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[EYEL1NER]

I was a free lunch kid for a while, and then reduced price for a while too. I think that for a good number of years lunch cost me $.40 a day because of our household income level. I remember being ashamed of getting free or reduced lunch, but I also remember that being fairly common with anything in school: "EYEL1NER got some new shoes, check them out! They're ''X' brand of shoes,' lol! His mom can't afford 'better brand than 'X!!!'"
I was surprised when my daughter started going to school and I found out every kid in the district here in a shitty town in the south got free lunch. I was scrambling to find out how much to send with her and just started giving her enough that I was sure it would cover it, and finally found out after a while that no child here has to pay.

 

[Drencrom]

It's hard to tell between a dystopian third world country and the US sometimes.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

The fact that students need to pay for breakfast or lunch at all is ridiculous. Such is the cold callousness of capitalism.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

The fact that students need to pay for breakfast or lunch at all is ridiculous. Such is the cold callousness of capitalism.

Its more on the population than anything else.
hard to blame schools really as well when teachers the single most important part of schools aren't paid a fraction of what they deserve.

 

[Yaphett Kotto]

A 4-year-old?

If a lunch room lady did that to my kid, she would be in the trashcan right next to the discarded lunch.

I would happily spend some time in jail for that.

What is funny about that also is that most of the time, the lunch ladies where I did school did not give a fuck if you are or not and had nasty ass attitudes about it.

 

[LinkAndEpona]

Isn't being poor punishment enough? Fucking hell... the mindset of Americans never ceases to amaze me. I'm a grown ass man and I'm still surprised day by day.

Where's your empathy? Does it only stretch so far?

Poor or not you need to put your kids' needs first.

 

[spazchicken]

2016, Alabama:

That's actually kind of hilarious.

Sad but still funny.

 

[Technosteve]

When i was real young being raised in brooklyn everyone got free breakfast and free lunch. No one thought any different

 

[The Boat]

It's getting harder and harder not to think of USA as a sad caricature of itself. I know this is unfair to all the good people there, but fucking hell man, this is just disgusting.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

I used to feel embarassed whenever I had to get my lunch replaced with PB&J, I can't imagine how shitty the trash & stamp treatment would've made me feel.

 

[eggandI]

You Americans are insane. You voluntarily spend hundreds of billions on defense but completely neglect to invest in the future generation of your country.

You republicans*

is what you mean. The only parasites depraved enough to do stuff like this are republicans.

 

[Bitanator]

I used to feel embarassed whenever I had to get my lunch replaced with PB&J, I can't imagine how shitty the trash & stamp treatment would've made me feel.

Shit I would have loved a PB&J, when my parents got divorced and I had no money for lunch I got just two stale saltines and one slice of yellow petroleum waste people call American Cheese

 

[akira28]

It's hard to tell between a dystopian third world country and the US sometimes.

Just imagine a United States where people didn't fight back against the system for the personal dignity of the citizen. It wouldn't be America then, would it/?

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

This entire story feels like it comes straight out of a Persona arc

 

[RecRoulette]

I used to feel embarassed whenever I had to get my lunch replaced with PB&J, I can't imagine how shitty the trash & stamp treatment would've made me feel.

This. My friends offered to share my lunch with me the first time it happened, but overall it was just a brutal experience back then.

This seems WAY worse though.

 

[Freshmaker]

I don't understand why school lunches aren't entirely free...who would be against that?

Ask Paul Ryan.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

my lunch replaced with PB&J

At least yours had jelly .
My middle school's was literally a peanut butter sandwich(with nasty PB and stale flaky bread).

No parent notification/reminder required, you ain't forgetting that nasty sandwich anytime soon.

 

[Trouble]

At least yours had jelly .
My middle school's was literally a peanut butter sandwich(with nasty PB and stale flaky bread).

Sounds like the school version of nutriloaf. Punishment food.

 

[Pizza]

Fucking hell, that's heartbreaking.

They should just make school lunches free, full stop. No kid should have to go hungry. Having literal insult added to injury is just cruel.

I agree wholeheartedly. There are enough studies done at this point to justify the concept that feeding students is essential to them being better off socially and academically. You're forcing them by law to be here. They should be fed.

Schools should have enough funding to feed the student population without batting an eye and have hella curriculums and buildings that aren't falling apart.

But no. Fucking academia is another thing affected by class and people can still find ways to argue that systemic racism/classism is a hoax.

My mom forgot to put money in my account for school semi regularly and it was always awful. I'm also from Texas and I can confirm I watched the last tray of whatever cool food they were serving that I lucked out on grabbing tossed directly into the trash in front of my face, in front of literally all my peers.

