I’m a proud product of Hawaii Public Schools, but you don’t go through any educational institution without some painful memories.

One day, three middle school girls who were much older than me tried to beat me into giving them lunch money on a short cut to Kailua Middle School. Lunch money could be scraped together in our house, where my father was a government employee and my mother only had a part-time job with four children and a grandmother to support. So I held on fiercely to that quarter, which is what lunch cost at the time, clutching it in my increasingly sweaty palm until the girls stopped hitting me and gave up, looking for an easier target in other side.

It still pisses me off when I think about bullies going after the kids’ lunch money.

New types of bullies are apparently coming at kids and their parents electronically, including in Hawaii schools.

In July, a report from the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has revealed a disturbing new way powerful forces have stepped in to take a slice of school lunch money. Over the past decade, school districts have increasingly moved to electronic payment systems that parents can use for things like school lunch.

It makes obvious sense: It’s easier and more efficient for parents and schools to handle payments this way, instead of kids bringing in checks or cash and cafeteria workers scrambling to hide checks and make change.

But the CFPB also noted what federal officials saw as an alarming new trend — school administrators allowing payment processing companies to take what is essentially a fee for each transaction. The CFPB studied a large sample of school districts nationwide to find out how widespread the pattern was. They found that payment processing companies charge an average of 4.4% of the fees that parents are required to pay.

The CFPB has calculated that the fees collectively cost families nearly $100 million a year.

In Hawaii, the state allows its payment processor, EZSchoolPay, to charge parents a 2 percent “transaction fee” for each payment transaction, plus a 13-cent “convenience fee,” according to the CFPB.

The burden falls disproportionately on parents who make so little money that their children qualify for reduced-price lunches, according to the CFPB.

High school kids in Hawaii pay $2.75 for lunch every day. Children who qualify for reduced price lunches – families of four earning less than $66,378 per year — pay 40 cents. Wealthier families can make larger down payments and are charged proportionately less in transaction fees. Poor families typically have to pay smaller amounts more often as they go, which means they incur more transaction fees.

It’s certainly not a huge amount of money or about $10 a year for kids who pay full transportation. But charging a 2 percent transaction fee to people who can afford to pay just 40 cents for a lunch, plus a 13-cent kicker, is a heavier burden.

About 80,000 children in Hawaii pay for school lunch each day, of which 10,732 qualify for reduced-price lunches, according to a spokeswoman for the Hawaii Department of Education.

Officials at the CFPB, the 13-year-old government agency that protects consumers in their dealings with financial institutions, believe these fees are unfair.

“While convenient for both families and school districts, electronic payment options present new costs and challenges for families who use them,” the CFPB concluded in its report. Parents have no choice but to make no payment, the agency said.

The CFPB report singled out Hawaii as an example of how the system works, noting that state officials have recently cut costs. In 2018, the state announced reduced the convenience fee from 80 cents per transaction to 13 cents and reduced the transaction fee from 5% to 2%.

There are a few ways to get around the fees. Parents in Hawaii learned they could avoid transaction fees by hand-delivering checks to school administrators or sending them with their children. But it’s enough of a hassle that most simply accept the fee to ensure their children are fed.

Now, some good news.

The federal government is stepping in to stop this practice. Hawaii schools participate in the National School Lunch Program, which is run by the US Department of Agriculture.

Last week The USDA has announced that it is banning what he called these “junk fees” being charged by payment processors to parents of children eligible for reduced-price school meals. The agency said schools must stop charging the fees by the 2027-2028 school year.

That’s part of a larger effort by the Biden administration to rein in what officials have called a series of unfair and hidden fees levied on consumers these days. Fake and mandatory “processing fees” are part of a growing burden on American consumers, who are forced to pay more and more of them every time they rent a hotel room, buy a plane ticket or I go to a concert or a ball game.

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez joined 18 other attorneys general in urging the FTC to continue banning these fees.

The US Federal Trade Commission, led by an activist chairwoman, Lina Khan, proposed a rule to prohibit these charges. Tens of thousands of consumers stepped in to voice their support for the proposal. Despite opposition from big business, including the American Bankers Association, the agency is moving forward.

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez joined 18 other attorneys general at the behest of the FTC to continue in the prohibition of these taxes.

Effort by several states to ban junk taxes he also joined by Mana Moriarty, Executive Director of the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection.

Not surprisingly, such issues receive political pushback.

Lina Khan of the FTC herself has come under fire for this and other things she has done. Some of the biggest donors to the Kamala Harris campaign, including Reid Hoffman from LinkedInpublicly told Harris they wanted Khan out. Harris never specifically answered one way or the other.

How the incoming Trump administration may view the issue is not yet certain. Consumer activism has not historically been associated with the Republican party, but the traditionalist wing appears to have withered. Banning junk taxes is popular with voters and may fit well with what Trump has presented as a more populist agenda. Vice President Elect JD Vance publicly endorsed Khan. On the other hand, one of Trump’s wealthy donors, Elon Musk, tweeted this he expected Khan to be fired.

Time will tell.

I have followed the junk tax debate with particular interest because I was formerly the editor of FTC:Watch, a Washington-based newsletter that follows the Federal Trade Commission. I also once co-wrote a history of the agency.

Everything related to my childhood. When I was in Washington, I carried with me a strong pro-consumer orientation embedded in our local culture, infused with the idealistic civic education I received in the school system in the 1970s. Kalaheo Intermediate (now a high school), where I been after Kailua, he had some smart teachers who talked to us about how things really work and the lessons stuck.

It’s good that the USDA is telling school districts to start getting rid of these processing fees.

It seems only right to move as quickly as possible.

There is no way to keep your quarter when a software system is the bully.