These aren’t isolated cases, either. Here’s a recap of the most recent honor roll of American public school cafeteria douchebaggery:
An elementary school in Salt Lake City, Utah reportedly seized between 40 and 50 students’ lunches on pizza day and threw them all in the garbage when the kids got up to the register and couldn’t pay because their account balances were either low or empty. Students all over the cafeteria were broken down in tears. I’m sure that made for a great learning environment.
Remember the most important meal of the day? A 12-year-old Dickinson, Texas boy’s breakfast was thrown in the trash right in front of him at his middle school because his account was short a whopping .30 cents. The breakfast itself cost $1.25.
Around 25 students at a Massachusetts middle school were forced to throw out their lunches or refused lunch entirely because their accounts were empty or they could not afford to pay. An employee from the school’s on-site lunch provider reportedly gave an order not to provide lunch to students with overextended credit or empty accounts. At least that employee was later put on leave. “I’m pissed that when there are people in prison who are getting meals, my daughter, an honor student, is going hungry,” one father remarked.
A New Jersey elementary school threw a 10-year-old autistic boy’s lunch in the trash because of an unpaid account…despite having already done so before. “It’s between the parents and the cafeteria. It’s not between the child and the lunch lady. Let the kids eat their lunch,” the boy’s mother told a local news station.
The middle and high schools in Old Town, Maine have a “no pay, no food policy” that Superintendent David Walker says students, like the 11-year-old denied food because his mom hadn’t paid his account, should be able to understand. “Students are old enough to take responsibility for their lunches” by middle school age, said Walker. You know, because apparently 11-year-olds can suddenly get jobs in this country to afford their lunch at school.
Over 40 elementary school students in Kentucky were denied a full lunch during state testing week. One student’s account was short $1.15, which the mother told a news station she paid online as many schools require the night before, but the funds hadn’t been processed by lunch time the next day, so her fourth grader spent all day upset and left school crying at the end of the day. Luckily a good samaritan showed up to that school and donated $56 to pay up all student lunch accounts so no more kids would have to go without a full lunch (which isn’t even that large to begin with in this country) during state tests.
Worse, apparently students at some schools across the state of Minnesota are actually branded with “Money” or “Lunch” stamps across their hands when they are late on accounts as a message to parents to pay up. Yep, they are actually branding children with the scarlet letter of poverty if they cannot afford their lunch, so the child will have to walk around school for the whole entire rest of their day branded and a walking target for ridicule by other children because they are poor or the parents forgot to put money in their children’s accounts.
I’ve personally had the same type of situation happened to me before in which lunch has been thrown right in the trash in front of me when I didn’t have enough money for lunch, and was given an alternate meal of lesser quality. I hadn’t even realized how disgustingly perverse that was at the time because of how it was normalized. Shaming the poor, and even depriving children of food has become normalized. This is especially a problem in conservative states where funding for education is low and funding for things like football stadiums and other less important things is high. Public schools need to be providing students with free meals, which can’t be done without the proper funding as well as the proper allocation of funds on the part of schools and school districts.