I know for a fact that a bunch of other people had those experiences all the time, and most the people in bad SES situations just went outside to try and pretend they were too cool for lunch. Shit is fucked up.

 

[Black-Wind]

didn't know public school meals weren't free. Mine were. But I'm from a bad chicago area so maybe it's not the norm.

Should be though ... shit's dehumanizing imo. What are you re-enforcing in children about the world when you do this shit?

 

[Trouble]

didn't know public school meals weren't free. Mine were. But I'm from a bad chicago area so maybe it's not the norm.

Should be though ... shit's dehumanizing imo. What are you re-enforcing in children about the world when you do this shit?

Poor == Immoral

 

[CrazyDude]

My school had an option for prepayment for lunch, so you could never tell whether the persona was getting a free lunch or if there food was already paid for, Saves the embarrassment for kids who can't afford lunch.

 

[Sir Abacus]

Ok so about 25% of the people in the community are going to be K-12. So in a community of 10,000 there's going to be 2500 kids in school. A standard school lunch is about a dollar per day. There's what, 180 days of school? So that's $450,000 a year. Labor force participation is about 62 percent so about 4650 people in that community work. So if we run that past the back of the napkin we literally take $2/week from everyone with an income in some, way, shape, or form and a kid doesn't have to go hungry.

My property taxes last year were near enough to ten grand. Add one hundred bucks to it. Add two hundred. Make it an even ten grand and take another three hundred. I don't have kids, I have enough income. I won't fucking notice.I couldn't give a shit. Just don't let the kids starve or be humiliated or have to go through this stupid fucking bullshit that they're not even responsible for. It's so fucking stupid for such a pittance.

 

[KSweeley]

NYT reported earlier this year (2017) that shaming the child is an attempt to get the parent of said child to pay up for the child to get meals at the school: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/well/family/lunch-shaming-children-parents-school-bills.html

 

[Velcro Fly]

A 4-year-old?

If a lunch room lady did that to my kid, she would be in the trashcan right next to the discarded lunch.

I would happily spend some time in jail for that.

you do realize that cafeteria workers in schools are likely low skill and low wage employees too right? and that the policy is not set by them? come on.

 

[WaterAstro]

Well, at least the kid knows the food is going to waste.

A majority of Americans don't even know they are wasting tons of food every day with the current grocery store system.

 

[HawksWinStanley]

I remember in grade school they'd just send the parents a bill if they forgot to buy more lunch tickets for their kids. No big deal. That was the 90s.

 

[Alcotholic]

I elementary school you got a free lunch if you wait till the last 10 minutes of lunch after everyone ate and played. It sucked waiting, but if you didn't have money or food, its what you did. The school wasn't going to make you starve.

 

[Nydius]

My property taxes last year were near enough to ten grand. Add one hundred bucks to it. Add two hundred. Make it an even ten grand and take another three hundred. I don't have kids, I have enough income. I won't fucking notice.I couldn't give a shit. Just don't let the kids starve or be humiliated or have to go through this stupid fucking bullshit that they're not even responsible for. It's so fucking stupid for such a pittance.

I agree with you but I often feel like we're the minority in this attitude. At least once a week my local paper has a letter to the editor with people complaining that they don't have kids and "shouldn't be forced" to pay taxes to subsidize public schools they'll "never use". These letters ramp up exponentially during city council and school board election campaigns and around January/July personal property tax collection dates.

There are a LOT of people who don't believe in the concept of supporting a public good when they don't directly benefit from it. Or they legitimately want the power to determine where their tax money goes as if they could pay taxes based on an a la carte budget basis. It's pathetic.

 

[Velcro Fly]

Not sure how other states do it but I'm pretty sure in Indiana you have to put a referendum on the ballot in order to raise property taxes to get money for schools. City I work in just basically said "hey we need money" and had no thought process behind it and it failed while other districts in the area outlined what they needed money for and what would be lost without the tax increase and their stuff passed.

People just don't give a fuck and it is completely obvious at this point. That is the problem.

 

[philz]

I'm a parent of a student that has been shamed and it works exactly as intended. Obviously, I can't speak for every child, but mine seemed completely unaffected aside from the fact he had to eat a plain PBJ sandwich instead of whatever was on the cafeteria menu that day (which he thinks sucks also). This approach surely works for busy parents like myself who simply forgot to reload their lunch ticket. Not sure if there's a good way to do this while considering households that struggle to keep reloading in the first place.

Edit: Brought this topic up to the wife and she mentioned there was a time years ago when the cafeteria staff vindictively threw away the food on his tray and gave him only steamed vegetables. This was at a comparatively lower income school. Would be 100% behind universal school lunches if it weren't for what shit the national food service companies put out.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Watched this since you mentioned it. This shit is fucking depressing. America truly is a third world country.

