Deadbeat Parents? Sandwich of Shame for School Kids!

1. Anthony
   June 19th, 2007 at 2:55 am

   You know what else they could do? Just make the kids wear t-shirts all day with the word “POOR” written across them in huge letters.

   They could just assualt children with outstanding debt. Gangs seem to find that effective, and it’s probably less psychologically damaging than the original plan.

   Or they could just round up the poor children and make them wear a special symbol like a star or triangle. That worked out well in the past.

   That is the worst idea in a long time.

2. Alex
   June 19th, 2007 at 4:11 am

   Lunch cost $1.50 at Chula Vista elementary school, so I doubt that the parents can’t afford to pay. Many people are just deadbeats.

   The school did try other things to try to get them to pay. The cheese sandwich of shame is the last resort.

   I will grant you that the kids suffer, but at least they’re still being fed something “federally nutritious.”

3. C Note
   June 19th, 2007 at 4:29 am

   Here’s a better idea: force the feds to feed the children. Oh, wait, expecting people at large to take measures against the Man is like expecting a herd of cows to whip out chaingun death to the next Saucer that tries to molest them.

4. heroic
   June 19th, 2007 at 4:52 am

   Actually, I find it upsetting that kids would throw away perfectly good sandwiches. I know they’re not as tasty as burgers or pizza but that’s an entire sandwich!

   But that’s cause I know poor kids here have to contend with watered down porridge. I suppose it’s different everywhere.

5. heroic
   June 19th, 2007 at 5:04 am

   ^But yeah, parents who can pay, should pay.

6. Jimbo
   June 19th, 2007 at 5:32 am

   Each state is responsible for school lunches funded with federal funds. I don’t know about California, but most states offer programs for people that can’t afford school lunches. The kids end up with free lunch.

   In this case, the kids are being punished because of their parents. This is wrong and the DFACS should called. Parents like this should go to jail.

7. jank
   June 19th, 2007 at 5:58 am

   KILL THE POOR!!!

8. AK-00
   June 19th, 2007 at 7:19 am

   So many targets for hate… I genuinely don’t know who to be more contemptuous of. Perhaps the kids on the receiving end of the sandwich, for having such screwed up priorities? Or the bullies, for being arrogant and superficial enough to look down on someone for being poor? How about the school, for not only allowing this state of affairs to continue, but actually exploiting and reinforcing it?
   Man…

9. Sigma
   June 19th, 2007 at 7:34 am

   It seems (from reading the article) that the parents aren’t paying lunches because they are poor but because they are just deadbeats that dont like paying bills.

10. ::mwah::
    June 19th, 2007 at 7:44 am

    We’ve got all the money in the world to blow children up in the Middle East but none to feed our kids. Ain’t America grand???

11. rainman
    June 19th, 2007 at 8:23 am

    Whatever happened to sending in a bag lunch with the kids? Why should kids be required to eat school food? I packed lunches for all 4 of my kids (and myself) every day. No wonder the kids are learning that they are “owed” something decent, and it’s okay to be ingrateful for a gift. Snobs. Would a homeless person turn down a cheese sandwich? I say that if the parents signed up for hot lunch and don’t pay, put a lein on their house. And write that into the lunch signup so it’s no surprise.

12. Fadfollower
    June 19th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    Food is food. Since when did everyone have the “right” to a gourmet meal? If its nutritionally sound, then TOUGH. I think that kids throwing the sandwiches away are ungreatful little punks with no concept or appreciation of the real world.

    My husband was adopted to a military family that had money, but treated him like crap. He was constantly starving, and wasn’t fed properly, often just once a day. Some days he had nothing at all. When he was old enough to, he got a paper route to FEED himself. He looks back on his broken childhood as an important lesson, and is a better person for it.
    When I asked him what he thought of this, he said “Ungreatful little sh*ts. I would have LOVED to have that as a kid”.

    So for everyone that thinks this is unfair…keep in mind, there are worse things. A cheese sandwich is not the end of the world.

13. astrodex
    June 19th, 2007 at 8:50 am

    It seems to me that the issue isn’t the fact that the kids don’t like the taste of the food. The issue is that the food is a catalyst for their ill treatment at the hands of other children. The tactic only works because the school district allows the children to bully and taunt each other.

