Turning up the heat on ‘lunch shaming’ by threatening child separation? Shame on us. | Editorial

While there is ongoing outrage over child separation at the Southern border, a school district in northeast Pennsylvania has tried to initiate a child separation program of their own as a tool to collect school meals debt. About 40 families with children in Wyoming Valley West School District schools received a letter warning them that their child could be placed in foster care if they do not pay their overdue school lunch bill. Some students’ debt was as low as $10. Overall, the school lunch and breakfast debt owed to the district was just over $22,000.

The letter sparked outrage and was denounced by members of the school board and county officials, who said that it was sent without approval from the superintendent.

In Pennsylvania, about 50 percent of students in public schools qualify for free lunches according to federal standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wyoming Valley West is applying to the USDA’s community eligibility provision, a federal program that gives more free meals for districts with high percent of students in need. Because of Philadelphia’s high poverty rate, all city students receive a free lunch.

A few years ago, the term “lunch shaming” emerged as a practice imposed when children who had school lunch debt or were unable to pay were served bare-bones meals instead of hot lunches served to others. In fact, Pennsylvania outlawed the practice of lunch shaming in 2017, though clearly not everyone has been paying attention.

School lunch debt is a failure — not of parents, but of the state and the country to figure out how to insure our children do not go hungry. If that means building universal free lunches into the state budget, that should be considered. According to Food Research Action Center, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on hunger, no state currently provides universal free meals. Oregon is the closest, having recently created a program that will double the number of schools with free meals for all students. A FRAC expert says that universal meals saves schools money by removing administrative costs to identify and enroll eligible children.

The time to figure this out is now, because things may get even worse. Just last month, Pa. lawmakers voted to kill general assistance, which helped about 10,000 of the neediest people in the commonwealth with monthly grants of $200 per month. Without general assistance, it is likely that more children will be vulnerable next year. This week, the USDA proposed a new rule that would push three million people off food stamps. School-aged students who will lose their food stamp benefits will also lose their automatic enrollment to USDA’s school meal programs, creating more barriers to access to free school lunches.

Children should be with their parents, and should be sheltered as much as possible from the traumatizing reality of poverty. Instead of shaming children and threatening parents, state and local government should provide more support for families. Making sure kids don’t go hungry seems a pretty basic standard for our nation — the wealthiest in history.