Lunch shaming effort lives despite setback,
Lawmaker partners with Feeding Texas as her bill dies.
After tea party-aligned legislators in the Texas House derailed her so-called school lunch shaming bill, Rep. Helen Giddings, D-DeSoto, is circumventing the Texas Legislature to address a problem she has identified in public schools.
During a news conference on Tuesday, Giddings announced that her office has partnered with Feeding Texas, a nonprofit whose mission is to end hunger in Texas, to launch a website — feedingtexas.org/schools — where people can donate to help pay off school lunch debt in public schools.
“It is inconceivable that in schools all over Texas, children who go through the cafeteria lines and discover they have no money in their accounts have their hot lunches taken away and thrown in the trash,” Giddings said. “For some, this could be their only hot meal of the day. One can only imagine the pain, the embarrassment and the damage to the child’s self-esteem.”
Giddings said that Feeding Texas and her office are still working out the details of how the donated money through the new website will be disbursed to school districts.
House Bill 2159 would have granted a two-week grace period for students whose school meal cards were depleted to continue purchasing meals.
The bill was moving swiftly through the House, even getting a coveted spot on the local and consent calendar where non-controversial bills go for easy passage. But, earlier this month, the measure was knocked off through a procedural maneuver by five Republican House members who are part of the Texas Freedom Caucus — Kyle Biedermann of New Braunfels, Briscoe Cain of Houston, Tony Tinderholt of Arlington, Jonathan Stickland of Bedford and Matt Rinaldi of Irving.
Caucus members have suggested that they were killing bills on the calendar out of frustration that some of their priority bills were left off, including those that address abortion.
Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, and Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, have tried to add some of the bill’s language through amendments to their own bills — Senate Bills 1696 and 725.
Lawmakers’ attention to students’ inability to afford school lunches comes amid grassroots efforts across the nation to help pay off lunch debts.
Earlier this year, the American-Statesman told readers how people can help pay off lunch debts in the Austin school district. By the next day, the Austin school district received $10,000 in donations, paying off all existing school lunch debts.