Girl Can’t Afford School Lunch, So It Gets Thrown In Trash

[The Straight Story]

Seventy cents. Two quarters and two dimes. That’s the change you throw in your pocket and forget about. And yet that’s exactly what stood between a 14-year-old girl and her lunch in one Texas school.

The girl, whose name is being withheld, was denied lunch because she didn’t have enough money left in her lunch account with the school. At Stevens High School in San Antonio, TX, school lunches cost $1.75. The girl in question only had $1.05 remaining in her account. According to school policy, there are no exceptions: if a student can’t afford to pay, then the lunch gets thrown out.

Yes, thrown out. This young girl went an entire day without eating, and the food was thrown away over 70 cents.

...

However, according to a representative from the school district, Pascual Gonzalez, “The policy says that there is no charge account that’s built in, either have the money to pay for your food or you’re not going to eat.”

Sounds pretty harsh, but Gonzalez also said, “I know it sounds terrible, I totally get that, but the law states we cannot take that same food and put it back in the for sale line.”

http://www.parentsociety.com/parenting/education-childcare/girl-cant-afford-school-lunch-so-it-gets-thrown-in-trash/

[eShirl]

1. They could have given her $1.05 worth of the lunch.

At least give the kid most of the entree.

[malaise]

68. We actually have three sizes for lunch

large, medium and small.

[99Forever]

2. Again.

We are a Nation without a conscience.

I want out.

[They_Live]

46. agreed.

my country does not represent me or my values, nor does it represent the values of my family.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Ah, yes....zero tolerance at its finest.....

Glad to see they are willing to let the girl go hungry rather than to show some compassion. Can't have her expecting freebies all her life.

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. Have you noticed that the more "Christian" this nation becomes the less tolerant it gets? n/t

[Wounded Bear]

10. No kidding.....nt

[Chuuku Davis]

28. Not sure what your statement has to do w this story

But every source I can find says the country is becoming less religious and christian.

Please explain

[alp227]

52. Post probably refers to the conservative christians.

For whom charity is code word for backdoor proselytization.

[Egalitarian Thug]

61. You might notice that I replied to Wounded Bear. But their comment was very relevant to this

article in that it addresses the larger issue of the cruel insanity that dominates the U.S. in general and Texas in particular and that it is almost exclusively fueled by religiosity.

As for the nation becoming less religious and less Christian, I would be willing to wager that those sources limit consideration to counting people, and as far as that goes it seems likely. In the ongoing culture wars however, I think the opposite is true depending on the time frame you consider among the myriad potential measures. Perhaps less in the last 5 years, but certainly much more in the last 40 years

[Bake]

63. Not only let her go hungry, but THROW THE FOOD AWAY!

Zero tolerance indeed. School administration at its finest.



Bake

[Newest Reality]

78. It is probably three strikes and you

are out.

If a kid does that three times, they probably toss her in the dumpster.

Sheesh, huh? Teaching by example?

[Hugin]

4. This is the kind of junk you can expect with "Health Care Vouchers"...

or "Vouchers" of any sort for that matter.

[redqueen]

5. Shameful. nt

[DreamGypsy]

6. In a civil society...

...the person behind her in line or the server behind the counter would have reached into his/her pocket and offered to cover the short term debt with loose change, or allowed $.70 to be deducted from his/her account. Not a big deal. Everybody would have felt better for the rest of the day.

Being thoughtful and considerate is not illegal in our society, but it is not exactly encouraged. The goodness quotient on the planet would have increased slightly.

Thanks for the post, TSS.

[OldEurope]

12. Except that the server behind the counter probably

cannot afford to give $ 0,70 to that girl, because then his own child will stay hungry.
It's a sad world.

[Laffy Kat]

31. I worked in the cafeteria at my son's school and we weren't allowed to help the kids out.

There was a student who couldn't afford lunch so I charge my son's account instead while the manager was looking over my shoulder. That was the only "negative" item on my evaluation. I was floored.

[dsc]

42. cafeteria servers are among the lowest paid workers around

and those are part time jobs. The person behind is another story.

[SomethingFishy]

7. At my kids school they still feed you

but they put a big red stamp on your hand so everyone knows you didn't have enough money for lunch. Stupid.

[Auntie Bush]

37. You gotta be kidding!

You mean they didn't put a big letter S on their forehead for "Stealing"

[DotGone]

41. Gotta let the everyone know who the Hester Prynnes are

[warrior1]

8. This comes to mind,

"whatever you do the the least of these you do to me"

All thought I am not religious, I'll bet many with in this school are. Rules should have exceptions.

[Ikonoklast]

11. No one there could front the kid seventy cents?

Oy.