    Maybe if they try really hard and work together the “deadbeat” parents, the bullies and the authorities who encourage the bulllying can create a few school shooters. For $5 each.

14. pol x
    June 19th, 2007 at 9:17 am

    that is obscene.

    In the UK when I was at school you all got the same lunch, if you had working parents they paid, if you didn’t the council paid.

    What they did not do was mark out the poor kids for more hardship.

    God the US is a morally very twisted country.

15. Acedia
    June 19th, 2007 at 9:22 am

    Considering that my 7 year old daughter won’t eat meat and that peanut butter (her usual lunch) is forbidden in school, I send her in with a cheese sandwich every day of the week (except for Friday pizza days.) Somehow no one has considered it a badge of shame! And that’s even considering that our school system has the same “don’t pay, get a cheese sandwich” policy — in our upper middle class area (deadbeat (or just forgetful) parents are everywhere.)

    In any case, considering the price of a couple of pieces of cheese and two slices of bread, you’d think that everyone but the homeless could afford to send their kid in with a similar bag lunch. (Isn’t there government cheese any more? My MIL, who was a political refugee from Cuba in 1961 (where she lived a life of luxury, the daughter of a heart surgeon, the granddaughter of the surgeon general) recalls the dreaded government cheese…but also noted that you’d be amazed what you can eat when you’re hungry.)

16. Laura
    June 19th, 2007 at 9:37 am

    Chula Vista isnt exactly South Central LA.. These kids have parents who simply haven’t paid up thier school lunch tabs. Since the kids cant go hungry, the school offers them a free alternative lunch. Its played up for drama in this article, my sons school does the same thing if the child has a negative account balance… now, I know i’ve been let it slide on occasion, simply because I forget or he doesn’t tell me he’s getting low. (its not like they send you a monthly statement) and he’s had to have a cheese sandwich or the equivalent. I feel bad and send money right away, though.

17. hedgefort
    June 19th, 2007 at 10:14 am

    What good has come from this solution?
    Surely there must be another route - garnishing wages of the parents - the children are not responsible for their parent actions…if “no child is to be left behind” then no child should be subjected to this shameful solution. The hurt caused from this sort of event in a person’s life can linger longer than the memory of it.

18. Aramax
    June 19th, 2007 at 10:41 am

    Well… after reading this article on Marco Raphael Castro and what he did to that salad dressing…

    http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0523072salad1.html

    … I pretty much lost faith in mankind and started living like some sort of amish and today the only acceptable food for me is the food I fix myself.

    No more restaurant for me… ever.

19. Tempscire
    June 19th, 2007 at 10:48 am

    —–
    ::mwah:: Says: We’ve got all the money in the world to blow children up in the Middle East but none to feed our kids. Ain’t America grand???
    —–
    They are being fed. The little brats are throwing throwing it away without eating it.

    —–
    rainman Says: Would a homeless person turn down a cheese sandwich?
    —–
    Yes. They can and do when all they want is alcohol or drugs or cigarettes.

20. Mike
    June 19th, 2007 at 11:01 am

    As a parent, I must say, this disgusts me. To put the shame on the child for something the parent is doing (or in this case NOT doing) is just absurd. Children, as we all know, can be very mean and the teasing that will take place can traumatize the kid.

    These schools aren’t losing any money by giving kids food. There are federal and state funded programs to supply food.

    I’m not saying people should get away with NOT paying, but how can you punish one person for something that’s not their fault?

21. Rob
    June 19th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    Hey, let’s stop pretending that school is good for kids. It isn’t. I don’t know about other countries, but in the US our school system was designed to break apart families, reduce children’s intelligence, curiosity and independence and rank them into winners and (mostly) losers. In this it has been wildly successful. You can read about the history of schooling here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
    If you love your kids don’t send them to school.

22. Sid Morrison
    June 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm

    What a laugh. Only in the America of today (it wasn’t like that 70 years ago!) can people getting something for nothing complain about it not being good enough. Bloody Moochers! Their lunches are heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars, and the parents need only cover a SMALL portion ($1.50 I think) of the total cost. But they are so self-absorbed and entitlement-deserving, that they welch out of even paying that, shifting it upon others to carry their burden. Why aren’t these people sending their own brown-bagged sandwiches in with the kids every day (I have one daily!) ? Because it’s easier to live on the dole.

