Parents Told They Could Lose Kids Over Unpaid School Lunches

[left-of-center2012]

A Pennsylvania school district is warning that children could end up in foster care if their parents do not pay overdue school lunch bills. The letters sent recently to about 1,000 parents in Wyoming Valley West School District have led to complaints from parents and a stern rebuke from Luzerne County child welfare authorities. The district says that it is trying to collect more than $20,000, and that other methods to get parents to pay have not been successful. Four parents owe at least $450 apiece.

The letter claims the unpaid bills could lead to dependency hearings and removal of their children for not providing them with food. "You can be sent to dependency court for neglecting your child's right to food. The result may be your child being taken from your home and placed in foster care," the letter read.

Luzerne County's manager and child welfare agency director have written the superintendent, insisting the district stop making what they call false claims. Their letter calls the district's actions troubling and a misrepresentation of how the Children and Youth Services Department and its foster care program operate. Wyoming Valley West's lawyer, Charles Coslett, said he did not consider the letters to be threatening.

The school district's federal programs director, Joseph Muth, told WNEP-TV the district had considered serving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to students with delinquent accounts, but received legal advice warning against it. School district officials say they plan to pursue other legal avenues to get the lunch money, such as filing a district court complaint or placing liens on properties. For the coming year, the district will qualify for funding to provide free lunches to all students.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/pennsylvania/articles/2019-07-19/parents-told-they-could-lose-kids-over-unpaid-school-lunches

[richsonpoordad]

1. Surely, their is some wealthy individual out there who could send a check for $20,000 to the school

district to cover the debt. Just one or two golf rounds at their favorite country club would do it.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. Or, you know, the whole policy could be chucked.

[Blue_true]

9. Then how do lunches get paid for?

Counties have a lot of stuff going on, police, fire, teachers, ect to pay for. In poor counties is enough property tax money coming in to cover everything? Likely not, nor does enough state of federal money come in.

I feel that having children in a choice. People that make that choice should think about the expense of raising a child before becoming a parent.

I think that if school lunches are reasonably priced, say $5 per day for breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack, there is no reason why a parent can't set aside $25 per week for a child.

To the other poster, if a wealthy person steps in and pay lunch tabs for parents, where does that end? If the parents get bailed out once, how many more times would that happen. I am willing to bet you that the very same parents are constantly late on paying their child's lunch bill. Now, I believe in taxing rich people more, but the issue of parents not paying lunch tabs is deeper than fair taxation.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. "there is no reason why a parent can't set aside $25 per week for a child."

There are plenty of reasons.

In poor counties is enough property tax money coming in to cover everything? Likely not, nor does enough state of federal money come in.

So if parents can't pay lunch bills, how can they pay higher taxes? How much money is the school spending on administrating lunch funds?

I am willing to bet you that the very same parents are constantly late on paying their child's lunch bill.

Why do you suppose that might be?

[TeamPooka]

108. don't argue with them. they don't have empathy for people in a hard place.

[Ilsa]

23. Reduced prices are below $5/day, if memory serves.

My son's full price lunches were $3.50.

But it doesn't mean even lower priced lunches are affordable if a family has three kids in school. That would be $300/month under your plan. But I do believe the parents should send a lunch with the child. They'd save a lot of money if it was leftovers or a healthy sandwich with fruit.

This idea of moving kids to foster care is preposterous. There aren't enough foster parents as it is.

[Blue_true]

37. How did you come up with $300 per month.

I stated $5 per day for a package that includes a breakfast, a lunch and an afternoon piece of fruit or cookie. I should have worded in more detail. My plan would be $25 per kid per week. If a family has 3 kids and pays $75 per week, shouldn't the parents have thought before having three kids?

Someone pointed out that kids didn't decide to be born. They are exactly right, the parents made that decision. So it is the parents responsibility to meet obligations, either by sacrificing things like liquor or cigarette or by voting to elect state and local officials that invest money in schools instead of giving away money to big business and big Ag.

[33taw]

56. Do you assume that every child's parent who cannot afford lunches is drinking or smoking?

That is insulting. There are many reasons families cannot afford lunches for children including - medical bills, loss of employment, death of a parent or other family hardships.

