Community pressure mounts on Bethlehem school board over free lunch

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Advocates, parents, clergy and alumni showed up to the Bethlehem Area School District board meeting Monday night to demand the district enroll in a federal free meal program — and stayed long after adjournment, pressing board members in the hallway for answers.

Roughly 70 to 100 community members filled the March 23 meeting to push the district to adopt the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal program that allows qualifying districts to offer free meals to all students without requiring individual family applications. The turnout was the largest the board had seen on the issue, according to Director Kim Shively.

The gathering is part of a nearly two-year campaign led by the Lehigh Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, working with local clergy and other community partners. By the night of the meeting, their petition had grown to 542 signatures.

Stories of shame and hunger

During public comment, speaker after speaker shared personal accounts of the stigma tied to school lunch debt — borrowing change from friends, skipping meals, and dreading the lunch period.

“Just bringing up this movement to my peers, my fellow graduates of Freedom, I found out that a number of my close friends secretly and silently hid that they could not purchase lunch because they had to pay too much debt,” said Kristina, a Freedom High School alumna.

Former BASD school nurse Kathy Hopkins, who said she worked in the district for 33 years, told the board that “staff, including administrators, keep food currently at this time in their office to feed kids who are hungry.”

Charlyann Acosta, 30, a lifelong Bethlehem resident who attended Fountain Hill, Calypso, Nitschmann Middle School and Liberty schools, described growing up splitting time between Bethlehem and Puerto Rico.

In her Puerto Rican neighborhood, she said, there was a community building where any child could walk in Monday through Friday and get a full lunch — rice, beans, meat, milk. “We could get seconds,” she said.

Back in Bethlehem, she recalled the burden of transitioning from free and reduced lunch to paying for meals: keeping track of the money, forgetting it, watching her debt accumulate, and noticing the expressions on cafeteria workers’ faces. “There are so many responsibilities that it falls on,” she said. “And it affects so many people.”

Twenty-one area clergy signed a letter calling on the board to act, citing an obligation to feed children “without shaming them or requiring burdensome documentation.” Signatories represented Episcopal, United Church of Christ and Moravian congregations, among others.

BASD students currently carry $264,000 in outstanding lunch debt, a figure drawn from a January 2024 board meeting and cited in advocacy materials. The district previously hired a third-party collection agency to pursue families with balances of $50 or more.

All students already receive free breakfast through Pennsylvania’s universal free breakfast initiative, but lunch remains means-tested.

The community’s fiscal case

Advocates argued the district’s own projected cost of $500,000 per year for district-wide CEP adoption works out to roughly $10 per property annually in Northampton County — though they acknowledged the figure is an average and that individual tax bills would vary by assessed value.

They also pointed to 11 BASD schools that, based on a right-to-know request filed by the Pennsylvania Cancel Lunch Debt Coalition, could enroll in CEP at no cost under current federal eligibility thresholds.

“There are 11 schools who could be enrolled in the CEP at no cost to anybody,” said Sebastian Zawierucha, an LVDSA organizer and BASD Class of 2019 alumnus.

Advocates further noted that neighboring districts — including Allentown and Easton, both of which operate under CEP, and Whitehall — have all adopted free lunch programs, and that some receive less federal CEP reimbursement than BASD would.

Advocates also argued that the $264,000 debt figure understates the real burden—it reflects only outstanding balances, not families who have already paid down debt. The financial strain on households, they said, is ongoing and largely invisible.

On cost, advocates noted the district spends approximately $4 million per month on charter school tuition, many of which already provide free lunch, making the $500,000 annual CEP cost roughly 1 percent of that spending, according to advocates.

The district has said it wants to see average daily meal participation rates increase before CEP makes financial sense. Advocates counter that adopting CEP itself increases participation, citing federal data showing that CEP adoption typically boosts lunch participation by roughly 7 percent in the first year.

The district’s position

In a press release issued the morning of the meeting, Superintendent Jack Silva said the program “does not cover the full cost for a district like BASD” and that implementing CEP would create a projected annual shortfall of approximately $500,000.

To understand the dispute, some context helps. BASD already offers free lunch — but only to students whose families qualify by income and submit an application each year. CEP would eliminate that process and extend free lunch to every student regardless of income.

The catch: federal reimbursement under CEP is tied to a district’s number of low-income students. BASD’s share isn’t high enough to cover all meals, leaving an estimated $500,000 annual gap that the district says would have to be filled by local taxpayers.

Faccinetto extended the public comment period by 10 minutes beyond the standard 30 minutes by a two-thirds vote of the board. He noted it was the first time in years he had imposed a three-minute speaking limit — a measure he said was intended to include more voices, given the turnout.

When that period ended, the audience pushed for a second extension — but the vote fell short of two-thirds and the meeting moved toward adjournment. Audience members chanted and called out.

Before the board adjourned, Shively was the only board member to address the crowd. She acknowledged the goal, expressed sympathy and personally suggested advocates push for HB180 — state legislation that would require Pennsylvania to cover the gap between federal CEP reimbursement and actual meal costs — which she called the most efficient path forward.

The crowd repeatedly interrupted her while she spoke.

“This is not my money, this is not our money,” Shively said afterward. “It’s the people’s money. I hope we can come to a good resolution. I think we will.”

Board members stay to talk after adjournment

After adjournment, Faccinetto, Silva, Shively and Director M. Rayah Levy remained in conversation with Zawierucha and roughly a dozen LVDSA members in the hallway.

Faccinetto said BASD is projecting a $10 million deficit even at the maximum allowable tax increase, which he described as “probably the most difficult budget we’ve had in probably 10 years.”

Faccinetto said he felt “the majority of people would support” enrolling the 11 eligible schools in CEP. Zawierucha called it the first time Faccinetto had said so publicly.

Faccinetto did not dispute the characterization. He confirmed that a CEP presentation is scheduled for the April finance committee meeting. The CEP enrollment window opens April 1, with an application deadline of June 30.

Levy told advocates directly, “I don’t want you guys to think that we don’t care. We do care… I heard what you guys were saying. I really listened. I even took notes.”

Faccinetto said he didn’t think anyone would argue against state-level advocacy, adding: “Personally, I think the state should have funded lunch and not breakfast, if they were going to do a universal anything.”

Silva agreed, describing universal school meals as “a God-given responsibility to kids” that the state and federal government — with far greater resources than a local school district — should be providing.

Silva confirmed he is retiring June 30; who succeeds him and where that person stands on CEP is not yet known.

Pressure expected to continue

Faccinetto said he expects more board members to voice views on the 11-school question at the April meeting. Whether the June 30 application deadline will be met — or, as advocates say, again deferred, as it has in prior years — remains to be seen.

Silva, for his part, reflected on the evening’s turnout.

“You can’t not respect public comment and expect the public to be engaged in the schools and loyal to the schools,” he said.