Two school employees were placed on leave today for taking lunch away from 40 children, and this story continues to be infuriating and awful.
“I got a call from my daughter during the lunch hour. She was crying and saying, ‘They won’t let me eat lunch,’” said Conway, who was nowhere near school or a computer to load her lunch card with money.
“I asked her to put her teacher on the phone. [The teacher] told me, ‘This is happening to a lot of kids today,’ and said she would go to the lunchroom and take care of it,” Conway said. “But when my daughter came home she said she was given an orange and milk and that a friend had given her some potato chips.” [...]
“The school has three phone numbers for me and three email addresses. But how did I hear I had a negative $4 balance? From my daughter calling me and crying,” he said. “Everyone is culpable here except the kids.”
Upon further examination, I think parents may be right that certain employees are being scapegoated for terrible district policy. Whoever ordered for food to be thrown away should be fired.
If you order someone to take the food on a child’s tray and toss it in the garbage, you are a fucking sociopath. To do so under any circumstances is wrong. To do so over $4 is unfathomable.
This is a much bigger issue and a larger topic for discussion, but children shouldn’t be denied lunch at school under any circumstances. It’s inexcusable.