Thank you for all the congratulatory comments; it’s been a long hard fight. It is awesome that Governor Abbott signed SB 1566 into law, that is the bill that addresses so-called lunch shaming, along with other education-related issues - now stand by for the reality check. Sorry, I’m a realist. My initial petition sought to amend HB 3562 from the 84th Texas legislature, and although no effort to amend that law was ever initiated, 99% of section twelve of SB 1566 IS a rehash of HB 3562, but this is still a good thing, as I’ll point out later. On paper, the only significant change between the law that is already in place and the new law set to take effect September 1st 2017, is that instead of school districts, it will be school boards that determine the length of the meal grace period. The grace period is the length of time a student will continue to receive regular school meals AFTER their meal account becomes depleted. This might seem like a small change but it is not, school districts are huge bodies with lots of personnel turnover, on the other hand, a school board is a defined set of individuals who have either been elected or appointed, depending on whether they oversee a public or a charter school, respectively. School board members are people from your communities that YOU have placed in power to make decisions on YOUR behalf. What is most important is that they are local and accessible. School boards hold periodic meetings that are open to the public. I’ve stated earlier that there was only a small change on paper between the current law and the new one; however, it is the unwritten law that will give SB 1566 its power. SB 1566 introduced into the Texas lexicon the term and concept of “lunch shaming”, parents AND students are now aware of the practice and will hopefully be looking for it and calling it out whenever it attempts to raise its ugly head. SB 1566 has placed Texas school boards and districts on notice, I’ll just spell out the message they should be receiving to avoid any confusion, “come up with a fiscally conservative way to deal with the issue of depleted school meal accounts without shaming students” - that is my challenge to Texas school boards. Here is my summertime challenge to Texas parents and other concerned stakeholders – • Decide for yourself what you believe is a reasonable meal grace period, • Get like minded community members to agree with your decision and/or refine it until you come up with a grace period you can all agree on, perhaps use social media to share ideas, • As a group, brainstorm ways to address the inevitable situations in which a family (for whatever reason) has not provided adequate funds for a school meal account, again, consider using social media, • While doing all the above, get to know your local school board members: when do they meet, when do their terms expire, who is up for election, what do they stand for, do THEY have social media accounts, etc. • Choose one or more spokespersons and plan to attend those school board meetings, armed with counter-proposals in case whatever the school board has come up with is unsatisfactory. While it is true that SB 1566 has been called the “anti-lunch shaming” bill, lunch shaming can still occur in Texas if we fail to plan; the time to address school meal charge issues and our responses to them is BEFORE they happen. Texas parents and concerned stakeholders, the ball truly is in YOUR court! School may be out but there is still much work to be done. Thanks for your support in getting this legislation passed, be well, Kelvin