[MineralMan]

14. That's not allowed. You have to have it in your lunch

account. They have no way to take cash. Seriously.

It is deeply fucked, that system. It wasn't the girl who didn't put money in the lunch account. It was her parent(s). Why punish the girl? An ugly system, indeed.

[marions ghost]

18. Children are often punished because the parents can't pay...

I remember.

[MineralMan]

21. When I was in high school, way back in the 1960s,

you paid for your lunch in cash. I think it was 50 cents. My mom was a cafeteria cashier during the lunch hour and a school secretary other times. She always had a bunch of quarters in her purse. If a kid didn't have the 50 cents, she paid for the kid's lunch. She's like that. Schools should be like that. Feed the children! It's what Jesus would do, if Jesus were real!

[marions ghost]

25. Nice Mom! So you know

from first hand that the need is real. Why does this happen? People treat stray cats better.

Not being able to pay is certainly real in my experience. My folks had 4 kids when they fell on hard times. Sometimes we didn't have lunch money. We just skipped lunch. In my large inner city middle school we'd go to the stairwell where there were other kids who didn't have the money & hang out. I don't think anybody knew or cared. It was just normal. I never heard of any way to get it paid for.

[MineralMan]

32. Yes. She is. I knew kids who didn't have lunch money.

But, they did know that my Mom would buy their lunch for them if they went through the line. Later, a free school lunch program was made available to kids who couldn't afford lunch, so my Mom could quit doing that. The kids had a free lunch card.

Sadly, a lot of kids who could buy lunch ended up dumping most of it in the garbage. Not me. I had a very large hollow leg to put my lunch in. I just couldn't gain weight in my teens, so I ate everything I could find.

[Raine]

70. My parents didn't have an excess of money because they choose to send my brother & I to private

school and my father worked overtime to even afford that. I got a quarter for lunch everyday which if I was really hungry I would buy an ice sandwich or a bag of popcorn. I never wanted to tell my father that the money wasn't enough for anything more than that. Usually though I would save the money instead and my friend and I would spend lunchtime in the library. I'm sure we weren't the only ones in the library because of a lack of lunch money. I would save those quarters everyday for months so that I could spend them on a new pair of shoes or something else to wear. I was more interested in fashion than food, in school how you look is a big deal.

[marions ghost]

87. Sounds exactly like how it was for me

We kept quiet about it, not wanting to be singled out.

[rdharma]

29. WWJD?

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Mahatma Gandhi

[former9thward]

58. What do Christians have to do with this?

This is a public school.

[RC]

38. That was before computers made our lives so much easier.

[MineralMan]

39. Yup. Exactly.

[ananda]

48. It's what the Jesus in each of us would do.

..

[MineralMan]

51. Yes. Sadly, it appears there are many people

with no Jesus in them at all, despite their protestations to the contrary. That's very sad.

[Beacool]

73. Bless your mom!!!

Sounds like you lucked out in the mom department.

[KittyWampus]

75. SORRY but stop with this bullshit. School lunch programs are in place. Parents are notified many

times way in advance if an account is empty.

[marions ghost]

88. Sorry, but lots of kids

fall through the cracks in America for one reason or another.

There is hunger in America. Read up.

[onpatrol98]

89. What B.S.?

School lunch programs are based on incomes. People can have an income that suggests they should be able to afford lunch AND STILL not be able to afford lunch. Many people live right up their means and over.

The ONLY way I know if my son's account is empty or low is when HE tells me himself. He finds out while he's standing there at the register. I am not notified by anyone. Thankfully, he has the money in his pocket to pay if he really wants it, but that doesn't mean its the norm for everyone.

Heck, my own father would REGULARLY forget my lunch money because he would insist on doling it out on a daily basis instead of paying for the week or month. We would spend our mornings shaking sofa cushions and still come up short. But, according to a form stuck on someone's desk, my sibling and I did not qualify for a free lunch. What we did apparently qualify for was to be hungry on many occasions.

[ProSense]

23. They could have

simply billed the parent(s) the other 70 cents. Schools that aren't run by callous assholes do it all the time. Kids get sent home with an invoice, giving the parent the choice to pay the amount due and a day up to a week of additional lunches. That's a much better policy than starving a child.

[MineralMan]

27. But that would make far too much sense.

Where do you think this kids are? At a school, where practical knowledge is being imparted to them?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

13. This country is fucked up.

You can bet the server was a Fox "News" robot who is brainwashed into hating the poor. What a horrible person.

[Chuuku Davis]

30. Uh NO

Server could not have done a single thing thanks to the district's rules

[Purveyor]

79. Hence, this country is 'fucked up' per those 'districts rules'. "Are there no prisons, are there no

work camps"....indeed!

