Albion alum becomes advocate for the nation’s schoolchildren

Adelle LaRue Settle ’02 was angered and disgusted by something she heard on the radio in 2017. Instead of switching the channel or turning off the radio, she decided to take action.

What Settle heard on NPR was the story of a New Mexico child whose parents were behind on their school lunch payments to the school. One day, that child reached the lunch cashier, meal in hand, ready to chow down. The lunch lady promptly took the meal from him, threw it in the trash, and gave him an alternative meal for students with lunch debt–a cold cheese sandwich.

“It sounded horrific to me,” Settle recalled. “The child had no way to pay the bill. You make the child suffer for something that’s between the school and the parent. That sounded insane to me.”

Settle would later learn that schools throughout the country, including her local district in Prince William County, Virginia, had amassed thousands of dollars in school lunch debt. The Prince William district had more than $200,000 in unpaid lunch debt at that time.

To try to encourage parents to pay up, some districts resorted to withholding lunches, providing alternative ones which amounted to little more than a snack, or prohibiting children from participating in extracurricular activities or even graduation. Other districts shamed students whose parents were behind on their payments by stamping their hands or handing them collection letters to take home.

All of this struck a sour note with Settle, who while growing up in blue-collar Ypsilanti, Michigan, had seen more than her share of poverty and people struggling to make ends meet. “A lot of families were having a hard time,” she said. “A lot of jobs were being eliminated and many folks were barely making it. We [our family] were able to get by. But that included my mother working two jobs.”

Starting in her own backyard

Settle initially focused on raising money to eliminate the school lunch debt at the elementary schools closest to her home.

“I reached out to my friends. I have some wonderful friends,” she said. “We went on Facebook and within three days we raised enough to pay off the debt of three elementary schools. I think it was $1,800 or $2,000.”

Not satisfied with that, Settle then started a GoFundMe campaign which raised $25,000 to eliminate even more school lunch debt. But Settle, an attorney at Gilbert LLP in Washington, D.C., who lives in northern Virginia with her husband and daughter, knew the problem could only be tackled through both local and state efforts. 

She eventually reached out to Virginia State Senator Danica Roem. “The biggest thing that she and I agreed that we wanted to focus on was eliminating school meal debt shaming,” Roem told Bristow Beat. “Before we can even get to universal free school meals…the first thing we wanted to eliminate was the idea you could single out and stigmatize a child, because that child wanted to eat food at school.”

Since 2017, 14 school meals bills have been passed in Virginia. Roem said Settle’s legal knowledge and advocacy aided in getting those bills passed. Today, in Virginia, no child can be prevented from participating in extracurricular activities or graduation ceremonies due to school lunch debt. Additionally, there are no more alternative meals and all of the state’s K-12 students can enjoy breakfast and lunch at school.

Settle also launched the nonprofit Settle the Debt in 2019. It raises money to eliminate school lunch debt and advocates for universal free school meals. It has successfully elevated the school lunch debt issue nationally. Many states have passed legislation similar to Virginia’s ensuring all students are provided with meals. Settle even made an appearance on “Good Morning America.”

According to the Education Data Initiative, there was $262 million in unpaid school meal debt in 2023.

“This [issue] resonated with me because I knew that keeping meals from children was wrong. There really was no other way to look at it,” she said. “It felt horrible knowing that meals were being taken away from children who had absolutely nothing to do with their economic situation.”

Settle’s Albion experience and beyond

Settle proudly stated that she arrived at Albion College as a political science major and left with that degree. She said she was immediately attracted to Gerald R. Ford Institute. One of the influential people she met during her first visit to campus was Kim Tunnicliff, former director of the institute.

“He [Tunnicliff] was so approachable. He was like a dad,” she said. “He would always say, ‘We can do this. We can make a better America.’ I left Albion feeling anything was possible. He instilled that in us.”

Tunnicliff also was instrumental in Settle getting a Capitol Hill internship during her junior year in the office of Richard Gephardt, the Democrat from Missouri who served as the House Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995.

During her time at Albion, Settle sang in the choir and studied abroad in Venice, Italy. After graduation from Albion, Settle earned a law degree from George Mason University. She followed academia with a job as a state affairs assistant for a Washington trade association, a law clerk, and then as an attorney for the federal government.

The mindset to be part of the solution which Albion, the Ford Institute, and her blue-collar upbringing instilled in Settle reared its head long before she heard that disturbing story on the radio.  As a lawyer for the Social Security Administration, Settle organized its annual food drive for more than a decade. She has also served on the board of the Northern Virginia Food Rescue.