If a kid was able to do this by saving his allowance, then it can’t possibly be very much compared to resources of a school or its surrounding tax base. Give the kids their food.
This, the problem is easily solved, but unforutnately the cruelty is the point, as some people still think “It builds character!”
When in reality it builds trauma
Yeah usually they’d cut kids off from lunch after like 10ish dollars of lunch debt for my school, like 5 meals behind max.
So a class worth of school lunch debt legit might be like 100$, and prevent a handful from being allowed lunch anymore. The level of petty is absurd.
It’s a news article from 2019 for Ryan Kirkpatrick at Westpark Elementary School (a public school in Irvine California). He paid off the debt for only his 3rd grade class (not the whole school, not the whole 3rd grade, just his class). It was a total of $74.50. However, the school still serves hot lunches to kids with a negative balance on their account.
Apparently he paid it anonymously. (???)
Just stating facts above, but yeah, my opinion is that all public school lunches should be free.
Every time I read about this I remind people of the Iowa governor.
The feds offered free money to help clear Iowa kids lunch debt.
Iowa governor Kim Reynolds turned it down because “we are in an obesity epidemic”.
Read that a couple of times to yourself just to let it sink in. Conservatives are about hurting people just so they can get a couple of easy points in the polls, even if it means literally letting innocent children of poor families go hungry.
Obesity can actually be caused by not eating enough
No really, your body thinks you’re in a time of famine and holds onto EVERYTHING it can… You also get more stressed which causes your body to store your adrealine as extra fat.
Doesn’t this kids parents pay for it? How else does he get “allowance”?
I know another way parents can contribute to the so-called lunch debt…
Wait what if everyone just paid a little bit of money so that kids could eat. Even people without kids would pay and it would just be taken out of their pay… or kids can go hungry…
I make my kids lunches every day. I still would if they were free, and school lunch should be free.
I wish I could comprehend why some people think hungry kids is OK. At the same time… I kind of don’t want to understand them. I want them to not be selfish pieces of shit instead.
Usually the excuse I hear on the ‘‘we can’t just feed children’’ crowd is that they don’t want their tax money, or anyone else’s helping the WRONG children. Often they mean non white children. There’s a strong history in white supremacy of stopping people from feeding black children, government or private efforts, the FBI has killed people over it.