For years there were no cafeterias. Kids took their lunch or lived close enough to go home for lunch. Then came the cafeteria and the parents sent a quarter to school with the child to pay for their lunch. From that day forward there have been kids who lose their money or forget it and there are also cases where kids will beat up a child or threaten to beat them up for their lunch money.
Then came the free lunch and free breakfast, kids who got a free lunch were sometimes embarassed because they were teased by the other kids so they came up with the the lunch card where parents could pay for the lunch by the week or the child who didn't pay got the same kind of card and the student got their card punched but these cards would forever get misplaced or lost.
The PIN sounds like it might just be a better way to keep track of the money, and make sure the kid gets to eat. Who payed and what student does the school get paid by the state or free lunch program.
It sounds like this woman who has 6 children still has too much time on her hands.
My very Libertarian 14 year old at Clear Lake High has stopped buying lunch in protest of the PIN system. I think they must be selling the info to marketing firms. We must be paying those school bureaucrats too much.
Actually, the real reason for the PIN is the liberal-emotional one: the free- or reduced-lunch kids might feel stigmatized by 'paying' for their lunch differently i.e., with a card, with a coupon, not giving the cashier anything (since she'll know who they are), etc. The Lefties, of course, saw this as an emotional catastrophe just waiting to destroy the fragile psyches of the poor, and had to force a system where everyone is the same: PIN numbers. Kids can bring checks or cash from home (which still gets lost and/or stolen before they get to the cafeteria, so that isn't exactly a working solution), while the poorer students have the state employees fill out their paperwork. They go through the line, put in their PIN "just like everyone else", and they don't appear 'different' from their peers.
Of course, the students STILL know who doesn't pay for their own lunch... and the overwhelming majority simply don't care, and most who do won't say anything for fear of PC police reprisals, and the bullies who would say something about it could always find something else to attack anyway. Once again, the Left successfully creates a problem while trying to solve another problem that doesn't really exist anyway... all to justify their existence.