"No Soup for You!"

I'm going to rant, and it's not library-related this time.

A school in Salt Lake City had a problem - forty or so elementary school kids hadn't settled their lunch debts. The school decided that the best way to deal with this problem was to literally take the food out of the kids' hands and throw it away while their classmates looked on. Now, they didn't want the kids to go completely hungry, so they did replace the meal with milk and fruit - an orange, apparently.

This is wrong on so many levels.
  1. The kids were punished for actions beyond their control. The money was owed, sure, but that was a matter between the school and the parents, not the kids. And parents have complained that they got no notice beforehand - not just that this action was going to be taken, but that they owed anything.
  2. The kids were publicly humiliated. They weren't called in and given notice, nor did anyone pull them aside and let them know what was going on. They just had their food taken and thrown away, and informed that they didn't have the money to pay for lunch, in front of their peers. 
  3. The kids were given a substandard nutritional "replacement" - and that's apparently policy for kids who can't afford food. No one seriously thinks kids can function well on nothing but milk and fruit, right? If you doubt that, I have news for you: kids need a well-balanced meal to function well in school. It really ticks me off that this is what happens for kids who can't afford lunch. 
  4. The kids saw perfectly good food thrown away. Which means the school bought that food and then threw it out rather than let hungry kids eat it. I don't know about you, but if someone bought food, flaunted it in front of a hungry guy who had no other resources available, and then threw it away, I'd say that's a petty, vindictive, wasteful, and simply hateful act. What kid of impression is that going to make on these kids? Does the school really want to encourage that sort of behavior - not just the profligate waste, but the blatant disregard for the physical and emotional needs of others?
The school claims there was no way to know who owed money before the kids had gone through the lunch line. I'd say that's a terrible system, anyway, but you work with what you've got, right? So why not have the kids' names written down this time, and then pull them aside later that day with a letter for their parents?

In any event, there is no way the best or only measure to take was to publicly humiliate elementary school kids and deny them a meal that then went into the trash.

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