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LEHI — Silicon Slopes executive director Clint Betts said he had no idea how bad Utah's school lunch debt was until he heard a story about a student digging through the trash to find something to eat.
For this particular student, a cafeteria worker saw what was happening and decided to cover their lunch expenses with her own money. While it may seem like a happy ending, this outcome is far from universal, and the fact that it came to a school employee taking matters into her own hands is indicative of a larger problem facing students in the Beehive State.
In Utah, school lunch debt is approximately $2.8 million. So Betts decided to harness Utah's prosperous tech sector to start chipping away at that debt, announcing that Silicon Slopes is donating all net proceeds from individual and corporate Silicon Slopes memberships to the Utah Lunch Debt Relief Fund.
Still, he knows this isn't a sustainable solution to the problem.
"No child should ever go without food at school or anywhere else," Betts said during an X space he hosted Wednesday. "I believe we live in the greatest state in the greatest country in the world, and this shouldn't be a problem. Since this is a Utah problem, it's up to Utahns to solve."
During the discussion on X, Utah Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, discussed an idea he'd previously proposed to the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee that would see the Utah Legislature appropriate $4 million to eliminate the reduced-price meal category for school students and provide the meals to students from low household incomes at no cost.
The request was not funded, but Clancy said that he would continue to work on the issue.
"I think it's time that we look at opening that up and eliminating the reduced-price category to expand," Clancy said. "Those families that, for a long time, we've always thought of as middle-class, they're feeling the squeeze now more than ever."
Neil Rickard, child nutrition advocate with Utahns Against Hunger, said that he's encouraged by the private sector stepping up to help tackle student lunch debt, but it's not addressing the source of the problem.
"Unpaid meal debt is absolutely a symptom, not the fundamental disease," Rickard said. "But, like Rep. Clancy said, there's a lot of stuff that we can do to just improve the systems in the safety net that exist right now in Utah."
That's 5,000 families that are being pursued by a collections agency for their kids to eat at a place they're mandated to be. ... It's just absurd. ... And the No. 1 problem we're facing, in my opinion, is just awareness over this fact.
– DJ Bracken, Utah Lunch Debt Relief Foundation executive director
DJ Bracken, executive director and founder of the Utah Lunch Debt Relief Foundation, said he recently learned that in the Alpine School District, 5,000 student accounts were sent to collections.
"That's 5,000 families that are being pursued by a collections agency for their kids to eat at a place they're mandated to be," Bracken said. "It's just absurd. I think every single person I've spoken to about this issue agrees that it's absurd. And the No. 1 problem we're facing, in my opinion, is just awareness over this fact."
Bracken added that school lunch debt has swelled from $1.3 million last year to $2.8 million this year.
While the Utah Lunch Debt Relief Foundation has paid off lunch debts at six elementary schools since launching a few months ago, it's a small drop in the bucket.
"It's a problem that's going to get worse," Bracken said. "We definitely want to find a solution, and I believe we have the budget. Utah's a very affluent state. I'm sure many of us have heard that we're planning on spending $900 million in taxpayer money on downtown (Salt Lake City) renovations, and $2.8 million is just pocket change compared to that."
Senate Minority Whip Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, said that she would support Clancy on any legislation he proposes to address the school lunch debt, adding that she would like to explore collaboration between the education system and local food producers to provide healthier, cheaper options for K-12 students in the state.
"We have a lot of farmers. We have a lot of growers ... and to create a program where we could maybe supplement our school lunches with choices that are locally grown and locally cultivated so that there's a free table. So instead of having to go through the lunch bar, they could go grab a piece of cheese, a piece of fruit, water, you know, some milk and just have that always available," Riebe said.
