A CEO of a local company offered to pay the $22,000 owed for unpaid lunches. He was told no. Parents were sent a letter saying that if they didn’t pay up they might be sent to dependency court and if that wasn’t handled right their kids might be put into foster care. The thought of foster care is no laughing matter. This is so wrong on so many levels. Here’s the article: Hope there’s a class action lawsuit over this one.
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That is fucked up 
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This was kid and parent shaming at it’s WORSE. And after the publicity, the School Board President has agreed to accept the donation by the CEO.
The township needs to request the Board president and the letter writer step down. And if they don’t? Fire them. What they did was unconscionable.
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Deplorable.
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Apparently there’s no problem with separating children from their families when $20 is at stake.
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The school lunch program receives Federal funding so I don’t believe the parents can be sued.
However, here’s the link for a somewhat satirical article about school lunches around the world:
Hi @Heuchera Heuchera, and welcome to Hungry Onion! I thought that the federal funding was a recent occurrence - as in it’ll be effective for 5 years starting with the 2019-2020 school year?
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The letter writer did step down (I can’t find the link as the Philadelphia Inquirer’s web site has an atrociously bad search engine).
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Well, that’s one. Interestingly, he says he didn’t write the letter. Sounds like there was a bit of an issue between Coslett (Board District solicitor) and the VP of the board. (Not sure why it’s Hawaii News Now that has a decent link! LOL)
Now the School Board president…
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I’ve worked in senior centers for years and all who provide meals made on site, or serve as meal sites where vendors prepare the meals and deliver them, receive federal funding for their programs.
The same situation applies to schools. They receive what is called commodity foods if they cook in the schools. However, our school lunches are a disgrace in that no real cooking is done and all they serve are what we call “Sysco” meals where you simply heat food up in an oven. Here’s a disgusting pic of a school lunch I came across on the web.
When I see pics like this I’m assuming that a lot of theft is occurring in the program as I’ve witnessed that myself where I worked.
We really need to take a closer look at what we’re serving our children and audit thse programs more closely.
I’m new to this site so I hope this whole reply posts properly.
Add images here
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Very similar to the meals I would see in my own high school back in the 1970s, although the cafeteria ladies actually did do a long more cooking back then. Now they either don’t have the staff to do actually preparation or cooking or it’s cheaper to allow Sysco trucks to pull up with heat-and-eats.
And this is exactly what Michelle Obama was trying to ensure - healthy, fresh food for kids in school. That picture certainly isn’t healthy or fresh. The few strands of cut lettuce as a “salad” is very sad.
It is, but it also may be more lettuce than the average US 6 year-old will eat.
Maybe there were more veg on offer and this kid declined. Maybe this is a stock photo unrelated to reality. A huge chunk of hard cheese and skin-on mango?
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It’s a picture of a lunch at a school in London. From 2014.
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