Entroncamento Stopped Serving Lunch to Pupils With Unpaid Meal Accounts, and One Father Heard at 11:30 That His Daughter Would Not Eat
The council confirms it has suspended school meals where money is owed since 21 September, and says it will review how families are told. Staff had phoned more than 50 parents, the father told the council.
A father in Entroncamento got a phone call at about 11:30 one morning this week telling him his daughter would not be given lunch at school and that he would have to come and collect her. The reason: an unpaid balance on the family's school meals account. The council has confirmed that since 21 September it has been suspending meals for pupils whose families owe money, and says it will now review how families are told.
What happened at the António Gedeão school
The case was raised at Tuesday's public council meeting by the father, Fernando Maurício, whose daughter attends the Escola Básica António Gedeão. He acknowledged that he had not settled the account in time, but called it "inadmissible" that a child could be left without a meal, and objected above all to how and when he was told. He said he had received no call beforehand, and argued that if the school could phone him on the day to say his daughter would not eat, it could have used the same phone call earlier so that he could pay.
He added that a member of staff told him they had already phoned more than 50 parents, though he said he did not know exactly how many families or children were affected.
The council's side
The mayor, Nelson Cunha (Chega), confirmed that the decision to suspend meals where money is owed was the council's, taken together with the Agrupamento de Escolas Cidade do Entroncamento, because of what he called a "considerable" amount outstanding. He did not give a figure.
According to Cunha, the council sent three emails to parents with debts, and warned at the start-of-year sessions that meals would be suspended from 21 September until balances were settled. On Monday, the day the measure was due to start, meals were in fact still served, and the school cluster contacted families again by phone and with a written notice for parents to sign.
"This decision, in itself, is obviously not one that was easy," Cunha said. He has promised to raise the procedure again with the school cluster "so that together we can have more effective communication, to avoid this kind of incident". A councillor from the PSD and CDS-PP coalition, Rui Madeira, proposed a system that alerts parents by mobile phone when a balance is due and lets them top it up immediately.
What the rules say
Entroncamento's school social action regulation makes registration for school services conditional on having no debts from previous use. It also makes parents responsible for booking meals, and requires the pupil's school card to hold enough credit to cover the price of the meal.
What parents elsewhere should know
School meals in Portuguese state schools are organised by the council in most of the country, and each council sets its own payment and booking rules, so practice varies from one municipality to the next. Families on lower incomes can apply for Ação Social Escolar (ASE), the school social support scheme: pupils in bracket A get free meals and those in bracket B pay a reduced price. The bracket follows the family's child benefit band, and applications go through the school or the council. Parents who are struggling to keep a meal card topped up should speak to the school cluster's social support office before a debt builds up, and ask to be told directly, by phone or text, if the balance runs out.
