Help families pay school lunch debt

Students rely on a nutritious school breakfast and lunch program to ensure they are ready-to-learn! Almost 1 in 5 students in the Norris School District qualify for free or reduced price lunch based on the federal government's income eligibility criteria for the National School Lunch Program. Some of these families' eligibility lapses and they accrue debt. These debts can cause an extreme hardship for low-income families to pay off, who are forced to make many sacrifices to make ends meet on a weekly and monthly basis.

We currently have several dozen free- and reduced-lunch participating families at Norris who have significant lunch debts (>$20 to >$300).

Many of these families also benefit from our backpack program, which sends food provisions home for the family throughout the weekend courtesy of our school partnership with the Norris Area Food Pantry. While we never deny breakfast or lunch at school to children, the families retain responsibility for debt accrued as part of the school lunch program.

Donations to the Norris Foundation earmarked for Food Service Debt will be applied towards families in need to reconcile their accounts and erase their debt obligations. The donations will be applied to families with lunch deficits who have low-income status.

The Norris Education Foundation is a recognized non-profit Foundation whose mission is to assist the students, staff and programs of the Norris School District in Firth, NE.