In Minnesota, 62,000 students from families making between $30,000 and $43,000 per year are eligible for reduced-price school lunches of $0.40 per meal. However, when some families cannot afford the co-payment, their children are either given an alternative meal like a cheese sandwich or have their lunch thrown straight into the trash in front of them. While four lunch employees were recently fired in Massachusetts for similar practices of denying food or shaming children, Minnesota law currently allows for students to be turned away if they do not pay the full co-payment amount.

1. Would you punish your child by
throwing their meal in the trash?

2. In the State of Minnesota, 62,000
students are eligible for reduced-
price lunch daily

3. Including kids from families of 4 that
make between $30,000 and $43,000
a year.

4. Each student is asked to pay $.40
per meal.

5. A percentage of those children’s
families often cannot afford the co-
payment, and in Minnesota, they
are turned away.

6. Some are taken to the kitchen
and given a cheese sandwich.

7. Some are snapped on their
wrists with a rubber band as a
painful reminder.

8. Some have their tray of food
scraped into the trash right on the
spot.

9. In April, 4 lunch employees were
fired for denying lunch to students
who didn’t have enough money at
Coelho Middle School in
Massachusetts.

10. They were fired for shaming
children. But in Minnesota, turning
kids away is the law.

11. Help us stop this
shameful practice in
Minnesota.