Free Republic

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a new state law Thursday that focuses on students' access to school meals, with provisions around free breakfast and lunch as well as unpaid meal debt. The new law also takes aim at a practice known as "lunch shaming," prohibiting schools from publicly identifying or taking punitive action against students who have unresolved debt for school meals. "The new law is both timely and critical because it boosts federal nutrition dollars to schools across Massachusetts, and keeps children out of what should be an 'adult only' conversation on school meal debt," said Patricia Baker, a...

The San Francisco 49ers may have earned a few new fans this week, but it’s not because of their most recent win on the football field—it’s because one of their players went out of his way to eliminate the cafeteria debt at a local middle school. Richard Sherman, the 49ers cornerback player, paid off all $7,500 of the outstanding lunch debt at Cabrillo Middle School this week. Cabrillo Principal Stan Garber had been working as a docent at the nearby 49ers museum when Sherman pulled him aside and handed him the check.

Gov. Newsom signed the Lunch Shaming Law today and the first arrest was made within hours of the signing. 3rd Grader Samantha White of San Francisco was charged with felony lunch shaming at her elementary school. School security officers arrested and transported Samantha to police headquarters after receiving complaints from the school staff. From her mother, it was learned that Samantha had taken a lunch to school which consisted of a Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich, bag of chips and bannana. When Samantha started eating her lunch, with the approved carton of white milk, her classmates were immediately "lunch shamed" when they...

I learned a new term this week: lunch shaming. What is lunch shaming? It’s when parents don’t pay their children’s lunch bills at school so the schools make them eat food I lived a large portion of my life surviving off of. We really are out of problems if this is an issue worthy concern for society.The New York Times had a big story on how children were made to eat cheese sandwiches because their parents had paid off their school lunch debt. Now, it’s been a while since I was in school, but I do remember school lunches costing a couple...

I believe we have fallen from God’s grace, and we cannot even find the decency to feed our own children. What have we become? Have we not said over and over again, “a child cannot learn on an empty stomach.” We are “lunch shaming” children who cannot afford to pay for their lunches. In front of God and the rest of the world, if a child owes on his or her lunch bill, instead of doing the right thing…giving the lunch to that child regardless…we are doing this: We take away the hot meal. We tell them if they want...