[jberryhill]

71. Uhm... pssst... school lunches are a boon to Big Ag

[xmas74]

109. Do you have children?

Things happen. Parents might have had children before they lost jobs, got sick, etc. They aren't out there drinking and smoking. They're working 2 and 3 part time jobs to replace that full time job they once had.

Another thing never mentioned is a la carte menus. They're gaining in popularity in schools at all ages. When you send in lunch money in some districts you can't designate it just for lunch-and a la carte has all the cookies, ice cream bars, bottles of juice drinks and chips. A parent can send in enough for a month (and yes, it must be prepaid, not daily). The money can be gone in a week, no notice.

My kid had this problem. All the good sandwiches, salads, etc were a la carte. Her class before lunch was on the other side of campus. By the time she got to the cafeteria the regular lunches were gone and she'd make an a la carte choice. A sandwich was at least $5, salad same, drinks were $3+ and a cookie $1.50. Send in enough for a month and it's gone in a week and a half but kids still charge on a la carte.

Add to that some policies of approving a sack lunch. Several times I sent her to school with tomato soup in a thermos, oatmeal raisin cookies, a piece of fruit, carrots and turkey pinrolls and the meal was confiscated because I didn't have instructions on ingredients and preparation included.

School lunches are a hot mess.

[Hekate]

78. That's very Libertarian of you. You think schools should have libraries & science labs...

...if the parents can't pony up? Or maybe only those kids who pay a special fee can use them? Sidewalks on streets? Electricity in the Tennessee Valley?

Did you know that the original school lunch program came about as a national security issue? When it came time to draft young men for the Army in WWII, an uncommonly large number were rejected due to nutritional diseases that never should have happened? It was particularly bad in the South.

Rickets
Pellagra
Scurvy
Xerophthalmia
Beriberi
Goiter
Anemia

In extreme enough forms, most of these things kill the sufferer. In less extreme cases they merely cause a lifetime of skeletal deformity, blindness, and low IQ.

Not seen much in 1900, cases burgeoned in the 1920s - 1930s, thus all the sick young men who failed their draft physicals in 1941. By the time I was growing up in the 1950s - 1960s, I learned about these nutritional diseases in public school textbooks and doctors hardly ever saw them.

To check my memory, I googled the information above, and here's a representative link:
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/canres/35/11_Part_2/3246.full.pdf
Nutrition in the United States 1900-1974

Another thing I recall from my childhood is nutritious school lunches so cheap even my own penny-pinching mother couldn't make a sack lunch cheaper. (I found out later there were still some kids who fell through the cracks.) Hawai'i in those years was not a rich state and we were a blue-collar lower-middle class family. Yet every school had a cafeteria, a kitchen, a chill room and a walk in refrigerator. Every kid from 5th-12th grade was rostered a couple of days a year to help out in the kitchen. The jobs were not outsourced to a private company, and the enterprise was not supposed to make money, any more than the schools themselves were supposed to show a profit.

Wherever did the money come from? Well, SOMEbody thought this was a good use of our tax money, for starters. Also, and Christ on a trailer hitch you should know this, America throws away tons of produce. I suspect some of those big blocks of cheese were government surplus.

The nutritional diseases of today are different. Chldren have obesity, clogged arteries, and diabetes, instead of ricketts and scurvy. It would be nice if someone thought it was a priority.

But you carry on with your Libertarian philosophy. Hope you've paid up your dues to the for-profit fire department and all.

[emmaverybo]

82. Excellent post. NT

[Hekate]

85. Thank you

[Crunchy Frog]

87. +1000.

I'm astounded by some of the things I read on DU these days.

[Hekate]

89. The tenor of many posts in this thread has me too sickened to keep participating

I just can't believe it.

Life in America is not a zero-sum game unless we make it one. There's plenty to go around. "Business" has a particular paradigm, which is to make a profit, but government and education are NOT "businesses" and the idea that they should be run like one is beyond stupid. Our government, from local to state to federal, always finds money to pay for what we truly value. Apparently we have not truly valued public education for 40 years. The idea that someone should be making money off government has gotten us Trump, among other things.

