Students Shouldn’t Be Ashamed to Eat Lunch
California lunch shaming bill should be a model for national policy
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By Bobbi Dempsey
School lunch shaming shows up in ugly ways across the United States thanks to the lack of a national policy on how to handle student lunch debt. Districts and states take different approaches to the issue, but they all have one thing in common: the stigma and embarrassment they can cause for the children involved.
This kind of shaming in front of classmates can be traumatic to a child. I know, because I was once one of those hungry students.
Lunch shaming was a hot topic again in recent weeks thanks to newsworthy actions on opposite sides of the country. The conflicting ways the issue was handled in each case illustrates the need for a national policy that puts lunch shaming to rest once and for all.
In a country as prosperous as ours, lunch debt should not even be a thing. And grade school kids saving up quarters and dimes to ensure their friends don’t go hungry definitely shouldn’t be a thing.
In mid-October, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation that prohibits “lunch shaming,” specifically banning the practice of giving a different (and generally less appealing) meal to students with lunch debt. A common tactic, this “alternate meal” practice publicly identifies and shames students, targeting them for potential ridicule and bullying from their peers.
Newsom said he was inspired to address the issue after hearing the story of Ryan Kyote, a 9-year-old boy from Napa, California, who saved up his allowance to pay off the lunch debt of his classmates.
Around the same time, a school district in New Jersey passed a new policy that would ban students with a lunch debt of more than $75 from participating in after-school activities, going on field trips, or attending the prom.
In a country as prosperous as ours, lunch debt should not even be a thing. And grade school kids saving up quarters and dimes to ensure their friends don’t go hungry definitely shouldn’t be a thing.
