Shaming children so that their parents will pay their school lunch bill.
It’s been seen all across the country and now ‘lunch shaming’ has come under fire.
There have been stories about holding children publicly accountable for unpaid school lunch bills by throwing away their meal, providing an alternative lunch or even branding them with ‘lunch money’ stamps.
"You're not going to see that in Center School District,” said Kelly Wachel, Director of Public Relations for the school district.
The recent outrage now has public school districts across the country rethinking how they cope with unpaid student lunch debts.
The Center School District is just one where shaming won’t be tolerated.
“The nature of what we believe in and what we do to serve kids, we're not going to turn students away or throw lunches away," said Wachel.
The U.S. Agriculture Department is encouraging schools to work more closely with parents to address delinquent accounts.
"It's phone calls typically, proactively calling them and telling them what the situation is on the lunch accounts," said Wachel.
Around 75 percent of students in the Center School District are on free or reduced lunches, but still the district was seeing negative lunch accounts, administrators said.
"If they reach a threshold where they have some debt, we're still letting them have hot meals," said Wachel.
In order to do this, they created the Care for Center Fund.
"This fund has really helped pick up that need to help support kinds in that way," said Wachel.
Faculty, staff and community members are donating to the fund to pay for any student lunch debt at the end of the year. Wachel says the debt is typically a couple thousand dollars.
"We want kids to feel like this is a safe environment, it's a place where they can be who they are and we will take care of them in whatever fashion we need to and that also includes taking care of them in regards to lunch money," said Wachel.
Right now the Center School District is working to receive the Breakfast in the Classroom grant. This would allow their schools to provide a ‘grab and go’ breakfast to students on their way to first period.
Other school district lunch policies:
