New Jersey school kids who were forced to eat off floor win $500,000 settlement

Seven Hispanic students who filed a lawsuit after they were forced to eat lunch on the floor of their school's gymnasium as a punishment have won a $500,000 settlement, their lawyer announced on Tuesday.

In 2008, the then fifth-graders at Charles Sumner Elementary School in Camden, N.J., were made to eat on the floor for two weeks as punishment for spilling a jug of water, Alan Schorr, the attorney for the students, said.

The Camden Board of Education agreed to pay $500,000 to settle the lawsuit. According to the Cherry Hill Courier-Post, the board approved the settlement without admitting guilt. The incident "had stirred claims of bias and underscored tensions between the city's black and Hispanic communities."

Under terms of the settlement, the seven students will split $280,000. Schorr will get the remaining $220,000, according to the report.

According to Schorr, then-vice principal Theresa Brown, who is black, punished 15 students in a bilingual class "by making them eat off paper liners normally used on lunch trays." Seven of the students sued.

"The African American kids were eating at tables, with trays, taunting these Hispanic kids who were forced to eat on the ground," Schorr told Reuters.

Their teacher, Jose Rivera, who was absent the day of the incident, was fired after encouraging the students to tell their parents about the punishment. Rivera sued, too, and won a $75,000 settlement, Schorr said. Brown was reassigned.

"These kids have a tough enough life without being bullied by their own administration," Schorr told FoxNews.com. "Hopefully this settlement will give them a head start toward college."