June is the month when Pennsylvania public school districts finalize work on their budgets for the new fiscal year that begins July 1.

It’s a busy time consisting of trying to grasp the best possible final estimates of incoming and outgoing revenue for the new fiscal calendar, settling on tax rates for the upcoming 12 months and identifying and implementing internal funds moves to ensure that, at least on paper, the budget has the semblance of balance.

It’s also a time for reflecting on the fiscal/school year ending and the one that will be getting underway. Amid that exercise, new topics sometimes jump into the limelight, if not locally generated then emanating from another district, sometimes in another state.

Unfortunately, this year the topic that needs to be pondered and acted upon is “lunch shaming.”

In some places, that topic might be well-known but in other places, likely including most school districts in the six-county Southern Alleghenies region, probably not.

Still, making and sharing unflattering photos of other students eating has, according to the Wall Street Journal, become the latest form of cyberbullying, and meaningful steps need to be initiated to curb it.

First, an important question, though:

Has “lunch shaming” sunk its ugly teeth in any school cafeterias in this region? If so, have there been efforts to curb it or has it been allowed to persist?

Wall Street Journal writer Julie Jargon, in her June 2 Family & Tech column, focused her “microscope” on the issue, and what she wrote needs to be pondered and acted upon, where necessary, in school districts across the nation.

It’s that important of an issue and it’s not funny — contrary to the immature minds that embrace and spread it.

Jargon began her June 2 column calling “lunch shaming” an insidious bullying tactic “creeping into school cafeterias across the country.”

“Kids are snapping and sharing photos of other students eating lunch,” she wrote. “The shaming tends to fall into two categories: the ugly mouthful and the lonely eater.”

“Catching people doing embarrassing things has been going on for some time, and this is the more recent iteration of that,” said Catherine Bradshaw, a professor and senior associate dean for research at the University of Virginia.

Bradshaw studies children’s mental health and bullying prevention, and in the process has been collecting data on 25,000 students.

On the matter of where at school they were bullied during the month preceding their interview, 14% of elementary students and 18% of both middle- and high-school students said it occurred in the cafeteria.

Understandably, having been bullied by the “lunch shaming” crowd has had profound effects on some students, such as causing them to not eat lunch or to find a secluded place on school grounds where they could eat without fearing being photographed.

It’s sickening to fathom what all might be going through some students’ minds as they sometimes spend more time trying to find ways to conceal themselves from others than concentrating on their studies, the reason they are in school.

Jargon noted that “other struggles students might be facing, such as body-image issues, food allergies or lower socioeconomic status come into play” that make “lunch shaming” more troubling.

Then there’s something “lunch shamers” probably never think about as they’re making other students’ lives miserable:

If a child of theirs years from now is bullied in whatever way, how will they react?

Something to think about.