Thank you to Christy Nadalin for her excellent, page one news item revealing the shameful practice of the Bristol Warren Regional School District of depriving some children of a hot lunch simply because their lunch account is overdrawn.

Is there not a way to provide a line item in the school district’s budget to cover overdrawn lunch accounts? Any community that can raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars Bristol raises each year to celebrate American independence can afford to feed adequately its school children.

And thank you to East Bay Newspapers for making the matter a page one item —story placement is pivotal. The term “lunch shaming” is a new one for me, one I hope not to see again. Your treatment of the matter, a news item for which local newspapers are particularly well suited, makes all the right points.

Nutritionists the world over have testified to the link between inadequate diets and learning difficulty. Making sure that school children are adequately fed while at school is a small investment that yields large returns. No school child should go hungry, and no school child should be made to feel inferior — ever.

We should heed the words of the late Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), long time advocate for ending hunger, who said, “I didn’t used to care about living a long time ... but now I want to live long enough to see every school child in the world getting a good, nutritious lunch every day.” 

Thomas C. Brown, Jr.

Alexandria, Va.