[CrispyQ]

15. How much of our tax dollars

go toward martini lunches for the banksters while they trash our economy?

I am infuriated reading this story. I want to fucking scream.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

16. What a Republican policy

I wonder which one created it? Pfft.

[Horse with no Name]

17. What a joke this country is

This situation is a metaphor for our society though.

If you can't afford something and you are poor, you do without.

I cannot understand that someone could THROW IT AWAY instead of giving it to this child.
That is horrible. This is school.

Our district would not have done that. In fact, our district has free lunches for everyone the first couple of months of school until the people that get free lunches get their paperwork in, etc.

But they would never ever ever let a child go hungry.

[smirkymonkey]

66. +1000

Couldn't they have taken up a collection or something?

Poor kid. Going hungry for the stupidity of others.

[Horse with no Name]

72. She went hungry so that they could use her for an example

No money no food. And we don't care about it.

[dem in texas]

19. How Sad and Stupid

Why didn't someone come up with the money so she could have her lunch. "Do the right thing". That means no matter what, if you are faced with a problem, always do what you know in your heart is right. And the right thing would have been to give this little girl her lunch. It seems like more and more, I am embarrassed to say I am a Texan.

[GiveMeFreedom]

84. I do not know this

but do the workers hold the food under the poor girls nose, before they throw it away? That would be pretty bad.

[HappyMe]

20. Good grief!

A kid goes hungry and food is wasted.

We used to get an automated phone call in the evening when the lunch accounts got below $2. They would let you go in arrears up to $5.

[dhill926]

22. we is truly stupid.....

boggles the mind.....

[LWolf]

24. I've never worked at a school that would refuse to feed a student,

and I've worked in schools and districts across 2 states. Never in Texas, though.

There are all kinds of ways to make sure the student gets to eat. Our cafeteria staff will feed them. If their account falls too far behind, someone will be talking to parents about free/reduced lunch, or we'll be talking to our FAN representative.

Nobody goes hungry; there are some teenagers who like to skip lunch, either to fit into their skinny jeans or spend more time socializing outside the cafeteria, or both, but even those will not be excused from the cafeteria without having eaten something.

[petronius]

26. What a stupid policy, both throwing out the food, and worse giving the

girl nothing at all. Why not allow an account to go a bit negative - and if they really feel they need a 'punishment' why not tell the student she can't go to prom or something else non-academic and non-health related?

[tblue]

33. Great ideas! What a dumb system.

Texas is just so backward!

[AndyA]

34. What insanity.

Whoever thought up this policy should be fired. If the food is going to be wasted anyway, might as well let the kid eat it.

Not only is this unkind, it's also wasteful. Welcome to America, land of the free where everyone is treated equally!

[itsrobert]

35. Probably a case of the kid using her funds too fast

I feel bad for the girl, but going without one meal is not going to have any adverse effects on her.

It doesn't sound like they did not have the money, just the mother tried to cut it too close with an automatic transfer.

My guess, the girl drained her account buying snacks or other food above and beyond the standard lunch and her mom did not plan for that.

I use to fill up my kids accounts and find that the kids would drain it buying extra food that the school tempted them to buy. My kids were also using the funds to buy their friends food too.

[DonCoquixote]

56. easily fixed

As someone who worked in a cafeteria, it is easy to simply make a fixed lunch price..let's say, 3.00 for a standard meal, baloney sandwich, fruit,drink, snack. Fixed amounts, fixed prtions, fixed deal, the sort of thing that diet planners do all the time. It's the sort of thing that can be bought in bulk (and at discount), and then given out, just like they do in the military. If people get snobby, tell them that in France they call this style of planned, soup to nuts meal "prix Fixe" (which they actually do.) This can also have the effect of better nutrition (i.e. out goes the sugary crap.) Kids frankly should not have as many choices open to them at schoolmeals, unless their parents pack the lunch.

But then again, the companies that sell snacks targeted towards kids would not make the extra profits, would they? Not like they would try to market to children that would want the snack rather than the meat loaf. Yeah Yeah, cue the old pink floyd line about not eating your meat and wanting the pudding, but we know damned well the food industry does it's best to bleed every penny of profit, which is why they make sure they have their sugar drinks in every cafeteria.

Then, if they get in debt, send a bill home. . There is no need to embarass a kid any more than they have to be in school, because I can tell you, when this kid is 40, she may remember that one time in the cafeteria some idiots made her embarassed.

And then, the school could bill her parents...simple...and they can even convince a few rich sobs to make a tax dedictible donation to a fund set aside for those parents who simply ARE too poor.

