Schools May Have to Absorb Students’ Unpaid Lunch Bills

New York Times ^ | February 8, 2011 | FERNANDA SANTOS

[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 school’s 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, there’s another who’s 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 city’s 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 City’s 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.

[proud American in Canada]

can’t make peanut butter and jelly and bring it to school anymore.

No, you can't. Too many children apparently have peanut allergies. I wonder why that is.

[Jvette]

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.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Eat-Z Pass?

[proudpapa]

Let’s do the math:

2200 students

1900 get FREE lunch

And the remaining 300 get hounded for nickles, dimes and quarters.

[pnh102]

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.

[kiki04]

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.

[calex59]

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.

[WayneS]

Actually, children can still take foods containing peanuts to school, but ONLY after the entire family goes through a rigorous background check and permitting process.

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, it’s probably easier to just NOT send your kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich.

;-)

[pnh102]

I look at your suggestion for peanut butter and jelly and I think about Mrs. Obama's contention that school lunches are not healthy. Personally, I think her concern is rooted in the fact that most of the people from the inner city know literally nothing about how to prepare food for their children. They have been so dependent on government food for so long that they wouldn't know how to prepare healthy food if their lives depended on it.

The very idea that there are parents who are more than capable of preparing healthy food for their children is totally foreign to her.

[certrtwngnut]

“we’re in the business of feeding kids”.
I thought they were in the once noble profession of teaching kids?
I guess not.

[ASOC]

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.

[WaterBoard]

But that is a luxury it can no longer afford, according to the Department of Education

That is a bold faced lie.

Fire all the non-working NYC teachers who are idled in 'rubber rooms' because they are too dangerous or incompetent to teach.

Due to Teacher Union rules, you can't fire these people, Tax payers have to keep paying them to do nothing.

"Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

The teachers generally spend months or even years in the so-called rubber rooms playing Scrabble, reading or surfing the Internet while still collecting full salaries of $70,000 a year or more. "

[nina0113]

Too many children apparently have peanut allergies. I wonder why that is.

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.

[LibsRJerks]

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?

[certrtwngnut]

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.

[EQAndyBuzz]

“The cruel and heartless government starving poor children.”

The cruel heartless liberals starving poor children.

[John O]

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?

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.

[WaterBoard]

Too many children apparently have peanut allergies. I wonder why that is.

Real Peanut Allergies are extremely rare. Most children do not have peanut allergies, their stupid parents just think they do.

1)Fewer people have real peanut allergy than previously thought

Scientists have developed a new more accurate test for peanut allergy after finding that eight out of ten children who previously tested positive were not in fact allergic to the nut.

In controlled conditions scientists at University Hospital South Manchester the University of Manchester gave 1,000 children cookies with or without peanuts.

It was found that 80 per cent of the children who were previously thought to have an allergy test did not suffer a reaction to the peanuts. Most of them had hay fever and were in fact allergic to grass or tree pollen.

2) The study Dr. Young referenced was conducted by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. They took thirty young children with documented severe peanut-specific allergies (using IgE antibody testing and clinical anaphylaxis, contact reactions or positive reactions on double-blind, placebo-controlled oral challenges). These children underwent double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized exposures to peanut butter through skin contact and inhalation. Neither the children or researchers knew which exposure contained the peanuts or placebo (scent was masked with soy butter, tuna and mint) and contact exposure used soy butter with histamine. There were no serious reactions. They concluded that “casual exposure to peanut butter is unlikely to elicit significant allergic reactions,” even in at least 90% of highly sensitive children with peanut allergy.

[SamAdams76]

So schools are banning peanut butter on account of a few other kids having allergies? Crazy stuff.

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.

[John O]

“shop pops out” should be “she pops out”