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Posted on 01/30/2014 5:29:36 AM PST by Wolfie
Parents upset after school takes lunches from students with account deficits
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Dozens of students at a Salt Lake City elementary school were served lunch Tuesday, only to have the food taken from them and thrown away in an incident parents said was uncalled for and humiliating for the children.
The incident took place at Uintah Elementary School when students were told there was no money in their school lunch accounts.
The students’ lunches were taken and thrown away, and the students were provided with fruit and milk. Officials said it’s school policy for food in such situations to be put in the trash.
Parent Erica Lukes said taking away her child’s lunch was “ridiculous.”
“I don’t think any child should have to feel like that over a two-dollar lunch balance,” she said. Jason Olsen is the communication director for the Salt Lake City School District, and he said in a statement officials with the school and district started calling parents with negative or zero balances on school lunch accounts beginning Monday and continuing Tuesday. He said students without money in their account were told Tuesday they would only be getting fruit and milk.
Because the children are given their lunch before they go to the computer to process payment, those without positive account balances had their lunches taken away from them.
The statement from Olsen reads in part: “This situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner. We apologize.
We are also investigating what type of notification parents may or may not have received prior to this week. The schools says they inform students when they go through the lunch line if they have a low balance. They say they also send notes home in the student’s Monday folders. However, when contacted Monday or Tuesday, many parents were surprised by the news. The district has specific guidelines for school kitchen managers on how parents should be notified, and we are currently investigating to see if these guidelines were followed correctly.
We understand the feelings of upset parents and students who say this was an embarrassing and humiliating situation. We again apologize and commit to working with parents in rectifying this situation and to ensuring students are never treated in this manner again.”
The government schools are so tolerant and understanding.
If you have a $0 or negative balance, then it’s not “your” lunch. It’s yours when you pay for it. Up to that point, it belongs to the cafeteria.
Then why serve it to the kid only to take it away a few minutes later?
I agree it was handled wrong.
That being said, why is there a deficit in their accounts? If the parents don’t have money, surely they are getting welfare and can make a lunch using the food purchased with food stamps.
This crap never happened when I was in school. The poor kids got free lunches- maybe 5-10% of the kids did. The rest of us brought bagged lunches or lunches in a lunchbox or paid money for our food. Or we did without.
Back in ancient times when I was a kid, if you didn’t have money you didn’t even get in line at the cafeteria. You brought a brown bag from home and ate outside.
This is what happens when public “schools” become daycare centers.
So who’s getting fired over this?
That’s what I thought. Chris Christie should have promoted everyone involved in the Bridge-gate scandal, just to be consistent with how things are done now.
I believe many of these parents just did not know that their kid’s account was low/negative on money. They just need to go back to the “pay at the window” policy. No more of these accounts, especially if parents/kids can’t keep track of the account. It was a little cruel to serve the kids and then take it from them...
I think it’s the whole “lunch account” thing that opens up the door. I can only assume they don’t want the kids carrying cash for some stupid reason. Probably because the scholar at the cafeteria register would have to make change. And the notices were sent home with the kids! How many of those do you think actually made their way to an adult?
With a national debt >$17,000,000,000,000, what difference does it make?
As much as it sucks for the kids, it avoids setting a mental precedent that you can still get things for free.
Put the onus on the parents to be more responsible.
I can only assume they don’t want the kids carrying cash for some stupid reason. Probably because the scholar at the cafeteria register would have to make change.
“That being said, why is there a deficit in their accounts?”
1. Many parents (probably more like a parent) are just lazy and don’t refill their kid’s account.
2. School worker are incompetent, even by government employee standards and don’t always tell the parents the account is low. And the schools are food fascists so the kids can’t just bring their lunch anymore.
Flawed process.
The correct process is that the children’s account should be debited before they walk away with the food. If they don’t have enough of a positive balance then at least some of the food can probably be returned for distro to another child rather than being tossed.
An even better process would be to check the account balance BEFORE the food is even distributed. This may not work in situations where price is determined by weight (salad bars, assuming the school has such a thing), but it would still be a good mitigation step.
Correct-—but to throw away food that taxpayers are providing shows a complete disrespect for the taxpayer, IMO.
Here in N Nevada, we are bombarded weekly, if not daily about donating to the food banks so the ‘hungry’ can get fed.
When I see examples of those who are going to the food banks to get food and they are women who are approaching the weight of an NFL tackle, I lose any sympathy I might have had.
This times about a million. My nephew had trouble multiple times because the school had two different accounts, one strictly for lunches and the other for "incidentals" - which could also be used for lunches. So my brother just kept that one full in case something came up and didn't bother with the lunch account. My brother had to argue with them about every 2 months when they'd refuse to look up the other account.
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