[yourmovemonkey]

99. Thank you for this

This whole conversation has made me so upset. Everything bad isn't the result of poor "choices", and even if it was, that doesn't give us the right to stand by and do nothing to ease people's suffering. Not everyone is an economic genius, and some never will be. I'm not willing to shrug my shoulders and stand idly by while they are ground down even further by people who consider themselves morally superior, and use that as an excuse to do nothing.

[Blue_Tires]

50. Surely, the school could quit criminalizing low income citizens instead.... I like that better.

[TeamPooka]

2. Who knows how to start a Go Fund me thing for this?

[Hekate]

105. Or hold a bake sale? Or beg on the street corner? Or do anything other than just feed kids...

...no questions asked.

[a kennedy]

3. Oh for FS.......

What has happened to our humanity??

[gratuitous]

24. Somewhere along the line

We thought it was a bigger scandal to tax wealthy people than to provide food for our children. So now we have government agencies threatening people with losing their children because they're poor. Oh, and we can't raise the minimum wage. And we can't tax rich people.

[RobinA]

70. No One

is going to lose their child over an unpaid school lunch tab. Did you read the article? CYS asked the school district to stop with the threats. In PA it’s actually pretty hard to lose you kid.

[gratuitous]

86. So it was totally fine of the school district to threaten that

Because of course the parents who received that letter knew that CYS would eventually intervene, and the threat was empty.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

41. This notion of ripping children away from their families has got to stop.

Right. Fucking. NOW.

This is not a solution to any problem. And anyone who thinks it is needs to see a cardiologist immediately to see if they even have a heart. Then a psychiatrist to see if they have two brain cells to rub together. Then a member of the clergy to see if they still have a soul worth saving.

This is outrageous. I know that word is seeing a lot of usage these days, but WHEN FFS, did being poor mean that you risk having your children stolen from you by the government ? Because they are doing such a bang up job these days of taking care of children.

The attorney who wrote this letter to those parents said that he doesn't see this as threatening ? WHAT school of law did he attend ? Trump U ?

[RobinA]

73. It Takes A Lot More

than being poor to lose your kids. County CYS agencies are always looking for workers if you feel you would like to contribute.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

110. Stick your snark where the sun don't shine.

You know NOTHING about me, so let me tell you this: I have spent my entire adult life in service to my country, my community and those less fortunate around me. Can you say the same ?

[BigmanPigman]

5. If they qualify for free lunches for all students next year

couldn't they get partially covered for this year? What the Hell happened from one year to the next with this district? How did they go from not needing it at all to completely needing it 100% the following year And qualifying for it? What happened to Title 1 funding? Something seems odd here. Who is doing their budget and accounting?

[Blue_true]

12. Lose of industries and jobs.

That is an issue that will make one year difficult, but allow the county to qualify for federal funds the next.

For me, if I had kids and became hard up due to job loss, I would borrow lunch money from family to pay the kid's lunch tab. Having children in a choice and people that make that choice obligate themselves to certain responsibilities.

[BigmanPigman]

15. Hopefully we can keep having kids as a choice.

The GOP loves them as long as the are in the womb, after that they can starve and drop dead as far as the GOP is concerned.

When I was teaching in elementary school if a kid forgot their lunch the school gave them lunch. Usually they ate the cookie and tator tots and the rest went into the trash unless I kept an eye on them and sat with them during MY lunch break. Often other kids would voluntarily share their lunches and the kid ended up with enough food for an army. Most little kids are pretty generous when it comes to stuff like this.

[stillcool]

17. punish the kids... threaten them with forster care...

over lunch money. Kids should do what I did, and steal the damn food. I never got caught, but if the kids are going to be in foster care over lunch money, they might as well go straight to prison for stealing, and skip all the other crap in-between.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. "Having children [is] a choice"

In an ever-growing part of this country, it's not so much.

[Blue_true]

26. Those places are either rapidly dying or slowly dying.

There is a reason why the more liberal coastal states are collecting more and more of the country's population. Any young people that believe they should control their reproductive choices or are LGBTQ leave the backward places as soon as they can. Young people stay in those places but those people seldom are the cream of the crop.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

32. Okay wait, so you're saying people who can't pay school lunch debt should move?

And those who aren't "cream of the crop" and reproduce despite not wanting to...should have their children taken away from them because they can't pay a lunch debt?

