Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase. Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr.
The district says that it is trying to collect more than $20,000, and that other methods to get parents to pay have not been successful. Four parents owe at least $450 apiece.
The letter claims the unpaid bills could lead to dependency hearings and removal of their children for not providing them with food.
"You can be sent to dependency court for neglecting your child's right to food. The result may be your child being taken from your home and placed in foster care," the letter read.
After complaints, district officials announced they plan to send out a less threatening letter next week.
Luzerne County's manager and child welfare agency director have written the superintendent, insisting the district stop making what they call false claims.
Their letter calls the district's actions troubling and a misrepresentation of how the Children and Youth Services Department and its foster care program operate.
Wyoming Valley West's lawyer, Charles Coslett, said he did not consider the letters to be threatening.
"Hopefully, that gets their attention and it certainly did, didn't it? I mean, if you think about it, you're here this morning because some parents cried foul because he or she doesn't want to pay a debt attributed to feeding their kids. How shameful," Coslett told WYOU-TV.
What a lovely person this Charles Coslett, attorney at law, is!
because he or she doesn’t want to pay a debt attributed to feeding their kids.
$450 is like two trips to the grocery store these days, or even less for a big family. Maybe the parents aren't paying the school bill because they did spend the money on food. Everything's expensive as hell.
How shameful
Yes, threatening parents for being poor in an unaffordable country without social safety nets is shameful.
Unfortunately it is a little of both. So many of our industries are subsidized by prison labor that it would be very disruptive for them to change it. Absolutely not saying we shouldnt. Just that that is why the centrist fucks wont move a muscle on prison reform
They're going to pay those other parents a stipend. Pay a case worker and their manager, pay an attorney. Those case workers are already bruised and battered nearly to death.
Imagine a child who grew up in lunch debt. Constantly aware of how awful their life is. Now take a portion of them at 18, give them training and weapons and send them to some country they grew up being told is bad and even responsible for their suffering. Tada.
Maybe we should do what Israel does and give people a monthly $260 per child payment until the child turns 18? I mean we pay for it there so why not implement it here?
Yes, but it often works the other way. I've gone to school in Asia, Europe and Australia. IME lunch ladies will let some kids tick food up when they lack the funds.
Some kids pay it back, but I know for a fact many come from families who lack the means and they let it slide.
Ironic seeing a country like the USA so obsessed with Jesus being as far from his teachings as you can go.
I can explain: the US government is filled with people connected to Epstein's island. People who either engaged in pedophillia or are completely fine with it. They've got an unlimited supply of children from the immigrants they're abducting off the streets. America is an evil country.
And if it's like my kid's school they just let them charge as much cake as they want to eat to their school account. If you tell them not to allow that they'll tell you that they can't not give children food. Motherfuckers also got a slushy machine.
So instead of free lunch we will take and house your kids and feed them and deprive them of family. Which will cost 100x more and is 10000x more evil than making kids pay for lunch
Basic school food is one of those things; it's not free, but it's not that expensive done in bulk. These kids need a couple of bucks a meal, only on school days
Short of paying for the entire meal program, it may not be possible. Some districts do not allow people to pay for meals/debt that is not their own.
When my youngest two kids were in elementary school I used to go eat lunch with them. One of the boys in my son's class had too much debt and they would not give him food. I tried to pay his debt ($20ish) and they would not let me, so I tried to pay for his meal, not allowed. So we went and sat down at the table and I gave him a twenty. The lunch lady accepted it, but gave me a hassle about it. I told her he found it in his pocket while we were eating.
That’s really weird. Also are you allowed to just go eat with your children at school or you need some kind of special forms and access? They can’t just let a bunch of adults into the school randomly.
Wild notion here for most USAnites. In almost all of the world, the parents can indeed just walk into the school and see what is up with their kids, part of the school's job is to know who are the parents to which kids. It's part of institutional transparency and parental rights. My nephew's schools (admittedly, in Europe) allows a family lunch day a week, when parents can enter the cafeteria and eat with their kids unannounced or simply watch what they are being served.
I had to go into the office and check in each time. They have it on file who my kids are. Only parents were allowed. So, you could not walk in off the street, having no kids at the school, and eat lunch.
