The War Against ‘Lunch Shaming’: NYC Joins Growing List of Cities and Districts That Are Rethinking Mealtime
The day before students returned to class this month, New York City officials announced that all 1.1 million public school students would be provided with a free daily lunch. The move came a few months after state Senator Liz Krueger and state Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon introduced a bill to address school meal debt — and, more specifically, lunch shaming — across the state.
Lunch shaming is the practice of publicly penalizing students — whether stamping their wrists, calling them out of line, requiring manual labor, or providing alternative meals — for past-due lunch balances that their parents have not paid. (In one notable example last year, an Alabama student was forced to walk around with “I Need Lunch Money” stamped on his arm.)
Mayor Bill de Blasio was slow to roll out universal lunch citywide, but groups like Community Food Advocates praised the administration’s “universal lunch” approach for creating a system that will go beyond lunch balances to also provide for students who may have refused to ever apply for free or reduced-price lunch to avoid being stigmatized by their peers. . .