Julia Bauscher

And that is one of the priorities of not only Jefferson County and school districts in Kentucky, but in school districts across the country

that school meals ought to be made available at no cost to all students all the time.

When I did a lot of media interviews, I often said, you know, in my opinion, and most people share this opinion, school meals are as important as the bus ride the kids receive to school at no cost,

the books and classroom resources they receive at no cost, if we all feed them, your education money is a lot more productive.

Yes, the advent of online payment systems definitely decreased the stigma of school meals because prior to that, you know, students who were paid had to give the cashier money and students that were free didn't ever exchange money.

So they were generally easily identifiable.

And then you had pay students that didn't want to eat at all because somebody might think if they were going through the lunch line,

They were poor.

And that is awful when the kid is afraid to eat.

Because, you know, there are even students back when we had that program that were paid that couldn't afford it.

And that's another thing that.

eliminating these programs, kids have to eat.

The students don't have the money, especially those students that fall in that reduced category where it's just 40 cents a day.

But if you've got three kids and you've got 40 cents for lunch and 30 cents for breakfast, that adds up pretty quickly.

They can't afford to pay.

And we never turned a student away.

If you came through the line, even if you were paid and you didn't have the money, you got a meal.

Go ahead, please.

It's just important that every child receive that meal and that they not be embarrassed because they can't pay for it.

But what happens is the district ends up racking up a lot of school meal debt.