    I don’t feel bad about putting the squeeze on the kids either — their ungrateful reaction belies the teaching their deadbeat parents have already instilled upon them. I think they are pretty darned lucky to be getting the cheese sandwhiches gratis — in my world, they would not. A little shame would do wonders to teach these children from becoming the societal burdens their parents have become. Stand on your own feet and stop being leeches! Kids today are really big into “getting respect” but not knowing humility. If those on the dole would endure a little shame at the same time, they’d be more likely to pull their bootstraps up a little quicker (while still not starving).

    Straight talk form Sid.

23. nerfherder
    June 19th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    In our school district the kids still get peanut butter and jelly, thank goodness.
    My kids eat one about 3-4 times a school year because they didn’t give me the note or I forgot to send in more money. Their school not only has lunch, but optional breakfast and a snack bar that all comes out of the lunch money I send, so I never know how much they’ve spent in a day, and I frankly don’t have the time or patience to pack lunches. “The sandwich” is not a big deal and no one picks on them for it. In fact, once my older daughter ate them for a week straight because she didn’t like the regular menu. I think the real people we should be angry at are the lazy reporters who make a story out of nothing just to piss people off.

24. Sid Morrison
    June 19th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    I just checked out the John Taylor Gatto link Rob posted. It’s an interesting site which seems to mirror a lot of my personal feelings on the subject — I will check out some of Gatto’s writing on the subject.

    To be clear though, Gatto doesn’t appear to advocate just “not sending your kids to school” (home schooling?) as Rob does. Rather, Gatto and the Odysses Group just want to *remove* the uncomepetitve monopoly that has been given to government schools, which would force them to compete with parochial schools, home schooling, non-sectarian private schools, &c. The problem we have now is that the government schools stink (in general) because they are given a TON of money per student, and none of the alternatives are. There is absolutely no incentive for government schools to comepete on a quality basis, becuase most parents can’t afford the other options. The government schools wind up delivering (generally) a mediocre product, becuase they needn’t try harder. Vouchers are one method to get them off their butts, by enabling parents who don’t have gobs of $ to have other choices for their kids’ education.

25. Chris
    June 19th, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    “the kids are being punished because of their parents. This is wrong”

    Agreed. Isn’t there a legal system out there? Feed the kids, sue the parents.

26. Sid Morrison
    June 19th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    Chris-
    Read the article. The kids ARE being fed. They just don’t like the menu and are throwing out their free lunch.

27. Jennifer
    June 19th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    First off - does anyone know how much reconstituted corn is in that cheese sandwich? Or anything else reheated and pried from a can at the school cafeteria for that matter. School lunches are not healthy sources of nutrition. The children should be eating whole foods and torching the junk produced by the cafeteria.

    For other folks who seem to think that Chula Vista is an upper middle class community …. HA! I went to school there. Sure, maybe Eastlake and Otay are okay. But take a cruise around central Chula Vista. Not the best place to be if your in San Diego.

    Lien on a house? Puh-leeze! Chula Vista has a large majority of renters, many parts of the community are poor. With the increasing mortgage rates many homeowners are facing tighter and tighter budgets.

    For the person who said lunch was only a $1.50 at Chula Vista schools …. yes, it is. (Way up from when I went to school in that district.) But $1.50 is a lot of money for some families, and many families in that community have more than one child.

28. Akiro
    June 19th, 2007 at 10:37 pm

    Well having the perspective of working in a small rural Midwest school I can definitely agree with Jennifer on the fact that $1.50 is a lot for many parents to pay. In the kindergarten classroom I was in many children could not afford the additional milk at snack time, as it was not included on the free/reduced lunch program. Any lunch option is offered too, although we do have PB&J unless their are known nut allergies.

    In reply to points from Sid (from Gatto’s site), public schools (I assume that is what is meant by government schools) do not receive tons of money. Funds are limited and awful in many states. Federal funds are almost nonexistent, state’s vary in expenditure, and locally schools are funded by property taxes so there is greater disparity. So making an argument that there is a fund disparity in favor of public over private schools is ridiculous.

    And my final point, I love cheese sandwiches! I think I may actually go make one after reading through all the comments that all education related posts always seem to raise.

