--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this episode of Today Explained comes from KiwiCo. It's a company that designs projects to spark creativity, tinkering, and learning in kids of all ages. They're offering Today Explained listeners the chance to try them out for free to redeem the offer and learn more about their projects for kids of all ages. Visit KiwiCo.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most American kids are nowhere near schools right now, but Pennsylvania somehow still managed to have a big old school scandal this week. And the scandal was somehow about lunch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A school district under fire for sending threatening letters to parents demanding they pay their children's outstanding lunch bills or risk their kids being taken away and sent to foster care.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One more time, just in case you missed that. A school district in Pennsylvania sent parents letters that threatened to take away their children if the parents didn't pay outstanding school lunch bills.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the person that wrote that letter should think about having his children taken away from him and put into a foster home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Wednesday, the school district apologized.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Todd Carmichael, a Philadelphia businessman, offered to pay off the debt of $22,000, but he was turned down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, late today, multiple sources told CBS News the district will now accept Carmichael's offer and send an apology letter to the parents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this fight over school lunches and school lunch debt isn't over. Au contraire, it's ongoing all over the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Students in Madison County stage a protest after a cafeteria worker ordered a classmate to throw out his lunch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's part of a school policy aimed at students who rack up lunch debt. Any student with unpaid lunch debt will be given a sun butter and jelly sandwich instead of the option of a hot meal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We heard from 22 districts, including the state's largest, and found they're carrying more than $346,000 in unpaid lunches.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was in lunch one day getting lunch, and a kid in front of me didn't have enough money, and they had to put their tray down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that made me sad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I went home and I asked my mom, what can I do to help?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's gotten to the point where students are passing around the hat to pay for other students' lunches.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm collecting donations and I'm returning bottles to collect money to pay off their lunch accounts and put money on them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we know just overall in and out of schools that more than 12 million children in the U.S. suffer from some form of food insecurity, meaning that they don't have access to high-quality foods consistently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nadra Niddle is a senior reporter at Civil Eats. It's a website about food policy.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: When it comes to school meals in and of themselves, it's a little bit harder to say exactly how many kids are going without lunch.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: But we know that lunch debt is something that's likely in the millions of dollars throughout the country.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Could you explain exactly how public school lunch debt works in the United States for those who aren't familiar or perhaps don't have a system where school lunch debt is even possible?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Say you're a student who has a meal lunch account. Your parents put $100 on your lunch account.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: At some point, let's say three months into the school year, it runs out.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And say this is a proactive school. So they let the parent know your child doesn't have enough money in the meal account.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And say these parents find out, oh, I forgot. They pay the debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Maybe they're given a cold sandwich. They're given, you know, fruit and a carton of milk instead of a hot meal.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Maybe that happens for three days and then the parents pay the debt and it's over.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: For some kids, it could go on longer than that.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And many schools and states have established policies in recent years that kind of forbid cafeterias from turning kids away.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So some of those kids may never go without hot meals in those states or in those school districts.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: There are some school districts alone that have tens of thousands or millions of dollars of lunch debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So schools are really struggling with their budgets.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And so in turn, they're putting little children into debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Obviously, it's not the kids themselves, which is why so many people get so wild up and upset about this as they should.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: It's their families that owe the school money.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And the reason you see so much outrage is why should students pay for their parents either not being able to afford lunch or for parents who are just negligent for whatever reason who may be able to afford lunch but maybe forgot and just didn't.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So the public concern is that the child is being punished for something that they have no control over.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: But isn't there already a government program to ensure low-income students get free lunch?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Yes. So there is a free and reduced lunch program which should cover meals for students from low-income families.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And if your family qualifies for those programs you wouldn't be paying any money for lunch or you would be paying money at a reduced rate for lunch
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So the government would subsidize meals for those children
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So if the federal government does provide money and puts these kids in these free or reduced lunch programs, how do kids or families end up falling into debt?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So they fall into debt because some families may not have ever filled out the paperwork that basically qualifies them for a free lunch.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Some may not be familiar with the program and the school wasn't proactive in letting all families know.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Some families may just feel like, I don't want a free lunch. You know, out of pride, they don't want any sort of government assistance.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And some families may be undocumented and they don't want to sign up for any sort of government program.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: The other issue is with the reduced lunch, where the families are paying 40 cents for lunch.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Well, that doesn't seem like a lot.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: You know, say you have two or three kids and you're from a reduced lunch family, even if you're paying, say, $1.20 a day every day, it can add up if you are not making a lot of money.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: What's the experience like for a free or reduced lunch kid?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Are they being shamed?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Do they have to wear a different colored T-shirt or something?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So when we get into the issue of lunch shaming, there have been schools that have put stickers on a kid's shirt saying, you know, need lunch money.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And so that's how...
