Today the Minnesota Senate passed a comprehensive Education Budget that fully funds our schools, emphasizes student literacy, provides quality education and opportunities for students, and empowers parents. Included in the final bill was significant language authored by Senator Karin Housley (R-Stillwater) that ends “lunch shaming” practices in the state of Minnesota.

This powerful language prohibits schools from denying school meals to children that have an outstanding lunch balance, provides specific examples around what constitutes lunch shaming, forbids certain types of lunch shaming (bans on school events like graduation ceremonies, extracurricular activities, and field trip participation), and establishes a role for the commissioner to ensure schools remedy any practices that are out of compliance.

“We’ve seen so many versions of the bill before, but I’m delighted to announce we finally got it to the finish line, and we are well on our way to ending lunch shaming in Minnesota,” said Senator Housley. “Previous examples have shown that when a student’s family can’t afford to pay for their child’s school lunch, and the student’s lunch account goes into overdraft, the student will either get their lunch taken away or get it replaced with a cheese sandwich. In some cases, the kids have gotten stamps placed on their arm. These are moments a child will never forget. Now that we have passed this critical language, it is my hope that no student will ever have to experience this traumatic shaming ever again.”

This language guarantees that even in times of uncertainty, as many experienced throughout the last year, under-served students will be getting a nutritious meal without suffering any form of “food shaming.” It also ensures that any communication regarding school meal balances remains strictly between the parents and the school.