29. Sid Morrison
    June 20th, 2007 at 8:09 am

    Akiro-
    Government schools near me (a mix of rundown inner city, middle class suburb, and redneck-rural upstate NY) generally use about $14K per student per year in taxpayer $ to educate kids. It varies a little among districts, but not much. This money ALL comes from taxpayers at some level. Because it is shockingly high ($350K per year to educate a single class of 25), school districts like to hide this figure, but it’s easy to calculate if you divide their published annual budget by their total number of students served. Tuition charged to the taxpayers is 14 thousand dollars per students per year. Period. What is it where you live/work? If you don’t know the figure, you are kidding yourself when you believe “funds are limited and awful”. I’m betting a lot more money comes in per student than you imagine; it is just so wastefully spent, that not much makes it to teachers like you (it sounded like you might be a teacher).

    Now parochial (and non-sectarian private, too, but there are fewer of them) schools do exactly the same job (well… better, but that’s an argument for another day) for roughly $7 thousand per student per year. About 1/2 of this cost is paid by the diocese which runs the schools ($ coming unltimately from donations) and 1/2 comes from tuition charged parents who send their kids there. The kids are tested to the same subject matter as the government school kids and do as well or better, yet the total cost is half! Unfortunately, their parents need to come up with half of that half, or around $3500 (the price can get reduced further if you are extra needy). $3500 a year is a lot of $ for even middle class folk, so those schools operate at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting students.

    If parents were given a $3500 voucher if they elected to send their kids outside the public schools,
    1.the taxpayer would be FAR ahead paying this instead of the $14K per student per year they now pay.
    2. parents who otherwise could not afford a private education now could.
    3. the government (public) schools would get a firm kick in the ass in that they would now be required to be cost-competitive. Right now, they are granted an exclusive monopoly to funds levied upon taxpayers. It’s a sweet deal for sure, but it makes them lazy, inefficient, and not particularly results-driven.

    Public schools counter my arguments by saying the private schools do better with less cash because they get the cream of the crop. Well, vouchers would level the playing field and let poor kids have a choice in school as well. What are the districts and teachers’ unions afraid of?

30. Dave
    June 20th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    Consider first the source of the story. The LA Times is like most other newsrags, always on the prowl for something they can twist into the next crisis that needs more government money thrown at it. The story is likely a gross exaggeration of what’s really going on there.

    Mountains from molehills.

31. Jeff
    June 20th, 2007 at 3:22 pm

    FTW, I love plain old cheese sandwiches. That and a bag of chips and a soda and you got your $2 lunch.

    Deadbeat is the keyword in this article, not poor. Poor have resources, deadbeats are just that.

32. smak
    June 21st, 2007 at 11:07 am

    The problem with Chula Vista, and much of Southern California, is that they’ve been absolutely inundated with illegals. My friend, who’s an English teacher in the San Diego school system, has told me that she is basically teaching ESL as opposed to writing, literature, spelling, etc.

    They are stretched so thin because of “No Child Left Behind”. They are trying to get functionally illiterate, Spanish-speaking children to achieve at the level required by NCLB. The class sizes are so huge now that her classroom has been relocated to a trailer with few windows and intermittent air conditioning.

    And actually, the expenditures per student vary quite a bit throughout the country. No surprise that the least amount of money spent per student is in the South/Midwest. Look at the difference between Arkansas and Connecticut, for example.

33. Nick
    June 25th, 2007 at 3:37 am

    My school district has done that exact thing for as long as I went there - 11 years. I don’t see the problem.

34. Storm
    June 25th, 2007 at 8:48 am

    I’m so happy I don’t have to live in that country.

35. ubishii
    July 2nd, 2007 at 8:16 am

    why should a school waste time, energy and money acting like “collection agencies.” take a poor family, take them to court, make them pay costs, and hope for lunch $ - now that really sounds logical? NOT! ya never know what is really behind the story. maybe the kids were provided lunch money? maybe they spent on other things. maybe the school administration needs to butt out! oh, let’s just humiliate a kid, try and make him like school now, and force him to control their parents’ behaviors. none of it makes it logical sense. just feed the child, stop humiliating the whole family, and deduct it from some overpaid administrator that proposes higher taxes for education.

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