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Really? I was joking.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: No, there have been school districts that do that.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So outside of those, you know, really awful ways that some schools have lunch shame students, it may just be the kid gets in the lunch line.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: They give the cafeteria worker, you know, their meal card.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: The worker scans it, finds out they don't have enough money.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And the worker will literally throw out the kid's lunch in front of them and say, you don't have enough money.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And I should also point out the reason why they dumped these lunches is just because, you know, there's so many guidelines around food handling.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: There's been some cases where kids have been told that they need to do chores.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So sweeping up the cafeteria, for example, or, you know, doing some other sort of work to, you know, basically work off their lunch debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: But in Minnesota, what we heard is that Minnesota schools were telling kids that they could not graduate until their lunch debt was paid off.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Wait, so kids are actually being held back for lunch debt?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So my understanding is that they're not technically being held back.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So if you had enough credits to graduate from high school, they wouldn't stop you from graduating from high school, but you would not be allowed to participate in the graduation exercises or ceremonies.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: The other issue I've heard, and these practices are all illegal to my knowledge, is, you know, refusing to hand over your transcripts.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: That in a way would be kind of blocking you from going on to college.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Is anyone trying to fix this?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So we have organizations who definitely are trying to fix these problems.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Some are trying to do this simply by raising money for lunch debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So there's a group, for example, called Feeding Texas, and they raised tens of thousands of dollars a couple of years ago to help students in that state eliminate their lunch debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: There's the Philando Castile Foundation, which is in Minnesota.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: It's named after Philando Castile, the black man who was slain in a very controversial police shooting a few years ago.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: He was a cafeteria worker.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And when he was alive, he was known for paying off the lunch debt of the students that he served.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And so that foundation continues his legacy after his tragic death.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And there's organizations like the Food Research and Action Center.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: They try to work with legislators to have, you know, come up with solutions to these problems.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: It's nice to hear that, I guess, fellow students and community foundations are taking this up and trying to solve this issue.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Is the government doing anything on a federal or state level?
--:-- Nadra Niddle: Right now, Congress is in the middle of reauthorizing the Childhood Nutrition Program.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So this is a program that's supposed to be updated every five years or so.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: It hasn't been reauthorized, though, in about a decade.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So 2010 was the last time Congress made any real changes to this.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So this year, we could see some changes that may eliminate these problems.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: For example, we could see some sort of retroactive debt policy.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So right now, the way it works is that even if you were to enroll after three months of not knowing this program existed, but being eligible, you would still be on the hook for all of the lunch debt.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: The other thing, it's called the community eligibility provision, which some schools are already using to essentially provide free lunch to all students.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: So say if you in a school district where two of the kids we know they qualify for free and reduced lunch the school district would be able to pay for all students even the ones who maybe make a little more money and wouldn't qualify for this community eligibility provision.
--:-- Nadra Niddle: And that helps to eliminate lunch debt as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so the federal government might do something soon until that happens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So until that happens, the USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a couple of years ago did issue a guidance telling schools that they need to be more proactive about communicating with families about lunch debt as soon as that kid goes into the red.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And even before that happens, that schools need to help families fill out the paperwork for free and reduced lunch so that we don't have families who should have been enrolled all along, accruing debt, and then having no way to pay for it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Philando Castile confronted student lunch debt every day working in a school cafeteria, but his mom, Val, had no idea any of this was happening until after her son died.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She explains why she started a foundation to address it after the break.
--:-- Valerie Castile: Hello? Hello Desmond!
--:-- Desmond: Hi! Hey, it's Sean again, remember me?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes I do! How's it going?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your mom Liz, my colleague, told me that you're maybe working on a KiwiCo crate right now.
--:-- Desmond: It was a paper airplane launcher.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cool. A paper airplane launcher?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow. What does this thing look like? How does it work?
--:-- Desmond: Well, it's a runway, and it has two little circles that keep going around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cool. The last time we spoke, I think we talked about how you were going to camp that day, and I asked you to tell your friends that KiwiCo is offering today Explain listeners a chance to try them for free and to redeem the offer and learn more about their projects for kids of all ages.
