I have some really good news, and it involves renewing your car registration. You may have never encountered those two ideas in the same sentence, but in Utah, you can now use that chore to pay off a child’s school lunch debt.
Why would you do that? For starters, lunch debt is out of control. Just this last year we had a running total of $3.8 million in debt, and $1 million in Granite School District alone.
A million dollars in debt is just a number, and numbers are a terrible way to communicate the meaning of a kid sitting in a cafeteria feeling ashamed to eat, or a parent staring at a negative account balance they can’t pay. In a state that prides itself on community and family, that should be unacceptable.
I started the Utah Lunch Debt Relief Foundation in 2024 and we’ve since given $250,000 in lunch debt relief and helped pass the bill HB100 bringing free lunch to 40,000 more students each year. Right now, the Utah Lunch Debt Relief Foundation is working to wipe out that $3.8 million debt through a brand-new specialty license plate.
Currently, a typical Utah elementary school carries about $2,200 in unpaid lunch debt, and the way the license plate works is that you pay $53.75 up front — $23.75 goes to the DMV for the metal and fees, and $30 comes directly to our foundation — and then $30 goes to the fund every single year when you renew. That means it takes just 75 cars with this plate to completely zero out the debt of an entire elementary school every year.
So yes, please get the plate, but also make your parents get the plate. Make your weird uncle who complains about taxes all day long, but would gladly spend $30 a year so a kid at his local elementary school doesn’t go hungry. Make him get the plate.
You can visit utldr.org/plate and be done in less than 5 minutes.
I’ll see you on the road.
DJ Bracken, West Jordan