NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A6527A
SPONSOR: Kelles TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the education law, in relation to prohibiting schools or
school districts from filing a lawsuit against a student's parent or
guardian for unpaid meal fees
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
To prohibit families from being sued for unpaid school meal fees.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1: Amends section 908 of the education law to prohibit schools
or school districts from filing lawsuits to collect unpaid school meal
fees.
Section 2: sets effective date.
JUSTIFICATION:
In 2018, the legislature took action to address meal shaming in public
schools. This measure took important steps to ensure that students who
may have unpaid school meal fees would not be shamed or treated differ-
ently than their peers. Since 2018, there have been prominent cases
nationwide of school districts filing lawsuits or threatening to take
the families of students with unpaid meal fees to court to collect fees.
Though infrequent, these incidents are counterproductive to the goal of
ending meal shaming. This legislation takes another important step:
prohibiting lawsuits being filed by schools or school districts against
families for unpaid School meal fees.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
New bill.
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
To be determined.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
IMMEDIATELY
