worked collaboratively” with St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Goffstown, which set up a fundraiser to offset the lunch debt, to cover some of the unpaid expenses, and some other families with unpaid accounts have since applied for free or reduced-price meals.
“These are positive developments, and we thank St. Matthews for their support of our families,” Balke said.
The superintendent’s clarification comes after outrage built over the weekend, in response to reports about the school’s plans to take families to court for unpaid meals. Scott Gross, the district’s business administrator, said he has received threats of violence in response to the situation, which he has reported to Goffstown Police.
At a school board meeting in late August, Gross said the district had “instituted small claims court proceedings on a few families” who owe food services money. When contacted by NHPR last week, he said the district had only filed one small claims case for an amount exceeding $1,500.
Gross said the school was only taking this step with people who haven't responded to other communication, and they hoped the court action would ensure the affected students are signed up for meal assistance or set up on payment plans. He also said the district was concerned about relying too heavily on outside charitable donations to fix the problem.
“Having a free or reduced lunch is a component of the education funding system in New Hampshire,” Gross told NHPR, “and having those conversations is critical of that need.”
Gross said that the majority of the unpaid lunch accounts are much smaller, only about $10 or $20, and he speculated that in those instances parents may have just forgotten to settle up with the district.
In New Hampshire, families who make under 185% of the federal poverty level are eligible for reduced price meals, and those who make less than 130% of the federal poverty level are eligible for free meals. That means a family of two would need to earn $37,814 or less to get reduced-price lunches, putting many families outside the program. There are deep funding disparities between Granite State districts, and individual schools might handle school meal plans differently.
In the Goffstown-New Boston school district, students are allowed to eat hot meals even if they can’t afford them, but families need to pay back the cost of those meals.
Rev. Jason Wells, with St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Goffstown, organized a fundraiser to cover the unpaid meal expenses after the August school board meeting where officials discussed taking legal action against families with lunch debt. The church is still accepting both donations and requests for financial assistance on its website.
Wells said the district should have sought charitable help before targeting families in court, as its own policy encourages.
“I find that by taking student families to court, we now have a very public record of all of the names of families that have accrued lunch debts,” Wells said last week.
Speaking on Sunday, Wells said he was glad to hear the superintendent state that the district welcomes the church’s assistance.
“There's been some, some ugly words I know shared online about their upset with the district and the business administrator, but I'm encouraging everybody to stay positive,” Wells said. “There's great things happening with the community response and I wanna stay focused on helping the families and the kids in our district who need it.”
Laura Milliken, director of the New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, said she isn’t sure that the small claims court is the best course of action to get families to settle balances, or to get students signed up for free or reduced lunch.
“Even if you’re eligible for free and reduced meals and you sign up, it's not retroactive to the beginning of the year,” Milliken said. “All of the time kids are eating and they weren’t signed up is the family school meal debt.”
Getting students on free or reduced lunch plans, if they qualify, can be a benefit to school districts, Milliken said: that it keeps kids fed.
Milliken said she feels for school districts like Goffstown and New Boston, because they are in a predicament that can really impact their ability to serve kids. However, she said, kids' need for food comes first. And while churches and organizations that run charitable donations to cover school lunch debt can be helpful to address student hunger, it’s still not enough.
“That’s lovely but that’s not really solving a systemic problem,” Milliken said. “We want to make sure all children have a great chance of success in school, not just the ones with a great church in the area.”
Some other school districts in New Hampshire have adjusted their budgets to account for school lunch debt. That includes the Concord School District, though according to the Concord Monitor they have gone over budget for that expense this year.
Planning for the costs of unpaid lunches is something Balke, Goffstown’s superintendent, has been looking into. He said the school district has presented the idea to the school board to include in the 2026 budget.
Both Balke and Milliken pointed out that New Hampshire is an outlier when it comes to school lunch assistance. Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts have universal free lunch. Connecticut has extended free lunch for students that qualify for reduced lunch and breakfast prices, and Rhode Island will do the same starting next year.
During the COVID pandemic, school lunches were free to all students. During the most recent legislative session, New Hampshire lawmakers rejected efforts to expand meal assistance during the school year.
Miliken said that finding ways to destigmatize food assistance programs and getting kids signed up is crucial for student’s health needs.
