Bill would outlaw ‘school lunch shaming’
Lawmaker: Indigent students shouldn’t be singled out
Students who can’t pay for school lunch shouldn’t be forced to eat something different from the other kids or have to work off the expense, an Arizona lawmaker says.
Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, has introduced legislation to ban what he calls “school lunch shaming.”
Senate Bill 1036 sets forth seven stipulations regarding how schools must address unpaid meal fees.
The Arizona Department of Education already offers similar guidelines to schools, but Quezada wanted to “take it a step further.”
He acknowledged public shaming of students is not a “widespread problem,” but he said his bill takes action against bad actors and solidifies the guidelines.
“I really just wanted to codify it into law,” said Quezada, who also serves as the vice president of the Pendergast Elementary School District Governing Board.
If it passes, Arizona would be the second state in the nation to ban lunch shaming.
In April, New Mexico passed the “Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights.” It directed any school that receives federal subsidies to prohibit actions that might call attention to a student that can’t pay for a school meal.
In May, Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., introduced the Anti-Lunch Shaming Act of 2017 in Congress, which would establish similar requirements for treatment of children unable to pay for lunch.
the exception of Colorado, the other states are worse off now than they were at this same time last year.
For Flagstaff, the below-normal precipitation expected for this winter will also affect the city’s water sources and supply balance going into next year, while the dry weather has already been a game-changer for prescribed fire operations this fall.
On the Coconino National Forest alone, it has allowed crews to do lowintensity understory burns on about 50 percent more acreage than normal, said Victor Morfin, the forest’s fuels specialist.
The fuels were already so dry in October that crews had to switch to burning at night, when relative humidity is higher, to prevent the fire from getting too hot, he said.
The Forest Service is taking a break from prescribed burning over the holidays but if the weather continues to be warm and dry, Morfin said the agency will ramp up burning again in January.
Trees respond to drought in several ways, said George Koch, a biology professor at Northern Arizona University.
As conditions dry out, they start to close up tiny pores on their needles and leaves called stomata. That helps slow water loss to evaporation but prevents the intake of carbon dioxide, which plants need to photosynthesize, Koch said.
Drought also causes damage to trees’ water transport systems. Warm, dry air increases evaporation from leaves and needles while dry soils make it more difficult for the plant to pull up water through its roots.
Without enough moisture, ponderosas also struggle to produce pitch, or resin, that works as their main defense. Without that barrier, insects are free to crawl into a tree and reproduce with little resistance.
Anhold said it wouldn’t be until late summer or fall that the effects of a beetle outbreak would become visible as needles turn yellow, then red and then start to fall off.