[Blue_true]

63. You really jumped the tracks.

I said that having kids is a choice. You said that some places are not allowing choice. I said that young people, BEFORE they come to the point of having kids can chose to move to other places, those that stay in the backward places chose to stay there. Then you jump forward to people already having kids in school when my base condition was they leave the backward places before deciding to have kids and never look back. I am not going to let you do that to me, I set a clear set of base conditions, you hopped forward to a completely different set of conditions to try to shame me.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

93. Didn't have to jump anywhere to highlight your lack of understanding and empathy.

Any young people that believe they should control their reproductive choices or are LGBTQ leave the backward places as soon as they can.

There are plenty of reasons a person can't or won't leave, and plenty of reasons to stay and change the culture. Blaming people for staying by is a shitty look.

Young people stay in those places but those people seldom are the cream of the crop.

What does that even MEAN.

I said that young people, BEFORE they come to the point of having kids can chose to move to other places, those that stay in the backward places chose to stay there.

This is called doubling down, and also is a terrible understanding of the concept of "choice."

Then you jump forward to people already having kids in school when my base condition was they leave the backward places before deciding to have kids and never look back.

Yeah it's just that your base condition is so unrealistic for so many people that it's laughable.

I am not going to let you do that to me, I set a clear set of base conditions, you hopped forward to a completely different set of conditions to try to shame me.

I just call it as I see it. Don't say shameful things and there won't be a problem.

[Hekate]

106. You just don't follow the news regarding reproductive rights, do you?

[Lars39]

6. If school is mandatory, then states should provide meals.

And fuck those evil people terrorizing parents and kids.

[Blue_true]

13. I don't disagree about free lunches. But having kids is a choice.

When people make that choice, they obligate themselves to certain responsibilities.

[Lars39]

14. Juggling exorbitant rent, high utilities, an ER bill plus dr bills, car repairs...

not everyone’s income is steady enough to handle everything tossed at them. The parents may have thought they could catch up.

[Blue_true]

28. Then borrow the money from family to catch up.

The biggest bills were around $400. While that may be a lot for a person to come up with on their own, relatives or good friends are often willing to help out, some of those people even immediately forgive the loan.

I stand by what I wrote.

[Lars39]

31. And if family and friends are broke, too?

[Blue_true]

59. Then get the kids into the free lunch program or get enough food assistance to make the

kids lunch that they take with them to school.

[questionseverything]

69. spoken like a spoiled brat that has a family with money to borrow from

foster care costs money too bt freakin way

I don't have time for this but I signed in to say u are really wrong on all of this

punishing people for being poor is what repubs do..i think u are in the wrong place

half the country doesn't have 400 dollar sweetpea

[NYC Liberal]

90. They should just ask their dad for small $1 million "loan" like Trump did.

Or sell some of their stock like Mitt Romney.

/s



The attitudes on this thread are unbelievable.

[AlexSFCA]

16. while it's true, kids are the ones who will suffer

they didn’t choose to be born, did nothing wrong. As a parent, I’ll say without a doubt, parents who can’t feed their kids are not fit to be parents and the school might be onto something. What else can’t those parents provide for the kids? School is not a substitute for parenting.

[yourmovemonkey]

40. Your assumptions about the parents of these kids fit a right wing stereotype of the poor

The causes of poverty are much more complex, and shouldn't be dismissed with victim blaming.

[Blue_true]

49. Poor people like rich people waste money on the wrong things.

The difference is that it does more damage to poor people because they don't have the excess funds to recover from the stupidity.

I stand by what I wrote.

[mokawanis]

47. I'd be interested in hearing

how you came to the conclusion that

"Those parent likely care more about spending money on other things like liquor, drugs, cigarettes, lottery tickets, ect, than they do for paying for their kids' lunches."

I think you probably know nothing about the circumstances of the families you're passing judgement on.

[Blue_true]

51. I was born poor and was dirt poor all the way through college.

After college, when the moving company that the company that hired me showed up to pack me up, all I had was a small box of washed clothes, the sheets on my bed, an old bicycle and the cloths on my back. So don't lecture me on not knowing what it is like to be poor.

