The Anti-Spirit of Christmas

According to the article, righteous indignation is the correct answer. The school district in question had a policy on how to handle the situation and the policy was not followed. The correct answer here is to be more aggressive with parents in collecting the debt and not to embarrass the kids while wasting the food. What interest does that serve?

quote:

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The action was a violation of the district’s procedures, district leaders told the school board this month. Some of the children’s parents weren’t previously notified that they had negative balances, and some weren’t given enough time to remedy the situation before workers took action.

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Workers will never take a student’s meal away again, said district spokesman Jason Olsen.

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Yes. Every poster here seems to agree that the issue should not be left up to the workers. Yet in at least one case a worker has been fired for giving away lunches. The article actually describes a good chunk of the schools problem, which is not collecting money from parents.The school is supposed to administer the problem by collecting money, or applying for free lunch and in particular the district policy eliminates the solution that the school employed, namely throwing lunches in the trash and forcing the lunch lady or lunch dude to make that call.I'm not sure what it is about Tanypteryx response that irks you so badly.

I saw an interview of Dalene a few days ago. She acknowledged that she had been feeding kids illicit lunches (lol) for quite some time, and she made no apologies for doing so. As you suggest, the additional facts don't place the school or the district in any better light."In the spirit of the holidays..." may well be school admin speak for not wanting to be cast as the Grinch who stole Christmas.

This issue was covered in the article. The school does a poor job of telling parents that it is time to pay for the lunch. It looks like their procedure for doing so includes not giving lunch to kids and waiting for the parents to hear a sob story from the kids. Surely that is not the way to do things.