A message from Representative Amber Baker: Full Bellies: One Common sense solution that helps fight school hunger in North Carolina

Everybody knows that a child’s full belly is crucial to her or his education. Yet North Carolina students have amassed more than $83 million in meal debt, the sixth highest state in the country. In the state of North Carolina, children in public schools are not generally denied food if they ask, but if they can’t pay, their debt follows them throughout their school years, potentially saddling graduating high school seniors with debt their family accrued since kindergarten. Accumulating meal debt can have real consequences: some kids skip meals to spare their family the financial burden of paying for their lunches – or to spare themselves the shame that is sometimes placed on students who can’t pay for their meals. There is one obvious solution: North Carolina’s state lawmakers could just make school breakfast and lunch free for all children in public schools. Best of all, doing so would not be particularly expensive. While some high-need schools already qualify for free lunch courtesy of the federal government’s community eligibility program, because of burdensome paperwork requirements, only 67% of qualifying schools actually participate. This means that thousands of students who already qualify for free school meals today are not actually receiving...