Posted on 02/08/2011 9:04:42 AM PST by reaganaut1
Of the 2,200 students at Intermediate School 61 in Corona, Queens, 86 percent receive free cafeteria lunches. Some others pay a reduced price, and some are supposed to pay full price.
But not all of their parents pay what they are supposed to, and recently, the schools principal, Joseph Lisa, has been spending a lot of time trying to collect money from them.
He has cornered them in the hallways. He has offered them gentle reminders after school meetings. He has called them and sent them letters suggesting payment plans for debts that might amount to $20 or $30.
We give them little pieces of paper saying, This week you owe $5, $3, 50 cents, but as soon as we collect it from one parent, theres another whos falling behind, Mr. Lisa said.
The city used to pick up the unpaid tabs. Since 2004, it has absorbed at least $42 million in unpaid lunch fees.
But that is a luxury it can no longer afford, according to the Department of Education, which has weathered several rounds of budget cuts, with more still to come. So it has been telling principals to collect overdue lunch money or risk having it docked from their school budgets.
Of the citys 1,600 schools, 1,043 owe a collective $2.5 million to the Education Department for meals served in the first three months of this school year. That puts them on track to be $8 million behind by the end of the school year.
New York Citys lunch money problem is costly and complicated, but it is not unique. The economic downturn has school administrators and legislators all over the country scratching for savings even as more parents are falling behind in lunch fees.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No, you can't. Too many children apparently have peanut allergies. I wonder why that is.
It’s a tough position to be in, especially as a mom.
We usually managed to work out something for the ones who couldn’t get a lunch.
The irony is that there is no real oversight of the applications for free lunch so lots of parents who shouldn’t get it do so as I said fraud is rampant. But, when it came to the number of lunches served, the control was rigid and we would come under scrutiny if we ordered too many over a period of time. The accounting of the food was stringently watched over to “cut costs”.
The whole thing is a perfect microcosm of the problems with the welfare state and liberalism.
Eat-Z Pass?
Let’s do the math:
2200 students
1900 get FREE lunch
And the remaining 300 get hounded for nickles, dimes and quarters.
How many familes which “can’t afford school lunch” happen to be able to afford things like Cable TV, broadband Internet and computers, smartphones, cigarettes, alcohol or illegal drugs.
Our daughter’s school is the same. If she has no money in her account, she can’t buy a lunch.
It always amazes me how many parents are not responsible enough to make sure their children are fed.
Here’s a thought, don’t serve the lunches until they have been paid for and stop the “free” lunches for the free loaders. When I was in school the poor kids(of which I was one) brought their own lunch, it was usually better than what the school had anyway.
Additionally, any peanut-containing comestible must be kept in a locked, hermetically sealed container until it is time for it to be consumed. Even then the peanut-containing comestible may be removed from the container and eaten only after a written 'Notice of Imminent Consumption' has been provided to every other person in the lunch room. Upon receipt of the 'Notice of Imminent Consumption', each person in the lunch room (whether or not said person has a peanut allergy) has the option to either stay and finish lunch, leave the lunch room so as to avoid the peanut-containing comestible, or to file a Stay of Consumption with the lunch room monitor.
If a 'Stay of Consumption' is filed by any other person in the lunch room (whether or not said person has a peanut allergy), then the child wishing to ingest the peanut-containing comestible is required to report to the 'peanut table' before breaking the seal on the container in which the peanut-containing comestible is stored. The peanut table is located in a secure area of the school which has been constructed with a separate air handling system from the rest of the building.
In reality, though, its probably easier to just NOT send your kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich.
;-)
The very idea that there are parents who are more than capable of preparing healthy food for their children is totally foreign to her.
“we’re in the business of feeding kids”.
I thought they were in the once noble profession of teaching kids?
I guess not.
Man, that’s harsh.
You can only strech food stampps, ATDC, subsidied/free rent and “other payments” (SII, crazy checks) so far. Add that taxes are not paid - and you have ask, how in the world can they get by?
And feed babbies on top of everything else? - how heartless.
Ya - public school, the new welfare outlet for America.
But that is a luxury it can no longer afford, according to the Department of Education
I'm not a scientist, but I like the soy theory. There wasn't soy in anything when I was a kid, and there were also no peanut allergies. There's soy in everything now, and the plants are related. Why kids would get sensitized to a relative of soy rather than soy itself points to an additional factor.
I remember when my son went to public school we had to pay around $65 a month for lunches, while the 50% of whomever paid nothing ... now, if EVERYONE paid, wouldn’t we all perhaps see a reduced bill — like say $35-40 a month? Wouldn’t that be affordable for MOST people?
If you couldn’t afford even that, what the HELL are you doing have kids? How do you afford rent?
I don’t remember peanut allergies being a problem before the peanut farmer took office.
I guess we can blame the peanut farmer instead of Reagan or Bush for the allergies.
“The cruel and heartless government starving poor children.”
The cruel heartless liberals starving poor children.
If you couldnt afford even that, what the HELL are you doing have kids? How do you afford rent?
To most working folks children are jokingly called "daddy's little deduction" to the welfare slaves children are called "mommies little meal ticket". The more illegitimate children shop pops out the bigger her check gets.
Subsidize bastard children and you get more bastard children.
They can afford the lunches, if they cancel their "get everything" cables service or their cell phones. And it would be racist to suggest that an unemployed breeder slave can exist without a cell phone.
Too many children apparently have peanut allergies. I wonder why that is.
We did not have hot lunches until I started going to junior high school and even then, many of us brought lunches from home. It's just the way it was back then.
During elementary school, I had the metal "themed" lunch boxes that they used to sell at the time with the thermoses. I remember having lunch box themes of the Banana Splits, the Archies and the Partridge Family (which will give away my age). Every day for the first six years of school, it would have the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, maybe an apple or a Twinkie and milk in the Thermos.
Point of saying all that is that the parents ought to be able to pack lunches for this kids if they can't afford the "hot lunch" at the school. In fact, schools should be out of the whole business of providing lunches. Let them focus on the pencils and paper and let the parents provide the lunches accordingly.
“shop pops out” should be “she pops out”
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