Elementary school students who forget their $1 in lunch money are being allowed an unlimited number of "lunch loans" under a pilot program being tried by the state Department of Education.

Previously, the decision had been left to the discretion of school officials.

But the handling of such cases became an issue last year after one school gave a child a lunch of bread and water after several days of loans, and the Board of Education asked the department to come up with a uniform policy.

The DOE does not track how many students don't have their lunch money.

The department is determined not to let the little ones go hungry at school, Randy Moore, assistant superintendent of the DOE's Office of Business Services, said yesterday.

Nonetheless, Moore said officials also will "bug the parents" to return the money to avoid seeing the school's petty cash reserves depleted or strained.

Notes are being sent home to parents the same day, advising them their child has received a loan, and letting them know the loan should be repaid the following day.

Middle and high schools have been given the option to decide whether to provide a lunch for students who forget their money, Moore said. Older students should be expected to be more responsible, Moore told a BOE committee, which is why these schools are being offered a different program.

"To date there's been almost no negative feedback (from anyone)," Moore told the committee yesterday.

Moore has been investigating alternatives and told the committee that elementary schools were instructed at the start of the fall semester to provide lunch to students who forget their $1 lunch or breakfast money and aren't signed up for a free or reduced-price lunch under Title 1 programs for economically disadvantaged students. About 40 percent of Hawai'i's 180,000 public-schoolchildren receive free or reduced-price lunches paid for with federal money.

Every year, families pay about $12 million into the school lunch program to pay for meals for their children.

Schools have been asked to report back to Moore's office at the end of the first quarter — two weeks from now — about how the program is going and whether it's a financial burden.

"We'll see how it's working," Moore said.

Moore had suggested several months ago that the department would also pursue handing over delinquent accounts to collection, but he told committee members yesterday the DOE does not have statutory authority to do that without a change in policy by the board.

Failing a change, Moore suggested that sanctions could be imposed on delinquent accounts, such as not allowing students to take part in graduation ceremonies unless school debts are paid.

Board member Denise Matsumoto said it's fairly standard for schools to have such policies now. "So we could hold that over their heads," she said.

Board member Herbert Watanabe said the board has heard there are some students "who consistently forget," and board member Maggie Cox agreed.

"The occasional ones aren't the problem. It's the consistent ones," Cox said.

Schools where this issue has been a problem in the past have given small loans to students out of petty cash, which is often provided by the parent-teacher organization. But school officials have said they don't have unlimited money to continue such a program.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.