Students fight back over healthy lunches

Two baked fish nuggets, a cup of vegetables, half a cup of mashed potatoes, one whole grain roll and 8 ounces of fat free milk. That's the fuel that American high school students are federally mandated to receive in their school lunches this year as healthier food regulations take effect.

But for a grumbling crowd of students, those 750 to 850 calories aren't cutting it.

"We hear them complaining around 1:30 or 2:00 that they are already hungry," said Linda O'Connor, a high school English teacher at Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kansas. "It's all the students, literally all the students... you can set your watch to it."

O'Connor teamed up with her hungry students and fellow teacher Brenda Kirkham to create a ballad to the growling stomachs that are now pestering her classroom. The YouTube song and dance video "We Are Hungry," set to the tune of Fun's "We Are Young," now has more than 108,000 hits.

"Give me some seconds, I, I need to get some food today," 16-year-old Wallace County High School football player Callahan Grund sings in the video. "My friends are at the corner store getting junk so they don't waste away."

Across the state at St. Mark's Charter School in Colwich, Kansas, middle school students are protesting the new regulations, which limit their calories to between 600 and 700 per meal, by bringing their lunches from home.

St. Mark's Principal Craig Idacavage said more than half of his 330-student school are opting for sack lunches because "they feel they are not able to get full" on the school offerings.

"I think they have a valid point and you can only hope that people will listen to them," Idacavage said.

The new school lunch regulations, which first lady Michelle Obama championed and a Democrat-led Congress passed in 2010, set a maximum calorie limit for high school lunches at between 750 and 850 calories. Under the old rules, cafeterias served a minimum of 825 calories per lunch.

Elementary students' lunches pack between 550 and 650 calories as opposed to the 633 calories allotted under the old rules.

For Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, that "scant diet" is a "rude awakening" for schoolchildren across the country. King and Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, introduced the "No Kids Hungry Act" this month to repeal the new lunch menu standards and prohibit the calorie limits.

"Kids are of varying sizes, activity levels and metabolism rates," King wrote in a Des Moines Register op-ed. "How can we expect each child to flourish and grow on subsistence diets? This all because some are overweight."

But while students complain of growling stomachs, the new nutritional requirements should actually be making them feel fuller, said Kristi King, a registered pediatric dietician at Texas Children's Hospital and a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The new rules double the amount of fruit and vegetables that are served and mandate that half of all bread products are whole grain. All three of those food types are chock full of fiber, which takes longer to digest, King said.

"It should be making kids fuller if they are actually consuming the whole product," King said. "If children are not picking the entire meal available to them they are obviously going to be hungry."

In Jackson, Miss., the state with the highest obesity rate, school cafeterias have been easing kids into the healthy food regulations.

Mary Hill, the executive director of food services at Jackson Public School District said her school district has been phasing in more fruit and vegetable options over the past few years to prepare for the regulations and while the new rules are an "adjustment" for the students, she said she has not heard any complaints.

"To me, if you hear that grumbling it's that typical grumbling with children," Hill said. "You know children will be children."

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Caught on video: Students bully elderly bus monitor

  ROCHESTER -- Tens of thousands of dollars have been raised online for an elderly upstate New York bus monitor who was taunted and verbally abused by students.

The incident was captured in a 10-minute video posted to YouTube showing Karen Klein trying her best to ignore the stream of profanity, insults and outright threats directed at her.

By early Wednesday the video had gone viral and since been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

CLICK HERE to see the video on YouTube. WARNING: Contains vulgar language.

Klein told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that she "was just trying to ignore them and hope they would go away."

The Greece bus monitor didn't report the incident, but school officials notified police when they learned of the video. An investigation has been launched.

By midnight Wednesday, the international crowd funding site Indiegogo.com had raised over $95,000 to send the grandmother on a vacation.

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Students take the plunge after prom picture...literally

  Eyewitness NewsWISCONSIN (WABC) -- It appeared ultimate prom picture - Wisconsin teenagers posing together, when a pier gave way beneath them.

Some of the teens admit they freaked out, while others say they couldn't stop laughing.

And if you look all the way over on the left, you'll see a knight in shining armor. He heard the wood crack and stepped off the falling section of the pier. The, he held on to his date.

She was the only girl who didn't end up in the lake.

Everyone else spent about an hour in front of blow dryers and fans before heading off to the prom.

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Bank Forgives Dead Student's Loan After 6 Years

Six years after the death of Christopher Bryski, a 23-year-old student at Rutgers University, Key Bank has agreed to forgive his student loan. But Bryski's family is not stopping there: It's now fighting to change the laws in the hope of sparing others the trauma it endured as lenders continued to hound it for payment on its dead son's debts.

Christopher Bysksi died on July 16, 2006, after sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a fall that left him in a coma for two years.

Because his father had co-signed his student loan from Key Bank, he was obligated to continue to make payments under the terms of the private loan agreement. He paid more than $20,000 of the $50,000 debt, coming out of retirement to make the monthly payments, according to Ryan Bryski, 34, Christopher's brother.

But Ryan Bryski, an Air Force veteran, said various lenders continued to call the family and ask to speak to Christopher, despite the family informing them of, first, Christopher's vegetative state, and later, his death.

Bryski said the family lawyer sent "threatening letters" to two credit card companies to put an end to the continual postal mail, always addressed to Christopher, and phone calls requesting payment. Bryski said the credit card companies eventually forgave those debts. And Christopher's student loan from Sallie Mae was forgiven upon his death, according to the federal lender's policies.

But Key Bank, which held the private student loan, ignored requests to pardon the loan, Bryski said.

On April 18, the family started a petition on Change.org after the online petitioning platform contacted the Bryskis. With a petition signed by more than 81,000 individuals requesting to "discharge" the student loan debt, bank executives reached out to the family on April 23 and a settlement was reached on Wednesday, according to Megan Lubin, communications manager at Change.org. Change.org was also behind the petition that got Bank of America to cancel its proposed $5 debit card usage fee.

"My family is very grateful for Key Bank finally contacting us and doing the right thing," Bryski told ABC News. "It's just unfortunate it took eight years and 80,000 signatures to get their attention."

"First and foremost, we are so sorry for the tragic loss of Christopher Bryski," David Reavis, a spokesman for Key Bank, said in a statement.

The bank said that, by law, it could not comment on matters involving an individual client or clients, but that it "regularly and continually reviews its practices, policies and procedures to ensure they are aligned with best practices and a constantly changing environment.

"Going forward, we will evaluate any similar situation involving a deceased student with outstanding loans – and we sincerely hope there are none – on a case-by-case basis," the bank's statement read.

Though the family is relieved that its own ordeal has been resolved and a bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives proposing more transparency for families who co-sign loans, Bryski is still hoping for change in other areas of death and disability policies of financial service companies. The family has also set up a website to provide updates about some of these issues.

"I asked myself what my brother would do. If he had the opportunity to help other people even if it didn't help him, he absolutely would. He was always helping others," said Bryski. "It's unfortunate that we lost him so young."

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