The state Department of Education is considering a policy that would allow schools to provide lunch for as long as 20 days to students who continually forget their daily dollar for lunch. After several warning notes home, the debt could go to a collection agency.

Setting such a policy in final form is still a long way off as the department continues to accept comment from school principals about what would or could work — and what won't.

It would also mean finding the money to cover the cost, and it can't come from federal lunch monies.

"If the board says we give a meal to everyone, we have to find a way to do it," said Randy Moore, DOE director of business services. "It will be a challenge to do this."

Schools generally set their own lunch policies regarding times when students don't have money, but the Board of Education asked the department to come up with a uniform policy after one school gave a child an "alternative lunch" of starch and water after several days of loans.

Schools where this issue has been a problem have been creative, providing small loans to students with no money from petty cash usually provided by the PTA. But schools have also said they don't have the money to continue such a program, and they have offered students a trimmed-down lunch.

It's difficult to get a sense of the scope of the problem because the central office has no statewide figures about how many students aren't eating lunch. The issue is also complicated by the fact that many high school students choose not to eat lunch at school, and younger students may choose to spend their money elsewhere as well.

"Fewer than three-quarters of the high school students have lunch anyway," said Moore. "And what about the seventh-grader who uses the dollar for a soda instead?"

In comments at a Board of Education committee meeting yesterday, Moore said the department hopes to have a suggested policy ready for the board to evaluate before the start of the new school year in late July.

But he also told the committee that no child whose family cannot afford lunch ever needs to go hungry.

"The ones who can't afford it, we encourage them to apply for free or reduced lunch," he said.

The department and the board are wrestling with several sticky issues as they continue to debate how to handle the issue of parents who forget to give children lunch money; the impact on those children; and federal regulations that prevent loans being made from federal lunch dollars.

"The feds say you don't give loans," explained board member Maggie Cox, a retired principal. "That's been the problem all along."

Board member Mary Cochran is adamant that children be held blameless.

"The bottom line is these kids will be fed," she said.

But cost is also a factor. Every year, families pay about $12 million into the school lunch program to pay for the meals for their children.

Forty percent of the state's 182,000 public school children — or about 70,000 children — receive federal subsidies by way of the free or reduced-price lunch program.

But families that fall below poverty levels are not the central issue here, according to Cochran. It's generally the families who forget to give their child money for lunch.

There's also the issue of families who fall temporarily into the low-income category because of a job loss, moving to the Islands or other circumstances.

These families must reapply for the free or reduced-price lunch program every 45 days, according to Terri-Jean Kam-Ogawa, a supervisor with the School Food Services Branch. And some of them find that to be too much "humbug," she said.

"Fifteen days before, I personally send letters to the household saying they need to reapply," said Kam-Ogawa. She said she sends about 50 letters out to families each month and gets only about 20 replies.

"I give them the opportunity," she said. "They don't even have to put a stamp on the return."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.