[Gore1FL]

36. Modern Day King Solomon Story...

Wrong outcome this time.

[Cleita]

40. I suppose they couldn't extend credit in her account and send a

note to her parent or whoever was footing the bill? Honestly, the stupidity.

[winter is coming]

85. That's what they do at my kid's school. n/t

[Cleita]

86. If there was no account, I could sort of understand it, (not really the kid

should be fed, but for the sake of argument) but there's an account there, which means someone has information for billing.

[Rex]

43. Horrible.

"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer



"America is the richest country in the world. And yet tonight, thousands of your neighbors will go to bed hungry.
It may be your child's schoolmate who is undernourished and has difficulty learning on an empty stomach.
Or it could be a co-worker, a working mother whose low-wage job doesn't make ends meet.
Perhaps it's an elderly neighbor who has to make a decision whether to delay filling a prescription or buying groceries. The faces of hunger are as broad as the faces of America." - David Nasby, General Mills

[FreeJoe]

45. That's odd

My kids go to a public school in Texas. The rule at their schools is that if you don't bring a lunch and don't have money for lunch, the school discretely provides one for you. Maybe its a district by district or even school by school thing.

[Horse with no Name]

60. It has nothing to do with Texas

I live there and the kids in our district don't go hungry either.

[AsahinaKimi]

47. A Republican would ask

Why should she be "entitled" to eat? "No money? too bad, just go away!"


I have a bad taste in my mouth, from these people. If I were there, I would have stepped up to make sure she got something to eat, but hey.. that's how I do things. They obviously don't care.

[talkingmime]

49. That's sick. Just sick. Why the hell can't they deal with a one lunch buffer?

[ananda]

50. Because of this ...

... the next time somebody in line falls short, I will cover it.

[Demo_Chris]

53. Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is wrong with us?!

No child should EVER go hungry in this country. Why in the hell didn't the teachers and administrators and everyone involved step and deal with this immediately? THEY are the adults, we entrust them with our kids, but they are apparently too freaking stupid to handle something this bloody obvious? FEED THE KID. Period. That's it. There is nothing more that needs to be said. You feed to kid first then worry about it down the road.

Every six months of so we have some teacher somewhere standing between a gunman and her children, dying like a Medal of Honor hero for her charges and I am just astonished at their courage and dedication, and then we have stories like this where some admin imbecile cannot drop a buck in the till or take a bloody pay cut to feed the children.

And it goes on all the way to the top, with fucking Obama handing out permanent tax cuts to the hyper wealthy while our kids go hungry. I'm POOR and I would skip my own dinner to feed some kid standing in front of me who couldn't afford to eat. Everyone involved in this needs to be fired, tachers admin lunchroom staff, the whole damn lot. Then they can learn what not eating feels like and maybe find some people with intelligence and compassion to do the job.

/rant

[Moostache]

54. And our moral collective dies just a little bit more...

This is just one of THOUSANDS of examples everyday of the coarsening of America and the death of civilization in favor of anarchy and greed.

My kids' school sends home a note with the balance due if my kids overdraw their lunch accounts. My son once ran through his entire month's amount in 8 days and when we asked him how that happened he told us that he was getting two lunches and two snacks and giving one to a friend who had no money. It makes me sad beyond words to think that the school would rather throw away the food than let the children have it.

What next? Should we line up the hungry kids and make them watch the food be fed to the dogs instead of them? What does Texas think such draconian actions do to children? Are we really so hateful in this country that we allow(or FORCE) adults to torment hungry kids by taking away available food?

Day by day, hour by hour we are devolving into a worthless nation, one that the world will rejoice in its passing...welcome to the last days of the Second Roman Empire.

[PDJane]

55. This is not the kind of system that anyone should support.

When a child can be punished by having food withheld so that the system can continue to thrive, there's something really wrong. When teens think it's ok to shoot a child because the child's mother has no money, when people can be locked up for minor offences and stay there for years, when a man is put in solitary confinement without being charged, and then forgotten for a few years, when zero tolerance says a child who makes a 'gun' out of a pop-tart is suspended, when children are subjected to police intervention or fines for throwing tantrums or wearing the wrong colour of socks......it's a fascist state, and there are few who see it, and fewer who complain.