But, as I grew up and in college, I saw poor people routinely waste money that they could not afford to waste, even my parents. Rich people and solidly middleclass people can afford to waste money, I saw that in high school and throughout college, they recover from that or are simply not hurt by the waste to begin with. Poor people did not recover from the waste, something went unpaid for.

If we are going to expand the social safety net, one key element of that expansion is having people making sound decisions. If we do not set that requirement as a foundation, all we are going to do is waste money and continue to lose ground as a society.

[TeamPooka]

55. You win most judgmental post of the day.

[Blue_true]

61. I was born poor and lived poor through college.

I, unlike some actually know what I am talking about.

[TeamPooka]

68. I was too but I still have empathy for others

in a hard situation and not just making shit up about them, like how you think they spend their money without any proof.

[Blue_true]

72. It is not about not having empathy. Turning this into an emotional pissing contest accomplishes

nothing. Poor people waste money just like everyone else, the waste tends to hurt them more, that is a simple reality of life. Policy can change the foundation that people have to stand on, but to make progressive policy work, people have to make some sound lifestyle choices.

[TeamPooka]

74. rationalizing is a powerful drug. Hard to make it through the day without it.

[Blue_true]

76. I have said what I have to say. nt

[TeamPooka]

107. Good for you.

[thesquanderer]

35. As a society, we have chosen not to means-test parenthood. But...

...even if someone could "afford" children when they had them, people's life circumstances change, and 5 or 10 years later, they can be really struggling. But they're still "stuck" with the kids...

[Blue_true]

54. You are right about change. But even in difficult situations people can make choices.

Pack a lunch for work, reducing smoking or the number of beer drank, changing habits to save on the utility bill. The point is choices can be made even in difficult situations.

[liberalmuse]

38. You don't sound like you were ever poor.

My mom could not afford 25 fucking cents for school stuff when I was young. My mom choose to have 3 kids when she was married, then my dad deserted us and left her holding the bag. Shit happens. It appears you have all the answers and assume the right to pass judgement. Please proceed.

[yourmovemonkey]

42. Exactly

How does he/she know what the circumstances of each of these families are? Life can throw us a curve ball anytime, and there's always someone standing there who chooses to just dismiss and look down on us as being "lazy".

[Blue_true]

57. I grew up dirt poor and was poor throughout college.

Believe me, I know what it means to be poor. I started doing odd jobs at 8 to help my parents and was buying my own school clothes at 13. In high school I road the bus instead of trying to buy a car, I saved the money instead for college.

If you are younger than 70 and your mom could not afford 25 cents for your lunch, you could have gotten free lunch tickets that looked just like the lunch tickets that other kids had. I went to school with lots of kids that qualified for free lunch, I ate daily with those kids and only found out when they told me. How did I pay for my lunch if I was so poor? I started doing odd jobs at 8, picking up trash for an elderly neighbor, finding and reselling good quality golf balls lost by golfers on the nearby golf course, taking people's yards, picking up citrus fruit for a fruit harvester on the weekends. Should kids be expected to do what I did, no, but their parents have the option of getting them into the free lunch program which still exists.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

45. NO. Having children isn't always a choice.

Where have YOU been lately ?

The government is trying to outlaw abortion, tell insurance companies that they don't need to cover birth control in their health plans, and controlling womens' reproductive rights. So, no, it isn't always a choice.

Additionally, there are certain faiths that frown on contraception. So, no, it isn't always a choice.

Rape. Incest. So, no, it isn't always a choice.

You can stand wherever you like, pal, but basically, no, it isn't always a choice.

[Blue_true]

58. Then people impacted by those government directives need to vote other people into office.

More than half the people don't vote in local and state elections most of the time. Everything is manageable, even in conservative states that are conservative because large numbers of voters don't bother to vote or make an effort to overcome disenfranchisement of soecific groups of voters.

[thesquanderer]

95. Voting new people into office is a solution for LOTS of things. But...

... (1) that approach doesn't always succeed, because, you know, other people are voting the other way, and (2) voting to give people better access to abortion doesn't do anything about the kids already born. Unless you include a provision permitting parents the right to murder their kids up to the age of 18. And (3) it doesn't address those whose faith prevents them from having an abortion.