I did this at 3 different schools in 2 different states.
I feel like pointing out a 6 year old edge case, where the school was rightly screeched at by just about everyone saying this is insane, followed up by an immediate apology, and funding to provide food to everyone is both a poor example of propaganda as well as a pretty decent case for safety kicking in at some point.
Sounds like the school was pretty poor and just made a bad and desperate decision to try and get more parents to pay.
In this case it excludes that this was an isolated district, the policy was rapidly corrected after this became public, and it's a story from over half a decade ago. It also leaves out how this was universally objected to, and it misrepresents the actual contents of the letter:
It warned that the parents could be taken to Dependency Court as a result of failing to send their child to school without either money or food.
"If you are taken to Dependency Court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care," the letter read.
which was pointedly that if you cant feed your kid, you may have to prove you can safely care for them. A shit situation yes, but it was not "pay your lunch debt or we'll take your kid away".
Yeah, this headline being reposted is pushing a narrative. And man you know what, in my experience the people that dismiss other users because of their instance are generally the problem. Othering people is pretty much always bad.
What if we instead forced corporations to pay fair wages and taxes in the regions they operate in so that their employees have access to the resources needed to raise their own kids?
"Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase. Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr."
I'm going to go way out on a limb and assume that placing children in foster care would cost the state more than just paying for their goddamn school lunches.
School district going after parents is dumb, they should be asking all of the parents to attend school board and City council meetings or whichever governing body controls school funding from taxes with them to find out why school lunch isn't provided for all kids that need it
Maybe we should do what Israel does and give people a monthly $260 per child payment until the child turns 18? I mean we pay for it there so why not implement it here?
Or... the state could provide children with free lunches. Maybe it's the state or the schools that are denying children their right to eat by making it dependent upon their parents' financial situations?
when my parents didn't give me lunch money, I just didn't have lunch - I'm don't think the lunch room offered a "debt" program, I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to get a lunch without payment ...
EDIT: just to be clear, I'm in favor of free lunches for children (jesus, who would think this needs to be stated) partially because I went without and know what that's like. I was bullied for eating out of garbage cans, kids younger than me would intentionally spit on their food and destroy their food to try to deny me their leftovers.
I'm just surprised kids are able to get lunch debt - I lived in the South and I suspect the schools just had more right-wing policies (like not even letting kids go into debt to have lunches). I wonder who is responsible for that debt, I would have loved to rack up debt and stick my parents with it (since it was because they were irresponsible and immoral that I was in that situation to begin with - they had plenty of money, they just refused to provide lunches).
yeah, looking back I was taking food out of garbage cans on days I couldn't stand the fasting ... my parents could more than afford school lunches, so this wasn't an issue of poverty, but I agree that kids should be fed, and if I were a parent there is no chance I would let my kid go to school without some kind of lunch
In my elementary school they had a third party company doing lunches. So they would collect money in class for the day then make exactly that number of meals and no more. However, there was pretty much no supervision or tracking at lunch, so every day they would run out of meals before the line ran out and whoever was at the end of the line got a pb sandwich.
I came into the thread prepared to be angry, then they said, "neglecting your child's right to food", and honestly, that's exactly what the parents are doing. If they don't want to pay for school lunch, pack one. If you want to do neither, choosing not to feed your child at all does sound like neglect, and the school is picking up the slack.
School lunch is so important for learning outcomes, lunch should be covered by tax revenue anyways. I hope we get there one day. But these parents sent their child to school knowing full well how the system works today.
Holy shit get off your high horse. You said exactly one sane thing: we should not let children be hungry at school. That's it. You have no idea what situations these people are in. They might only be scrounging 1 meal a day, maybe less. Frankly it doesn't matter in the slightest.
Let's blame the poor people for being poor. Sometimes life is not fair and we should treat people with empathy.
But yeah, let the kids suffer for the problems in society that rich fucks created.
If they don't have food because they can't afford it, the kid should just starve rather than the school having to front the cost?
A child not having food security while attending school is a societal failure. If we can afford to spend more than multiple countries combined on our military and send billions in military aid to other countries and have more billionaires than any other country, we can afford to publicly subsidize public school lunch.
