High school students pressed lawmakers for years to act, detailing the practical indignities of dealing with periods at school. With a bill poised to pass the Legislature this year, the teens say they’ve learned lessons on power, persistence and making change.
“We cannot learn while we are leaking,” Elif Ozturk told a legislative hearing in January as she and other teens made their case for Minnesota to provide free menstrual products in public schools.
“It’s just simply the truth,” she noted later. “This is a fear everyone knows, and it is happening in our schools all of the time.” | 