To take this conversation back to more realistic and more empathetic perspectives, parents who are struggling so that they can't pay the lunch school fees probably get (or at least qualify for) government assistance, i.e. SNAP. Does anyone know, do schools accept food stamps for payment of kids' lunch charges? I would hope so.

[DURHAM D]

67. The federal government does just that through the

National School Lunch Program.

[Merlot]

7. The talk is about free tuition at college, but why not free lunches for all?

I actually think college should have some tuition, just not as much as it does. But all school lunches should be free, and high quality.

[gopiscrap]

8. Jesus fucking Christ

what have we become?

[panader0]

10. Because foster care is so much cheaper per day than lunch?

Shaking my head.....

[Sapient Donkey]

29. IT'S NOT ABOUT OVERALL COSTS AND EFFECTIVENESS!!! THEY DIDN'T EARN THAT LUNCH!!!

Even if you have 100% clear data that shows something like funding school lunches has many positive results or can even be cheaper. People will still be against it out some sort twisted principle against anyone getting something they view as unearned.

These same people are against education and rehab programs for people addicted to drugs and/or convicted of crimes. Can't even have discussions with people about it, because they dismiss it right off the bat and call everyone a socialist or communist.

[ReformedGOPer]

19. I live one school district over from WVW.

Smack in the middle of red country. In fact, my county (Luzerne) has the dubious honor of giving Trump the state of PA on election night. Just another example of how much the repugs care about children outside the womb.

[JDC]

20. I'm surprised they don't threaten them with their kids going to work camps

Seems like the perfect opportunity for some child labor.

[YOHABLO]

22. As a matter of fact, Jack Kingston Rep GA suggested making kids do jobs around the school for lunch.

"Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, suggested that low-income students either pay or work for their subsidized school lunches to teach them that “there is no such thing as a free lunch." this was back 2013 but it gives you a perspective of the RW mindset. Kingston thankfully lost his bid for Senate of GA and hopefully has faded away somewhere.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

46. Sadly, he's still around, making the rounds as a "pundit."

If you've ever seen him, he is THE definition of a mouth-breather. His mouth is always open, even when he's not talking. I've been waiting for him to start drooling.

[YOHABLO]

81. I knew Kingston from way back when. Went to high school with him. What a twerp.

[YOHABLO]

21. What are the socio economics of this school and district? There's needed info not provided here.

[Sapient Donkey]

25. I am curious how many people saw this letter and signed off on it thinking it was a good idea

Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2019, 09:33 AM - Edit history (1)

I wonder if the same people who gave them legal advice about their PB&J "solution" were consulted before sending out this letter.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

48. Did they plan on paying for the ER bills for those with peanut allergies ?

Anaphylactic shock is a bitch.

[Laffy Kat]

27. In the U.S., every effing thing boils down to $$.

Sick of living under capitalism.

[SCVDem]

30. Ya gotta love those evangelical Christians.

Let the kids die!

Yet they bitch of an attack on Christianity. What gives you the fucking right?

Go to fucking hell for child abuse!!

[Doreen]

33. It will cost more money to put each child into

foster care than what they owe. Oh, by the way, those lunches they are so worried about are not that healthy in the first place.

[Shrike47]

36. Children's Services and the court would not place children in foster care for not paying.

The letter was a lie. I was a Juvenile Court attorney for many years. The local Children’s Services workers were undoubtedly pissed. They take foster placement seriously.

[Doreen]

44. What a horrible thing to do.

[RobinA]

77. Thank You!

former caseworker here. People need to read the article before getting on their high horse.

[Snackshack]

39. Not threatening?

Really?

Amazing how this country can afford a billions in a tax cut, billions on “defense”, billions in foreign aid, a trillion to develop a plane alone, over $100mil for trump to golf but not supply food for kids to eat lunch. Our priorities really are upside down.

[drthais]

43. Interesting diversity of opinions here

Looks like some are plants or bots.


I have been a member since 2004 although do not post often
but I am on this site reading every single day

Who on earth who spends time on this site
would think ANYTHING other than...these poor kids and their poor struggling parents!
and the SHAME it must bring them to be in this position!

what is the MATTER with everyone!