--:-- Desmond: You have to go visit KiwiCo.com slash explain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you let anyone know about KiwiCo.com slash explain?
--:-- Desmond: Yeah, I let a few people know about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cool. Well, enjoy. Let me...
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, at least I think so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now you can talk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you, Desmond.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, good luck. Talk to you soon, buddy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Take care. Okay, bye.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bye-bye.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Valerie Castile, and, you know, my close friends call me Val.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My daddy called me Captain all my life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think about that a lot because look what I'm doing right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My son, he was the one and only Philando DeVal Castile.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, it's been nearly three years since a St. Anthony police officer shot and killed Philando Castile.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His family is carrying on his legacy with a donation that will wipe away the worries of countless students and their families.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Philando found his calling working with children.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was a supervisor at J.J. Hill Montessori School when he was denied his right to live.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Children at J.J. Hill Montessori School knew him as Mr. Phil, and his legacy of helping them get fed is living on in a new way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Philando served children their breakfast and lunch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was pretty much the first person that the children saw during the beginning of the day, because the breakfast is the beginning of the day before they actually went into their classrooms.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was the first person to greet them by helping them get off the bus in the morning.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He came to school early enough where he could help the children with disabilities get off the bus and get back on the bus at the end of day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He loved those kids.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll just start off right there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was devoted to his job.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Throughout his career as a nutritionist or supervisor, he received several perfect attendance certificates.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mind you, every year he's fighting tickets, you know, over the course of his driving career or whatnot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He had over 50 tickets, but he managed to get to work every day and serve those children their meals that they needed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Robbinsdale's Cooper High School just got a big check to pay off lunch debt for its students.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Valerie Castile's foundation paid the debt in memory of her son Philando.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The foundation was designed around the things that Philando held new and dear to his heart.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was the children, family, and his community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The foundation helps families that lose a loved one to gun violence and we also pay off the negative lunch balances for our struggling school districts here in Minnesota.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, he wanted to make sure that those children had a nutritious meal every day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, when you bring your children to school, you're entrusting your children with the people, the staff at the school.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he knew all of those children by name.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He knew all of their allergies and he had a relationship with them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he can persuade the children to do things that their parents couldn't persuade them to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I mean, if they're having a bad day and they're not on their best behavior or whatever, he would come out of the cafeteria and talk to the child and explain, you know, hey, listen, you got to do what your mom and your dad asked you to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are your parents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if they say you need to do this and do that, then that's what you need to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they go, OK, Mr. Phil. OK.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: District officials say when a student couldn't pay for their lunch, Philando Castile often actually paid for their lunches out of his own pocket.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't have school-age children, so I knew absolutely nothing about what was going on in that environment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So obviously, he saw that there was a problem in order for him to just take initiative and do something about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of us in the morning, we can't get going without our cup of coffee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now you think about a child that has slept all night and get up to go to school and be denied a meal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or you have to wear a certain tag that separates you from the rest.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Lunch shaming. I think it's ridiculous.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know what going on up in them schools, but I think to deny a child a nutritious meal, I think that is awful within itself because we don't know everybody's family dynamic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't know how a family is living, if they can afford the lunches or if those two meals for the day are the most nutritious meals that a child is getting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or if that's the only meals that they are getting and to deny a child because of the conditions of their family.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, if you're living in poverty, you're living in poverty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you don't have the money, then you're going to make the child suffer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's ridiculous.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And another thing, I think we as adults, we pay enough taxes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They should offer those meals and education for our children free across the board.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, we pay taxes for food, clothing, personal property taxes, tabs, gas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We taxed already before you get your paycheck.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think it's awful that our children have to suffer because of an adult situation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because our children have one job. That's to go to school, become educated, and lead this country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they cannot be successful if they're hungry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of officials started to think about things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once we started paying off the lunch balances and then a lot of the horror stories started to surface, then our legislators started paying attention.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I'm sad that I'm able to do that because of the murder of my son.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's been bittersweet, but it's very rewarding knowing that I helped a child be successful.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just to be able to help a child that's in need.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, kindness is contagious.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, we're doing this lunchroom thing, paying off the debt.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So then that encourages other people to help their communities as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: KiwiCo is on a mission to empower kids, not just to make a project, but to make a difference.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: KiwiCo is offering today. Explain listeners the chance to try them out for free and to take them up on that offer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to KiwiCo.com slash explain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's K-I-W-I-C-O dot C-O-M slash explained.
