#LUNCHSHAMING: New Law Stops Schools from Shaming Students Who Dont Have Lunch Money

[DonViejo]

by Alberto Luperon | 3:23 pm, April 8th, 2017

According to supporters, New Mexico has become the first U.S. state to outlaw “lunch shaming.” That’s when a student or their parents can’t pay the lunch bill, so school officials perform certain actions to embarrass the child. This might involve throwing out the kid’s lunch food, making them do chores in return for a meal, or making them wear wristbands signifying the bill delinquency. It’s a story from 1917 2017.

“People on both sides of the aisle were genuinely horrified that schools were allowed to throw out children’s food or make them work to pay off debt,” Jennifer Ramo told https://t.co/hHXgxb40dP" target="_blank">The New York Times in a Friday report announcing New Mexico’s new law. She’s executive director of New Mexico Appleseed, an anti-poverty group that supported the reform. “It sounds like some scene from ‘Little Orphan Annie,’ but it happens every day.”

Governor Susana Martinez signed the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights on Thursday in a bid to eliminate that behavior in her state. This law makes it the parents’ responsibility to handle delinquent lunch payments, not the child’s. That means no wrist bands. No chores.

So it sounds like reform has come to New Mexico. But “lunch shaming” has been reported in one Utah elementary school as recently as 2014. In 2016, an Alabama boy reportedly had “I need lunch money” stamped on his arm.

###

http://lawnewz.com/crazy/new-law-stops-schools-from-making-students-do-chores-for-lunch/

[democratisphere]

1. What kind of an outrageously cruel country have we become?

[Solly Mack]

4. This :(

[Hekate]

2. When I was a kid in Hawai'i, every kid took their turn in the kitchen. ALL of us.

It was a shared chore, you got a day off from classes a couple of times a year, and the only exemptions were for physical inability. Doing chores shamed no one -- it was just what you did.

The food was subsidized -- ALL public schools -- don't ask me the politics, as I was a kid. How do I know this, though? My mother, who pinched every penny, said even she couldn't make a meal that cheaply, and stopped making brown bag lunches for the 4 of us.

When my own kids were in school in California, though, some bright minds decided "central kitchens" would save money, so much less nutritious food items were trucked in and reheated in microwaves ovens, don't even get me started.

The idea that it would be actual policy to let children go hungry to teach their parents some sort of lesson is abhorrent. To actually line them up in front of other children who are eating and publicly refuse to let the impoverished eat should shame any adult with even a shred of conscience.

[Danascot]

3. Nobody tell Trump

He'll sign an EO making lunch shaming mandatory.