These are kids and we're talking LUNCH here, folks!
We should all step up, as a group and pay this bill.
In addition, the laws or rules about school lunches need to change.
NO child should (a) go hungry or (b) be shamed about their parent's inability to pay for their lunches.

Do I think the parents are slackers?
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU! of COURSE not!
Do you live under a ROCK or something>?

my apologies
this made me particularly angry

[jberryhill]

75. Yup

Must be them “Reagan Democrats” I always hear about.

Always heard about them.

Them, and Leprechauns.

[DallasNE]

52. Taking Kids From Biological Parents

Is becoming more common. There are not only cases like this but Child Protective Services are not taking 3rd party complaints seriously and possibly coaching kids to say things that mean the parents are "neglecting" their children so they grab them. And this happens more often with people of color. Now we are not talking about physical abuse here. Were talking about the parents not spending enough quality time with the kids - having them watch TV in their room. A creeping big brother, if you will. One wonders what the statistics show over the last 40 years on number of foster children and by the offense for removal.

[RobinA]

79. Utter Nonsense

Children in foster care because parents weren’t spending quality time with them?? Not likely unless the parents were drugging the kids with Benedryl so they’d sleep unattended through the night while the parent was spending quality time at the local bar.

[Dawson Leery]

53. It looks like we found the s**thole Trump was talking about.

Luzerne County.

[durablend]

62. Where Lou Barletta is from

So do the math...

[Dawson Leery]

64. Casey lost the county to Louie.

While it seems Luzerne is gone, the larger Lackawanna swung back to our side, putting it back where it has been historically.

[onecaliberal]

60. The federal school lunch program provides free lunch to SED students.

The director of federal programs should know that.

[DURHAM D]

66. Here is some information on the National Lunch Program for

free and reduced lunch -

Federal eligibility income chart for 2018-2019 school year
Household size Yearly income Monthly income
1 $22,459 $1,872
2 $30,451 $2,538
3 $38,443 $3,204
4 $46,435 $3,870

I have a feeling that the people not paying are actually parents who can afford to pay but won't.

[Hekate]

80. I have a feeling there are people so poor they can't pay at all

[DURHAM D]

84. They don't need to.

There are six grade schools in the town I live in. At one of the schools 100% of the kids get free or reduced lunches.

[Cosmocat]

96. They need to sign up then

It's signing one form, and districts tend to try to help people sign up to make it easier for them. They get the money why not.

So in this situation you either have people who qualify it's simply just won't fill the paperwork out for whatever reason. Or people who I have enough to be able to pay it, and aren't paying it.

We had this issue in our district, we didn't do anything crazy like send this stupid letter out. But we are bringing in a collection firm, and sending Letters Out letting people know if they don't saddle up their balance, we're going to turn it over to the collection firm.

Last year our district did go out to get community contributions to hey these off. But we can't do that every year.

[Hekate]

83. The cruelty is the point, okay? The fact we even have to discuss this at DU as if there was ...

...a reasonable approach to shaming children is despicable. There are American children who go to bed hungry every night.

Nothing about public education should ever be about making money, including the lunch program. Education is not a business. "Business" is the wrong paradigm.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

88. Public schools should include lunch for every student.

Period.

I had the good fortune to send my kids to a secular independent school and lunch was included in the tuition. As it should be in public schools.


Back in the late 1950s, when I was a 5th grade student at a school in rural upstate New York, this issue became close and sort of personal. There was a family in our school with five children. One was in my classroom. Their father committed suicide in about December or January of that school year. Everyone was reeling in shock. Before the kid came back to school, my teacher convened a class meeting, and persuaded us to underwrite the cost of a meal ticket for the son of that man for the rest of the school year. I believe the meal ticket was all of $1.25 each week, but keep in mind this was probably 1958 or '59. I think we all contributed pennies and nickels, and probably the teacher made up any difference.

Here is what has always stayed with me. The family was poor to begin with. The father took his own life, leaving the family completely destitute. The community, including my 5th grade classroom, did what it could. I have no idea what eventually happened to that family, as we moved away a few years later. But I've never forgotten. I think that for me there was always a sense of it could have been us.