[Scuba]

57. Disgraceful that the girl went without lunch REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE!!!!!!!

[Purveyor]

80. A compliant should be filed with 'child protective services'....no wait, it is Texas afterall. eom

[iemitsu]

59. I hate to suggest it but the hungry girl is probably lucky

she was not allowed to eat a school lunch on credit, in Texas, where they eventually would send her to prison for the 70 cent debt.
I work in a public high school where nearly 80% of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunches (when I first started to teach in this building fewer than 40% qualified). Classes start at 7:30 AM but I bet half of the kids are there by 6:30 to get breakfast.
Growing kids need nutrition (not that school fare is the best source of it) and empty stomachs impede student success.
Throwing the food away in front of the student, who did not get to eat, reminds me of the scene in The Grapes of Wrath, where California orange growers burnt piles of oranges in front of starving migrants.
Our subscription to competition and to profit-driven motives has created a dystopic society that no one should want to live in. I sure wish it were different.

[Libertas1776]

62. I've seen this done at a restaurant I once worked at....

I worked in the kitchen at the dish washing end. A server came back with a plate of food, an appetizer I think, that had been refused by the table (wrong order, didn't want it, whatever) so it never came in contact with the customer. The server was going to give it to us, the starving dishwashers, until a manager saw and interjected. We had to pay for it, or it went in the trash. Of course, no one had money, and into the trash it went. So it wasn't a matter of hygiene or anything, which these district rules at least claim to be for, it was simply a matter of money. In their finances, they take a hit if they give food away, it's better if they just throw it away or some such bullshit. Bastards.

[paulsonj72]

92. I had a Different Experience in the Restaurant Industry

Once when I was working at a restaurant(to help pay for college) late one Saturday night (actually early Sunday morning) between 2:30-3:00 AM we had a customer(who may have been drunk) send back a BIG order with a BIG cheeseburger,fries as well as some appetizers. Our manager on duty instead of throwing it out allowed those of us left to eat it. His thought was this will go against my food cost anyway and I might as well have it be consumed. IF it needed to be paid for we(as employees) as a perk were allowed to order meals at half price for our meal breaks. So IF HE had to pay for it it would only be half of what a regular customer paid for it. And out in the front of the store there was only one waitress, myself and our manager on duty. Off topic on this night my folks and I had 1 working vehicle to take(for late nights) and it was during our county fair which my dad was working so they had to come get me. Anyway, they had a very late night meal and dad had a breakfast(as was his custom) and since it included hash browns, he would want ketchup for them. The waitress on duty, knowing they were my folks(I told her) asked if he wanted catchup and I said yes so instead of him asking for it(or her) she delivered it with the meal. He was dutifully impressed even though, when we got home I told him she had asked me and I had said yes. Anyway, I helped her earn a bigger tip.(and my folks were ALWAYS) decent tippers.

[indepat]

64. This one policy is but a microcosm of how wholly fucked up politics and politicians

are in the Lone Star State.

[dkf]

65. Why is it okay to do that to anyone? Yet it happens.

A teacher who was in line would be treated the same way I imagine.

It's sad that kids have to depend on the responsibility of their parents who may not be equipped to do a good job.

[Brigid]

67. During the Depression . . .

There were stories of milk being dumped and crops being left to rot in the fields because prices were so low it was not worth the cost of bringing them to market. This, while people were starving. Makes no sense st all.

[octothorpe]

69. Shit like this pisses me off and makes me wanna smack these idiots upside the head

I'd get the issue if the same kids repeatedly was short. Although, even then my first action wouldn't be to deny the kid food and then throw it out, I'd check to see if there was something that could be done to help. Then only deny the kid food if it turns out she/he gets plenty of lunch money but spends it on other shit (and assuming it's an ongoing issue and not a one off thing)

Shouldn't these administrators be more in touch with what's going on?

[Beacool]

71. Let Gonzalez go a whole day without food and see how he feels about the law.

He doesn't think that there's something fundamentally wrong with a system that allows children to go hungry???? They should have given the girl her lunch and informed the parents that they needed to put money into the account. No child should go hungry in any school in this country. Shameful!!!!

[tabasco]

74. Proud to be an American?

Nope.

[Turbineguy]

76. It must have gone something like this:

"How do we write rules that do damage and make us look like idiots?"

[mia]

81. Just because she didn't have enough in her account, doesn't mean that

her parents didn't have enough money to pay.
Suppose her parents missed the email or phone call that the account was low.
Who knows? Maybe the family was dealing with other issues, like a grandparent who suddenly can no longer live alone.
There are all kinds of reasons. Sometimes we pay our bills late.

[liberal N proud]

82. Society is very sick

We will destroy things because we can't make a few cents from it.

I have seen stores destroying perfectly good fruit because they could not sell it all. Why does that make sense?

[mia]

83. Lawsuits. n/t

[Skittles]

90. this is inhumane

I mean, seriously demented

[davidn3600]

91. Money has a higher priority in this country than life.

Nothing is considered superior to the all mighty dollar.