School lunch shaming is a controversial problem in the United States today. When a child’s parents or guardians owe unpaid meal fees to the school, the child is “shamed” and given an alternative lunch. Such a meal is usually bread with butter and jam on it, for example.
One state has recently made this act illegal. It’s now banned to shame, treat differently, or serve a child a meal that differs from the other students in California. Gov. Galvin Newsome signed a bill into law that guarantees all students to be entitled to a meal of their choice no matter what.
Why the sudden change of heart? Newsom was inspired by a kind 9-year-old student from Napa County elementary school who gave up his entire saved up allowance to pay off his friends’ $74.80 lunch debt.
The governor said:
He showed how at many schools across the country, students whose parents are not able to pay for their lunch are given a cheaper, ‘alternative’ lunch that causes them to stick out from their peers.
He had been paying for other students who couldn’t afford a meal with his lunch card all year, but this time he took it a step further by using his entire savings up and drew a lot of attention by doing so.
His mother Kylie Kirkpatrick said:
He was like, ‘I don’t understand why that happened. Why would that happen to a 5-year-old?’ It really touched him in a way and he wanted to do something so that wouldn’t happen to his friends. We talked about what we could do to make a difference locally.
This problem is prevalent in schools across America. It has drawn lots of public attention lately. As reported by People:
A Pennsylvania school district made headlines when it sent letters to parents with outstanding balances telling them to pay or else their kids could end up in foster care. In another case, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya donated nearly $50,000 to pay off the lunch debt of a Rhode Island school district that planned to deny hot food to students who owed meal fees.
Ms. Pratt-Heavner, an association spokesperson, told the New York Times that the average lunch debt accumulated by a single American student is $2,500. There are around 30 million students in 100,000 schools across the nation. According to the School Nutrition Association, 7.7 million of them pay their meals in full, 1.8 million pay at a reduced price and 20 million receive a free meal. At the commencement of the 2016-2017 school year, 75% of the students had unpaid meal debt.