Here's more of why I have that sense of it could have been us. Those several of years later when we moved away, it was from rural upstate NY to Tucson, AZ. My father was an alcoholic who was becoming more abusive, and my mother realized she needed to get us away from him. So she took a deep breath, loaded the five of us still at home (oldest brother was in the army, stationed in Berlin) into the VW bus with all of the possessions we could pack in there, and set out. She was a nurse and knew that she could find work. But I must point out that the nursing profession did not pay very well in the early '60s.

Two things that relate to me about this. First is that the high school we enrolled in quickly realized that our family had major financial needs. So they forgave our book costs (yeah, in Tucson at that time we had to purchase our textbooks which was a huge shock, because in NYS the textbooks were provided) which was greatly appreciated. Then, in the spring of my sophomore year, I was given a Saturday babysitting job (the parents had come to the school looking for a babysitter, students could sign up for it, and even though I was about the 8th one to sign up, I was given the job, and I'm sure it was because the school knew I needed the money.) and I used the money to buy groceries for the family. I couldn't imagine spending the money on myself.

But here's the most important thing. I'd knocked out a front tooth several years earlier, and someone directed my mom to contact a charity dental clinic in town. Which gave me the dental work, including the crown, that I desperately needed. I have never stopped appreciating that. For years after, whenever I donated money to charity (and I cannot for the life of me recall the one that is commonly used by companies) I always designated my donation to go specifically to that particular clinic. Actually, I should send then a check some time soon, as I can never really thank them enough for what they did for me.

[DeltaLitProf]

91. The Office was set just up the road from here

You'd think someone from the cast or crew would see this and at least smell good publicity or a tax write-off. Of course, doing something good for kids from poor families should be enough in itself.

[DeminPennswoods]

92. It's flown under the radar, but a few years

ago, the free school lunch program was modified so that if a district has 40%, iirc, qualifying for free/reduced lunches, then the entire district qualified. That means every student gets a free lunch. It seems like Wyoming Valley has applied for this program and did qualify.

But, imo, the real issue is that school districts no longer prepare and serve their own food. They don't employee cooks and cafeteria workers; it's all contracted out. Personally, I suspect it would probably save money if districts went back to preparing their own food and working with local farmers for fresh fruit and vegetables.

Agriculture is still the number 1 business in PA. There's always concern from all branches of state government about the loss of family farms and how to keep them. Setting up a county-wide or state-wide co-op system where school districts could buy fresh food from local farmers would help everyone. Farmers get a stable market and kids get fresh food.

One other issue impacting school districts here in thes state is mandatory pension contributions. Back in the late 90's, early 2000s, when the stock market was going great guns, the teacher's pension fund was actually "over funded". Legislation was passed that allowed school districts to reduce their pension contributions to very low levels - and many did just that using the "savings" for other things. Of course, what goes up usually comes back down. And so it was. Now the school districts are having to pay back the contributions they skipped during the "fat" years and it is taking a big bite out of the budgets of even the richest districts.

The other issue is charter school funding. For each child from a school district who is enrolled in a charter school, the tuition comes directly from the district where the child lives. School districts are paying for students they aren't educating, thus reducing the money avail for everything else they must continue to do.

[no_hypocrisy]

94. Small claims court, maybe. But certainly not family court with foster care!

[Gothmog]

97. Arggh

[Buns_of_Fire]

98. Sounds like the Wyoming Valley West School District Superintendent

gets paid about $20,000 a year too much.

[ck4829]

100. Disgusting

[OkSustainAg]

101. in school district around me

90 percent of the school mostly working white families qualify for school lunches.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

102. Digusting

They were apparently told that just serving kids PBJ sandwiches was not legally advisable but THIS was?


I don't know what it's like in PA but here in Indiana there's almost no way we would remove children over this. If anything, the school would be the ones looking bad.

[Pachamama]

103. People are being threatened to losing their children because they can't pay for their food?

WTF!!!!



No words

[superpatriotman]

104. The lawyer:

"Wyoming Valley West's lawyer, Charles Coslett, said he did not consider the letters to be threatening.

"Hopefully, that gets their attention and it certainly did, didn't it? I mean, if you think about it, you're here this morning because some parents cried foul because he or she doesn't want to pay a debt attributed to feeding their kids. How shameful," Coslett told WYOU-TV."

Make America Sane Again.