‘Stop penalizing hunger’: the push to cancel US school lunch debt

While the US offers free school meals to its poorest students, many who don't qualify still struggle to pay. Some politicians are joining the fight to erase that debt

When Talyn Summers was in middle school, their parents started receiving emails and text messages from their school multiple times a day. The problem? Summers had eaten school lunch but hadn't paid in full: they owed 30 cents.

In a fairly well-off school district in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, Summers remembers feeling like their peers were completely oblivious to the fact that other students might be plagued by the shame of lunch debt". While the US offers free school meals to its poorest students, many who don't qualify still struggle to pay. According to the Education Data Initiative, more than 30 million students in the US can't afford their school meals. On average, those students owe $180.60 each year, for a national total of $262m in student lunch debt annually.