First Focus Senior Director of Poverty and Family Economics Cara Baldari was interviewed for WKBN on August 11, 2017 speaking about the importance of schools paying of student lunch debt.

 

Lawmakers want federal measure to end ‘lunch shaming’ (NEXSTAR/WKBN 27)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NEXSTAR/WKBN) – Some lawmakers in Washington want to ban “lunch shaming” in schools across the nation.

The bipartisan bill would make it illegal to publicly shame students who can’t afford to pay for lunch or have outstanding school lunch balances.

New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich said it must stop.

“Don’t single out these kids and give them a lunch that is inferior to send a message that they are somehow different,” he said.

Heinrich’s home state was the first to outlaw lunch shaming—a term coined when schools punished students who couldn’t afford lunch by providing…[Read More]