I don't know anything about this movie, but this is an asinine thing to say. Have you ever been to a third world country?

 

[Auron_Kale]

I actually learned about this while getting an email from change.org either last year or almost 2 years ago.

The story was appalling enough that I ended up signing the petition, so I'm glad that this story has not only gained traction but now the school districts are rethinking their policy.

Publicly shaming a kid for the lack of funds in their meal plan and letting them starve is really disgusting and never should've happened in the first place.

 

[99Luffy]

I kinda envy how every other country has mandatory school cafeterias.
In Canada(at least some parts) everyone has to pack their own lunches and pay a fee(around $2-4) just to sit down in the lunchroom, which was sometimes an empty gym.

 

[Haunted]

I fucking hate these stories from third world countries, they're always so frustrating to read.

Kids here in the U.S. even get stamped when they don't have money:

Literally, publicly marking poor people. Incredible. Why not just brand poor people and get it over with? Mark these kids for life, it's not like they've got upwards mobility in the US anyway.



Thank fucking god I don't have to live in such a shithole. Always happy I was born in a first world country instead. Seems like a really shitty place to live if you're not wealthy. Seriously though, the more I read about the US these days, the lower it gets on the list of countries I actually want to visit during my life.

 

[Dead Man]

I was in Montgomery and the school I went to, before further cutbacks (on high school lunches), allowed for us to bring food or drive somewhere and get it but after cutbacks that all went away.

They stopped you from bringing lunch from home?

 

[Cow Mengde]

So they dump the food in front of the kid and put a stamp on their hand to shame them? What the fuck?

What fucking year is it again?

Trump year.

 

[George Oscar Bluth II]

At my old (UK) secondary school, no money meant no food. This was just a few years ago as well.

My mum gave me money for food but I wouldn't use it so I could sneak it back into her purse when I would get home. School food was horrible anyway.

 

[Speevy]

Hungry kids can't think about anything but food, so they might as well get something to eat. Otherwise, what's the point in coming to school at all?

 

[Paganmoon]

Let me clarify, I wasn't thinking of poor parents when I made that comment. I was thinking of lazy parents who didn't bother paying the bills because they forgot or something like that.



See above.

Ok, thanks for clarifying. I guess I just assume when someone can't or hasn't payed it's due to lack of funds and not laziness.

Poor or not you need to put your kids' needs first.

Poor people may not have much of a choice at times.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Wait, I just remembered, didn't Michelle Obama tried to do something about school lunches and breakfast to make sure kids don't go hungry? I don't know what happened to that.

 

[Cap'n Cook]

I remember back in 3rd grade they had me wipe clean all the tables after everyone was done eating for some milk and one of those awesome pb&j graham wafer sandwiches. At the time I really didn't think much of it, just thought I guess that's what I have to do if I wanted to eat.

Btw has anyone seen these or know of a good replacement? I've tried making my own but it's just not the same.

 

[Hesemonni]

The money for the meals has to come from somewhere and since nobody in the USA wants to pay any taxes...

 

[lush]

Wait, I just remembered, didn't Michelle Obama tried to do something about school lunches and breakfast to make sure kids don't go hungry? I don't know what happened to that.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act has already been partially rolled back in attempts to Make School Meals Great Again.

 

[Yazzees]

They fucking throw the food away. Incredible.

Happened to me a couple times in high school. America's great

 

[autumnleaf]

“The cash register woman says to this 4-year-old girl, verbatim, ’You have no money,’” said Holt, describing the incident last year. A milk carton was taken away, and the girl’s food was dumped in the trash

 

[Kain-Nosgoth]

damn, i thought i knew a lot about america, buti still leanr some dumb shit like that! Not only humiliating children, giving them nothing to eat, and throwing the food in front of them, just for shit and giggles....

even economically speaking it's out of this world!

"ho you can't pay for this food? Let just throw it in the garbage, surely it wil save money somehow"

 

[Outtrigger888]

When my kids go into debt in school lunch they get to still eat and I get a automated voice call telling me what the account is at. My son was 17$ in debt at one point and still got to eat. I live in America BTW

 

[MrCinos]

I'm 29 years old from a Siberian city in Russia and these news seem bizarre to me. We had free lunches in school and additional paid extras, not sure how it is now though. But the stamp thing wouldn't fly here regardless of circumstances.

 

[neorej]

Wait, I just remembered, didn't Michelle Obama tried to do something about school lunches and breakfast to make sure kids don't go hungry? I don't know what happened to that.

There's someone in the White House nowadays with a raging hard-on for repealing anything that has Obama written on it...