County officials upset with Wyoming Valley West School District’s letter (PA)

pa home page ^ | July 18, 2019 | Andy Mehalshick

[Morgana]

WILKES-BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A Luzerne County school district is getting a lot of flack regarding a letter sent to parents.

The letter demands they pay delinquent lunch bills for their children or face the risk of having their children placed in foster care. And some of that flack is coming from Luzerne County officials.

Luzerne County officials say there is no way they would be part of removing children from their homes over unpaid lunch bills or any unpaid bill for that matter. They are demanding a retraction letter from the Wyoming Valley West School District.

“I found it very disturbing. Upsetting. It’s a total misrepresentation, a gross misrepresentation of what our agency does,” Luzerne County Children and Youth Services executive director Joanne Van Saun said.

Van Saun and Luzerne County Manager David Pedri say they were stunned when they read the letter that was sent to parents in the Wyoming Valley West School District. It tells the parents they could be taken to dependency court and have their children removed from their homes if they do not pay their delinquent lunch bills. The district is trying to collect some $20,000 worth of delinquent lunch payments.

“It’s just not true. We do not remove children from families for unpaid bills,” Van Saun said.

Luzerne County Children and Youth Services would be part of any foster care placement and they say the scenario, the threat, laid out in the school district letter just does not happen.

“I have been employed for Luzerne County Children and Youth Services for 33 years. Never has this county removed a child from a home for unpaid bills and never will we,” Van Saun said.

[Texan5]

I’ll bet your brother got teased about that for awhile...

I’m pretty sure if there were any gypsies in that part of W Texas, they weren’t European/Romany, but the Irish Travelers that live in parts of Texas and in some Southern states-my grandparents lived in the Valley, and were friends with an Irish Traveler couple who had a carnival that followed fairs, rodeos, etc all over the US Spring to Fall-they also had a very nice home and citrus orchard in the Valley where they Wintered every year-they said it was cheaper than Florida and just as nice-as kids, we were fascinated with their lifestyle-it just seemed so cool-Most Irish Travelers seem to be paving-and-construction scam artists now...

[Do_Tar]

Seems to me if you don’t feed your kid then they COULD end up in foster care.

[Morgana]

I really wonder about the gypsies like I wonder about some FReepers here :P

[catnipman]

“foster care”? Meh. Why not just threaten to shoot ‘em?

[hanamizu]

Too far. But schools need to drop lunches and let kids bring lunches from home.

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Alas, your comment is running against the tide of recent history. Not only are schools serving lunches, most now provide a breakfast as well. The trend is to also serve an after-school meal as well, because you cannot expect parents to feed their kids, can you?

For the weekends, “backpacks” of food are sent home so the kids don’t go hungry and in the summer time, many schools offer ‘free’ lunches for anyone under the age of 18.

Many schools are also switching to free lunches for all students to avoid stigmatizing the kids on the free lunch program.

Now the kids who qualify for free lunches also likely qualify for food stamps. But only a hard-hearted ba$tard would suggest detecting the free school meals and ‘backpacks’ from a family’s monthly food stamp allotment