Viral video shows school food workers throwing out hot lunches of students with debts and replacing them with cold lunches. Now they're sorry.

A Minnesota public school ate crow after throwing away indebted students' hot lunches and replacing them with cold meals.

KARE-TV reported that as many as 40 students' hot lunches were thrown in the trash because they owed balances on their lunch accounts.

What are the details?

The Richfield School District issued an apology on Monday after the video was released to the internet.

The video showed a variety of food service workers at a district school throwing away the hot meals of students who owed money on their lunch accounts.

A Facebook post from the district read, "Today at Richfield High School, our nutrition services staff began implementing an existing practice that students with a meal balance of -$15 or more are provided with an alternate lunch."

"Unfortunately, this was not implemented in line with our guidelines or our values," the apology continued. "Once our administration was made aware of the situation, we immediately ceased the practice in time for the third lunch period."

The school went on to point out its deep regret over the embarrassment and promised to rectify the situation.

"We deeply regret our actions today and the embarrassment that it caused several of our students," the apology added. "We have met with some of the students involved and apologized to them. High school administration will also be meeting with student government this week to talk about the situation and listen to what students have to say."

Richfield Public Schools Superintendent Steven Unowsky also issued a statement, obtained by KARE-TV, on the matter.

“Our nutrition staff inaccurately and inappropriately implemented alternate lunch," Unowsky said on Tuesday. “There are multiple failures we had in this situation and our job is to fix it. First and foremost [in] the way we treated our kids. We should never leave kids with the feeling they had from the experience."

The district also made a link available to people who wished to pay students' lunch debts.

Richfield High School Principal Latanya Daniels promised that the school would never engage in such behavior again.

“One of the things we can do is model failure with grace. We absolutely failed in this situation and our team is working to try and rectify mistakes we made," she said.