Fuck your "they knew how the system worked" stance. That's a lazy excuse that allows you to blame poor people for being poor rather than challenging the validity of the system.
Did you know over 70% of all homeless people were in foster care. Did you know the cost to raise a kid outpaced the median income 30 years ago. Did you know punishing the children because of some misguided understanding of morality is the reason kids go hungry in the first place. Also just because a kid has a home lunch doesn't mean it's quality food. What needs to happen is a national free food for everyone program. Not like we're the "wealthiest" country on earth.
That movie isn’t funny anymore.
President Camacho knew that there was a problem and actively recruited the smartest person he could find...completely unrealistic.
Terry Crews, without any additional training, would literally be the best president since Carter.
XTRA BIG ASS FRIES
Fuck you, I'm eating!
XTRA BIG-ASS TACOS!! (WITH ONIONS)
What a lovely person this Charles Coslett, attorney at law, is!
https://www.10tv.com/article/news/nation-world/kids-could-end-foster-care-over-lunch-debt-school-district-warns-parents-2019-jul/530-1952542e-0f2c-4b3a-b6f0-a32de5dbce58
$450 is like two trips to the grocery store these days, or even less for a big family. Maybe the parents aren't paying the school bill because they did spend the money on food. Everything's expensive as hell.
Yes, threatening parents for being poor in an unaffordable country without social safety nets is shameful.
People like him make me wish hell was real.
Enforcing this will cost more than just feeding the kids would.
We've been a prison country for a long time now bud. They'll find a way.
America is 3% of the world population, yet has 25% of the worlds prison population. America runs on prison labor and debt slavery
Probably higher now.
Nope, this isnt a labor supply solution.
This is just for the love of the game.
Unfortunately it is a little of both. So many of our industries are subsidized by prison labor that it would be very disruptive for them to change it. Absolutely not saying we shouldnt. Just that that is why the centrist fucks wont move a muscle on prison reform
Obligatory
You forget that slavery is still legal for prisoners. They will put you in prison for stupid reasons because they want tons of free labor.
Land of the free labour.
Didn't pay your Minch money? Then the state will now spend thousands over thousands of dollars to ruin your child's life!
Seriously fucked up. They could feed all those kids for free for a fraction of what it would cost the state to forcibly put them in foster care.
I'm always reminded that the cruelty IS the point.
They could feed all the children for free for the cost of forcibly taking one child away.
This feels like a military recruitment strategy.
They're going to pay those other parents a stipend. Pay a case worker and their manager, pay an attorney. Those case workers are already bruised and battered nearly to death.
Why do we even have this orphan-crushing machine?
Imagine a child who grew up in lunch debt. Constantly aware of how awful their life is. Now take a portion of them at 18, give them training and weapons and send them to some country they grew up being told is bad and even responsible for their suffering. Tada.
My mom worked full-time as a lunch lady, my dad full-time as a janitor. We had reduced lunch ($.40) and once got a letter for -.$20 with a $.34 stamp.
The more you crush them the harder they work.
Same for adults.
Torment Nexus isn't built yet
Instructions unclear, the orphan-crushing machine now crushes non-orphans as well.
Is there any other country where "lunch debt" is even a thing?
Maybe we should do what Israel does and give people a monthly $260 per child payment until the child turns 18? I mean we pay for it there so why not implement it here?
Yes, but it often works the other way. I've gone to school in Asia, Europe and Australia. IME lunch ladies will let some kids tick food up when they lack the funds.
Some kids pay it back, but I know for a fact many come from families who lack the means and they let it slide.
Ironic seeing a country like the USA so obsessed with Jesus being as far from his teachings as you can go.
whY wOn'T pOEpLe hAvE MoRE kIdS??
I cannot explain how, but I feel that this is just another start of great scheme on how to make Epstein's island 2.0.
We don't need to make Epstein Island 2.0, we have Epstein Island at home...
I can explain: the US government is filled with people connected to Epstein's island. People who either engaged in pedophillia or are completely fine with it. They've got an unlimited supply of children from the immigrants they're abducting off the streets. America is an evil country.
We saw what our owners(until proven otherwise) do when they don't want to be found out.
What kind of sick shit do you think they're doing right now?
