Remember the boy who took a carton of milk and ended up in handcuffs?

       It happened in a Northern Virginia school less than five years ago and drew national outrage for its ridiculousness. At the center of the conflict was a 65-cent carton of school-provided milk.

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       For those who have forgotten about the incident or missed hearing about it, here’s a brief reminder of the details: A Prince William County middle school student, who qualified for free lunch, said he forgot to get a carton of milk when he went through the lunch line and returned to grab one. He described an innocent action that followed an understandable moment of forgetfulness.

       But a school resource officer apparently saw the teenager’s actions otherwise. The officer reportedly accused the student of stealing and ordered him to go to the principal’s office. After the student refused, he was arrested in the middle of the cafeteria and charged with disorderly conduct and petit larceny.

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       The teenager was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but only after a trial date was set and prosecutors decided to drop the charges.

       Teen accused of stealing 65-cent carton of milk at middle school to stand trial

       It is hard to imagine that event taking place in a Virginia school cafeteria nowadays, and not just because counties have cut back on the presence of school resource officers.

       Arguably the best thing to come of the pandemic is the generosity of food giving that is happening now in schools across the country. In Virginia and elsewhere, students who have long qualified for free meals, students who have barely missed the cutoff for free meals and students whose families, on paper, don’t need help feeding them, can all now count on getting fed at school if they want.

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       There’s no calculating how far below or above they sit from the poverty line. There’s no waiting on parents to fill out a complicated form that asks detailed information about their family’s circumstances:

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       Are any children in the household homeless, a migrant, or a runaway?

       Does any member of a household receive SNAP or TANF benefits, and if so, what is their case number?

       For each household member, list each type of income received for the month. You must tell us how often the money is received — weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, or monthly. Also list the amount you receive for Workers’ Compensation, unemployment … welfare, child support, alimony, pensions, retirement, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Veteran’s benefits (VA benefits).

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       I remember my family having to fill out that form each year. I grew up attending schools in Texas where the majority of students received free lunch and because of my family’s circumstances, I always assumed my family would qualify. But we didn’t. I don’t know how far we inched above the poverty line and whether it landed us in the “reduced” lunch category, but my older sister reminded me that we were expected to take $1.25 to the school each day to eat, an amount she remembers because she sometimes forgot it.

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       I was six years younger than her and recall only this: My parents, while loving, worked long hours and there was no way I could expect them to pack me a lunch in the morning or even make sure we had lunch-like food in the refrigerator.

       I spent middle school as a latchkey kid, riding two public buses to get home and once there, often ended up spending evenings alone and warming up a frozen TV dinner. Many days, the school lunches were the only meals I ate that were cooked fresh by somebody I could see. And for all the criticism school lunches get, those square-shaped pizza slices and discount-cheese topped enchiladas tasted great to me.

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       Recently, a Wisconsin school system’s decision to opt out of a federally funded program that makes school meals available this year to every family, regardless of income, set off a social media storm.

       A school district opted out of a free meals program, saying students could ‘become spoiled’

       Former school-lunch recipients across the country offered online defenses of the food that kept their bellies full and their minds focused, and counter arguments to the statements from those Milwaukee-area school officials. According to a story that ran in The Washington Post last week, one school official described the universal meals program as making it easy for families to “become spoiled” and another said there could be a “slow addiction” to the service.

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       Spoiled. Slow addiction. To anyone who has stood in a school cafeteria line, watching food from a large metal vat slapped onto their tray, those phrases resonate as absurd. More than that, they feel out-of-touch with the struggles many families faced before the pandemic and that others have come to know during it.

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       They don’t acknowledge that living above the poverty line may still mean you don’t have enough food at home to eat or the money to cover a school lunch bill. They don’t recognize that just because a family’s finances look stable on paper, their situation may not be. Parents with addictions, depression or stretched between multiple jobs may have the resources to take care of their children’s dietary needs but not the ability to pack a lunch for them. A father or mother may also be in the picture one day and not in it the next.

       Offering universal meals fills in those cracks. It makes sure that the children of parents who are too proud to ask for help, or in the case of many immigrant families, fear filling in a form that explicitly asks whether they have a social security number, don’t go hungry.

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       The opposition to offering universal meals in schools is not isolated to Wisconsin. A person just has to look at conversations that have occurred on parenting sites in the D.C. region to see that. People have complained about taxpayer money being spent on food for families who can afford to buy their own and too many meals ending up in garbage cans. They’ve also expressed worry that spreading food further could reduce the quantity and quality that lands on trays.

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       I understand some of those concerns. I also believe there are better ways to address them than going back to pre-pandemic practices. To minimize food waste, a school system could simply ask families to opt in or opt out of receiving meals for the year. No forms. No hassles. Just a check of a box. The reality is that many families who can afford to send their children with lunchboxes packed with foods they enjoy will continue to do so. I pack lunches for my sons, who are in elementary school, every day because one has a serious food allergy and because I’m fortunate enough to be able to. Many parents I know do the same.

       Salaam Bhatti, the Director of Virginia Hunger Solutions for the Virginia Poverty Law Center, which has been working for years to advance better school meal policies in the state, says when addressing food waste, it’s important to look closely at what is ending up in the trash. Maybe oranges are being tossed away in an elementary school because kids don’t know how to peel them, he says. Maybe there is a better way to serve them.

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       Bhatti also grew up eating cafeteria lunches, and when we talk on a recent evening, he starts to say he doesn’t understand comments like the one about students being “spoiled” by free meals, but then he stops.

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       “I do understand,” he says. “I understand because people have this criminal mentality for people who are low income from the time they’re kids to the time they’re adults, thinking they are just leeching off the government.”

       Making sure students don’t go hungry is an “investment in the future” and the cost is a “drop in the bucket” for the federal government, he says. He describes Virginia as making great strides even before the pandemic to make sure children who couldn't pay their meal debts would no longer be shamed and their families no longer sued.

       Remember, that used to happen too?

       Lunches would get tossed in the trash if a student was found to owe money, alternative meals would be served to those students whose families hadn’t paid their bills and we would celebrate the feel-good stories of people and organizations who swept in to clear those debts — debts that don’t exist under the current system.

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       Students should never be watched so closely in the lunch line that a reach for a milk carton lands them in trouble. I would hope that if that teenager went back for a carton today, no one would question him. But even if that’s not the case, there’s comfort in knowing that at least a friend could grab one for him.

       The pandemic will (hopefully) eventually end. Making sure students, all students, are fed shouldn’t.

       Read more from Theresa Vargas:

       Kids normally fear the first day of school. This year, the delta variant has their parents scared, too.

       The moms are not all right — and maybe that’s okay for children to see

       Some objects will remind us of the pandemic long after it’s over