From Your Neighbors

Cherokee County, GA has a median household income of over $108,000. On paper, school meal debt shouldn't exist here. But it does, and the reasons go far beyond income. From cash flow gaps to broken notification systems to a July application window many families miss, here are seven reasons meal debt is a systems problem, not a poverty problem.

Economists call it the K-shaped economy, where some households thrive while others fall further behind. For school nutrition programs, the effects aren't abstract. They show up in the lunch line. Unpaid meal debt nationally jumped 49% in a single year, and a shrinking safety net means more families are falling into the gap between qualifying for help and affording full meal costs. Here's what the data shows, and where neighbors fit in.