New Mexico Law Bans Schools From Lunch Shaming Hungry Kids

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Huffington Post

04/08/2017 06:40 pm ET
New Mexico Law Bans Schools From ‘Lunch Shaming’ Hungry Kids
“No child should be forced to wipe down cafeteria tables or throw away a meal because of a debt.”
By Hilary Hanson


New Mexico is the first state in the United States to make it expressly illegal to single out or humiliate a child who cannot pay for his or her lunch at school.

Gov. Susana Martinez (R) signed The Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights into law on Thursday, The New York Times reports. The bill is aimed at ending the practice of “lunch shaming.” It also outlines procedures for schools to collect debts and helps families in signing up for federal free or reduced-price meal assistance.

Advocates for children say tactics that stigmatize students with lunch debts are disturbingly common. This includes throwing kids’ lunches away if they can’t pay; making students clean the cafeteria; or requiring that they wear stickers, stamps or wrist bands that indicate they can’t pay.

“Children whose parents or caregivers owe money for school lunch will no longer have to miss meals or face public embarrassment in front of their peers,” Jennifer Ramo of New Mexico Appleseed, a group that works to fight poverty, said in a March statement supporting the bill. “No child should be forced to wipe down cafeteria tables or throw away a meal because of a debt.”

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-mexico-lunch-shaming-law_us_58e958efe4b00de14103e8db?section=us_politics

[certainot]

1. the limbaugh/lobos radio station's sat morning blowhard, a

truly ignorant pos, thinks it was another loss for common sense values....

there's something really totally namby pamby typical liberal about not punishing parents by starving and shaming their kids.

[Warpy]

2. Just when I want to kick her ass all the way back to Texas

she signs another good bill, the second one in as many days. The first was to get all cops to carry Narcan to save the lives of people who have overdosed on bad drugs.

Children here didn't go hungry, they just got cheese sandwiches instead of hot lunches. In some cases, the parents were shamed into paying up. In others, most of them, the children were found eligible for free lunches that their parents hadn't known about. In all cases, the kids were picked on by the other kids.

Finding another way to collect that doesn't hurt the kids seems like a more reasonable idea.

[mopinko]

3. just give them all free lunch, ferfucksakes.

if you have a high income community, find a way to raise the money so that no kid's family income is even fucking public knowledge.
considering what these lunches cost, having someone whose job it is to manage it is likely a wash.

my kids never qualified for free lunch. i always felt sorry for the teachers who had to count the coins of the kids who had to pay. and ja knows the bullies knew which kids had lunch money on them in the morning.

just feed the kids in your care all day. you make them go. you should take care of them.

[Lithos]

4. Kids need meals

It's common sense - feed the kids, and if you do it right, help local farmers. It's about as simple of a win-win as you can get for as cheap as you can get.

L-

[mopinko]

5. especially if public school is supposed to make us one people.

sharing meals is a better way to build that than reminding them who is "entitled" to eat and who isnt.

[JCanete]

6. It isn't surprising that people can be cruel, but sometimes they are astonishingly, bafflingly so.

Nice to see an R next to the name of the person who signed this into law, but its sad that that comes as a surprise to me, even in the face of something so obvious.