If there were ever a ludicrous school policy that needed to be trashed quicker than month-old leftovers in the back of the fridge, it is “lunch shaming,” the term given to denying a hot lunch to a child when his or her account has run dry.
Most likely, the circumstance arose when a parent forgot to replenish the account, or the student has gone through a certain amount more quickly than anticipated. Hungry students do that. But in any event, it is embarrassing for the child involved.
The topic came up in Stafford County recently when School Board member Scott Hirons became aware of the practice. Stafford is by no means the only school district that handles the situation in this way. School officials in every locality should determine if this policy exists and, if it does, do away with it in time for the 2017-18 school year.
First off, it makes sense that schools can’t just look the other way forever when a child’s lunch money account is depleted. As recently as a couple of years ago, Stafford was ending years with some $10,000 in unpaid student account debt.
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To get a rein on that, Stafford school officials set up an automatic call system to let parents know the account is empty. If that doesn’t work, a staffer might reach out and call the parent directly. Stafford school officials credit this change with reducing unpaid debt to just $1,300 at the end of the 2016-17 school year.
Nevertheless, the “shaming” method persists. If the student’s account is empty at checkout, his or her hot lunch is taken away and anything not pre-packaged, like slices of pizza or side dishes, is thrown away. The child is then given the “modified lunch” instead: a cheese sandwich, a piece of fruit and milk. That’s a clear signal to all the other kids that somebody has come up short.
When the student gets home, he or she will no doubt “communicate” the day’s embarrassing, unfortunate episode to his or her parents, who will then, hopefully, rectify the situation.
If it’s not ridiculous enough that the hot lunch is thrown away, it gets worse. That modified meal with the cheese sandwich saves the school only 11 cents versus the typical standard meal the student picked out, considering that it ended up in the trash and the school is paying for the discarded meal as well.
Under federal law, schools must have a policy for dealing with depleted lunch accounts. It doesn’t specify a particular policy, but it does require schools to inform parents what the policy is.
Stafford appears close to arriving at the only commonsense solution: Let the kid have the doggone lunch. If the situation is chronic, and the robo-call doesn’t work, maybe because it’s going to a landline the family never checks, make sure other avenues of communication are attempted. If there are other family issues involved, then deal with those.
We noted in this space recently that a survey found that teachers often provide school supplies, paid for out of their own pockets, when their students show up without them. Now, another survey indicates that teachers also reach into their own pockets to help out kids who are shy on their lunch money. This is altruism at its finest.
Certainly, school systems can’t be expected to eat this debt, so to speak, so in Stafford, school nutrition director Berkley Dunbrack has been asked to come up with a plan for how to recoup it. Hopefully, it doesn’t rise to holding transcripts and report cards hostage until the bill is paid, though some sort of leverage might be needed.
What we don’t need to do is stigmatize a student by handing out an alternative lunch that barely saves the school system a dime.