Cold cheese sandwich anyone?Follow

They already do this in the elementary schools where I live. Most of the time Xavier, who is in first grade, takes a lunch in to school, but once in awhile he wants to buy. You send the cash in, they add it to the kids PIN #, and the kids are responsible for knowing what their PIN is. You can even add in to the computer system if the kids can use their money to buy extra snacks, and choose which days they can and can't.

Do you just type to type? While I get your general statement above and have no issue with it, I'm trying to figure out why you would quote something about computerizing school lunches in elementary school, as an answer to the above quoted query wondering if they would incorporate this as standard procedure below middle school. Your statement just seems beyond vague and could have been thrown out there on it's own.

I'm just blatently curious

You didn't even read the linked article did you?If you had, you would have seen: In some cases, parents are waiting for approval to participate in government-aided lunch programs.

We all know how easy it is for you to gloss over the full deal to meet your ends but jesus man, that's a bit much.

And as Dr. Hill (quoted in the article) said "We are taking an adult problem, and the children are the ones getting the punishment for it" is absolutely correct. It's not right in any manner.

In my opinion, the school fees you pay twice a year (or once, whatever) should include a % of what it would cost the school to feed a child for the year. Yea, it's the rich paying for the poor (go ahead Gbaji, just say it) but it does solve the problem in budgeting.

My oldest one just uses cash and buys whatever a la cart, since he's in high school and won't eat a school lunch. He gets a set amount from me and up to him to budget it.

My middle one gets free lunches at the school he's currently at. But the school is a no frills, lockdown type so it's a cold lunch and the kids aren't allowed any choices.

My youngest one goes half and half on lunches. She checks the menu and if she doesn't want the mystery meat pocket sandwich thing for lunch the next day, she'll make up her own lunch at home.

I was responding to the idea that the mechanism used for the child to pick up the lunch was any more or less "embarrassing". If Xavier types in his PIN and there isn't enough funds in the account for a lunch, what happens? Is that any different than what happens to a child in the article who's parents didn't (or forgot to) pay?

he gets a sticker on his shirt that says "Need Lunch Money". I've yet to see him, or any other kid, flip out over it. most kids age 6 and 7 enjoy stickers, and while they realize it's a message to mom and dad, it doesnt take away the coolness factor that they got a sticker while the other kids didn't.

I had some friends who would've asked their parents to not pay. They loved cheese sandwiches.

Apparently, this wasn't working in this district. Does he still get a lunch? And if you continue to forget to pay, does he continue to get a lunch and a sticker "forever"? Or at some point, do they stop giving him a lunch?

My son's school uses the PIN system also. And if I fall behind on lunch money, they just send a little note home with his homework. I've fallen behind a couple of weeks (I can't remember ****) and they've never penalized him.

Shrek came out when my youngest step brother was oh, between 3 and 4. Does everyone remember the green ketchup? Lord, my little brother would eat nothing BUT Shrek ketchup and American cheese sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For weeks. He survived.

And frankly, I'm on the side that would have preferred the cheese sandwiches. Not because I like them particularly, but because I have some sort of weird trauma with lunchroom food that still lingers today. That **** was putrid 98% of the time. My mother paid for my hot lunch, just to avoid having to make me a lunch every morning. I rarely ate lunch at school, and I would get awful migraines towards the end of the day. The cheese sandwiches may have saved me!

My elementary school had a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and a jar of grape and/or strawberry jam at the end of the line. This was for students that didn't have any money or a lunch card. Our school didn't care about allergy ridden children.

The lunch card was purchased through the school at a price determined by an application you filled out. Either Full Price, Reduced, or Free. Regardless of price, the card was exactly the same, and had your name on it and 4 weeks worth of stamps which the lunch lady punched.

There was really nothing telling about who got what. No one could tell unless you told them yourself.

We got a Sternly Worded Letter (tm) from our teacher to take home if we went behind on lunch money payments.

Edit: And yes, in the US, many children have parents who go to work at 4AM, so they don't have time to make them nice lunches in the morning and they're too exhausted from double shifts to make them at night.

These are the kids who also probably don't get breakfast or dinner, as that one grandfather said.

Edited, Feb 25th 2009 9:42pm by catwho