reporter: for michael padilla it s personal. growing up he knew poverty and hunger. now a state senator, he spear-headed legislation making new mexico the first state in the country to ban any kind of lunch shaming. how did you feel when it passed? once in a a while in the legislative process we get something right. this is something we got right. reporter: padilla says 21 other states reached out to him to see what they can do and an identical bill has been introduced into congress which could bring a federal law so that no student should ever again have to face a choice between hunger or shame. martin savidge, cnn, albuquerque, new mexico. good for new mexico. thank you, martin savsavidge. in a few hours president trump will honor fallen soldiers in his first memorial day wreath ceremony. we re joined live with a personal take on this national holiday, coming up next. ugh, no bars.
height. i m glad we re exposing it for what it is. that is that journalistic investigative report. this important story new mexico becoming the first state in the u.s. to ban stools from singling out students who don t have enough money to eat. this troubling trend is called lunch shaming, and it is on the rise apparently across the country and leaves children feeling humiliated and ashamed. martin savidge has more. reporter: 13-year-old addison doesn t talk about that day at school but her dad does. what a kick in the face for a kid. reporter: what a cafeteria worker realized addison owed money on the meal account. she took her tray of food from her and set it aside and offered her a cold cheese sandwich and a white milk. reporter: don re says his daughter was humiliated by her school in front of everyone. it s borderline bullying. reporter: it s called lunch
lunchtime is the best time of the day for many student, but for others it can be a shaming experience. a troubling trend called lunch shaming is on the rise. when a student doesn t have enough lunch money, they are taking away hot food and replacing it with a a cold sandwich or sometimes no food at all. but martin savidge has more. reporter: this 13-year-old doesn t talk about that day at lunch at school, but her dad does. what a kick in the face that would be for a kid. reporter: he s talking about what he says the cafeteria worker did after realizing she owed money on her lunch account. e he took her tray and offered her a cold cheese sandwich and white milk. reporter: his daughter was humiliated by her school in front of everyone.
we re just appalled. what the we did is tried to work diplomatically to get more and more gets introduced in reduced price meals. 50% of the lunch debt here was from children who should have been eligible from free and reduced-price meals and just weren t enrolled. we ve come a long way improving that but ultimately at the end of the day we needed legislation that said we re not going to throw out meals that children have taken. we re not going to make them work to pay their lunch debt. we re not going to stamp their hands with ink saying that they owe money. we re just going to feed children, and that seemed like the right thing to do. fortunately our sponsor, senator michael padilla and the governor, agreed. which is great, but it s an issue nationwide, right? you all dealt with this in new mexico and it s a question of how do you pay for it, and when you talk about lunch shaming, it shouldn t be shaming the kids. so who should be shamed over this? i don t think anyone should be
he was forced to mop the floors because his parents hadn t paid off his lunch money debt. at another a teacher says kids go around the cafeteria collecting food scraps from trays. at another, a homeless student in tears afraid show wouldn t be able to graduate because her lunch money debt piled up as her family lost their home. these are just a few examples of lunch shaming. a child through no fault of his or her own treated differently or singled out because they are poor. it is happening in several states, and it s happening right here in america. 76% of school districts have kids with lunch debt, and nearly half of the nation s schoolchildren get free lunch. that is had a massive jump from 17 years ago, and it s a problem my next guest is trying to fix. she is jennifer ramos, executive director of a nonprofit called new mexico apple seed. her team just wrote a law that just passed in new mexico to end this practice, and a similar bill was introduced in congress just yesterday. jenni