Something you'd hear Americans say it happens in communist countries
And if it's like my kid's school they just let them charge as much cake as they want to eat to their school account. If you tell them not to allow that they'll tell you that they can't not give children food. Motherfuckers also got a slushy machine.
So instead of free lunch we will take and house your kids and feed them and deprive them of family. Which will cost 100x more and is 10000x more evil than making kids pay for lunch
So that whole "greatest country in the world" thing was just propaganda?
Well shit.
That song about it being a grand old flag was a dead give away
Tbf it is a very nice flag
The stars make it overly complex and too subject to change.
Meahwhile, Some counties in Maryland have made school lunches free for all kids.
All of California, too
Basic school food is one of those things; it's not free, but it's not that expensive done in bulk. These kids need a couple of bucks a meal, only on school days
Michigan schools have free breakfast and lunch, also for all kids.
Baltimore city, free lunch and breakfast! Grades and performance....not so good tho.
Don't let perfection be the enemy of good, I say.
i swear this pic is a decade old
If it's in the US it's older than that, our school lunches in the 70s didn't look this good
Ya the lunch is too nice.
I'm seeing an opportunity for some rich schmuck to do some reputation-repair.
Short of paying for the entire meal program, it may not be possible. Some districts do not allow people to pay for meals/debt that is not their own.
When my youngest two kids were in elementary school I used to go eat lunch with them. One of the boys in my son's class had too much debt and they would not give him food. I tried to pay his debt ($20ish) and they would not let me, so I tried to pay for his meal, not allowed. So we went and sat down at the table and I gave him a twenty. The lunch lady accepted it, but gave me a hassle about it. I told her he found it in his pocket while we were eating.
That’s really weird. Also are you allowed to just go eat with your children at school or you need some kind of special forms and access? They can’t just let a bunch of adults into the school randomly.
Wild notion here for most USAnites. In almost all of the world, the parents can indeed just walk into the school and see what is up with their kids, part of the school's job is to know who are the parents to which kids. It's part of institutional transparency and parental rights. My nephew's schools (admittedly, in Europe) allows a family lunch day a week, when parents can enter the cafeteria and eat with their kids unannounced or simply watch what they are being served.
I had to go into the office and check in each time. They have it on file who my kids are. Only parents were allowed. So, you could not walk in off the street, having no kids at the school, and eat lunch.
I did this at 3 different schools in 2 different states.
Rich schmucks see an opportunity to offer high- interest loans to these families to do some yacht repairs.
Rich schmucks see an opportunity to offer high- interest loans to these families to do some yacht repairs.
I feel like pointing out a 6 year old edge case, where the school was rightly screeched at by just about everyone saying this is insane, followed up by an immediate apology, and funding to provide food to everyone is both a poor example of propaganda as well as a pretty decent case for safety kicking in at some point.
Sounds like the school was pretty poor and just made a bad and desperate decision to try and get more parents to pay.
That doesn't feed the narrative, though :/
What narrative exactly are you accusing people of feeding? The Narrative that school lunch debt is bad? You don't like that narrative?
Its always the .world users I swear.
In this case it excludes that this was an isolated district, the policy was rapidly corrected after this became public, and it's a story from over half a decade ago. It also leaves out how this was universally objected to, and it misrepresents the actual contents of the letter:
which was pointedly that if you cant feed your kid, you may have to prove you can safely care for them. A shit situation yes, but it was not "pay your lunch debt or we'll take your kid away".
Yeah, this headline being reposted is pushing a narrative. And man you know what, in my experience the people that dismiss other users because of their instance are generally the problem. Othering people is pretty much always bad.
They don't want to understand 🤣
Asking 'what narrative' on a late stage capital post isn't in good faith. They are trolling you.
You know, you make a good point. Thank you!
Richest nation in the history of our species...
On average. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I have a suggestion: let corporations adopt children.
What if we instead forced corporations to pay fair wages and taxes in the regions they operate in so that their employees have access to the resources needed to raise their own kids?
Eh, that's probably communism.
Wait, I thought we were doing a make the Earth a hellscape competition?
I was just giving suggestions.
"Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase. Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr."
I'm going to go way out on a limb and assume that placing children in foster care would cost the state more than just paying for their goddamn school lunches.
Yeah, but it's not as much fun.
School district going after parents is dumb, they should be asking all of the parents to attend school board and City council meetings or whichever governing body controls school funding from taxes with them to find out why school lunch isn't provided for all kids that need it
Off topic for a sec, that pic of the lunch tray looks like a really nice school lunch. Mine looked like shit 30 years ago.
In the US, maybe. Civilized countries don't do that.
I WISH I lived in One of the Countries my Tax Dollars fund that Allows Children to EAT!
That seems far less expensive than school lunch. Fuckin clown shoes
Maybe we should do what Israel does and give people a monthly $260 per child payment until the child turns 18? I mean we pay for it there so why not implement it here?
Or... the state could provide children with free lunches. Maybe it's the state or the schools that are denying children their right to eat by making it dependent upon their parents' financial situations?
when my parents didn't give me lunch money, I just didn't have lunch - I'm don't think the lunch room offered a "debt" program, I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to get a lunch without payment ...
EDIT: just to be clear, I'm in favor of free lunches for children (jesus, who would think this needs to be stated) partially because I went without and know what that's like. I was bullied for eating out of garbage cans, kids younger than me would intentionally spit on their food and destroy their food to try to deny me their leftovers.
I'm just surprised kids are able to get lunch debt - I lived in the South and I suspect the schools just had more right-wing policies (like not even letting kids go into debt to have lunches). I wonder who is responsible for that debt, I would have loved to rack up debt and stick my parents with it (since it was because they were irresponsible and immoral that I was in that situation to begin with - they had plenty of money, they just refused to provide lunches).
We got a peanut butter sandwich and a lecture to bring money in the future.
Every kid should be fed. Use my taxes and feed them little goblins for free at school.
yeah, looking back I was taking food out of garbage cans on days I couldn't stand the fasting ... my parents could more than afford school lunches, so this wasn't an issue of poverty, but I agree that kids should be fed, and if I were a parent there is no chance I would let my kid go to school without some kind of lunch
In my elementary school they had a third party company doing lunches. So they would collect money in class for the day then make exactly that number of meals and no more. However, there was pretty much no supervision or tracking at lunch, so every day they would run out of meals before the line ran out and whoever was at the end of the line got a pb sandwich.
Happened very literally every single day.
I came into the thread prepared to be angry, then they said, "neglecting your child's right to food", and honestly, that's exactly what the parents are doing. If they don't want to pay for school lunch, pack one. If you want to do neither, choosing not to feed your child at all does sound like neglect, and the school is picking up the slack.
School lunch is so important for learning outcomes, lunch should be covered by tax revenue anyways. I hope we get there one day. But these parents sent their child to school knowing full well how the system works today.
Holy shit get off your high horse. You said exactly one sane thing: we should not let children be hungry at school. That's it. You have no idea what situations these people are in. They might only be scrounging 1 meal a day, maybe less. Frankly it doesn't matter in the slightest.
Let's blame the poor people for being poor. Sometimes life is not fair and we should treat people with empathy. But yeah, let the kids suffer for the problems in society that rich fucks created.
If they don't have food because they can't afford it, the kid should just starve rather than the school having to front the cost?
A child not having food security while attending school is a societal failure. If we can afford to spend more than multiple countries combined on our military and send billions in military aid to other countries and have more billionaires than any other country, we can afford to publicly subsidize public school lunch.
Fuck your "they knew how the system worked" stance. That's a lazy excuse that allows you to blame poor people for being poor rather than challenging the validity of the system.
I hope you get to experience why your point is wrong.
Man, I hope not. I don't wish that shit on anyone.
You're nicer than me. But some people only learn from experience.
Did you know over 70% of all homeless people were in foster care. Did you know the cost to raise a kid outpaced the median income 30 years ago. Did you know punishing the children because of some misguided understanding of morality is the reason kids go hungry in the first place. Also just because a kid has a home lunch doesn't mean it's quality food. What needs to happen is a national free food for everyone program. Not like we're the "wealthiest" country on earth.
Just because a school provides lunch doesn't mean its quality food either.
As adults that's our problem to resolve.
While I don't have kids right now, I don't have the power to change a schools lunch menu. I do have the power to make a packed lunch.
Not the point.