World's Longest Scuba Submergence.

Someone didn't think this out. Once they took the food away and disposed of it, they couldn't really go back and charge the parents for it, now could they? If they had just kept track of the food taken by the children they could just bill the parents after the fact.

I understand the school shouldn't be in the business of providing credit for school lunches, but the way they handled this incident, both the children and the school lost out.

Shouldn't a "child-nutrition department" see to it that children get, well… enough nutrients? I'm confused.

And on something completely different, may I congratulate you on your choice of picture for this article?

At my kids' high school, a lunch lady punches in a student's 4-digit account number before they can enter the lunch line. If you are more than $5 overdrawn, your number is rejected and NO SOUP FOR YOU! I don't know if they are so strict at the elementary schools.

I pack lunches. They are more nutritious than what the school offers.

OK, so the school wastes the food rather than let it get eaten without payment. Words are not adequate to express how I feel about this situation. Please wait a bit while I engage in some interpretive dance:
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OK, do you understand now?

Once a bully, always a bully. How does that old con-artist saying go? Like taking candy from a baby? If you don't have the cajones to talk to grownups, pick on the kids.

At my children's elementary school the children with no money, or no money in their lunch accounts, are given lunch, but on a smaller tray. While I commend the no child should go hungry policy, I have never liked the fact that the school stigmatized those children by giving them a noticeably smaller tray. Children should be fed equally. Humiliating a child is no way to deal with a deadbeat parent.

They said they tried to contact the parents who were in arrears ...just this week. Monday and Tuesday morning. And took the lunches away Tuesday. Anyone who runs a real business, even the evil cable company, gives you a week to pay a bill. And this was on the last week of the month, when no one has money anyway. All that in addition to the fact that the children are not the ones responsible for keeping up with the bills.

It would be one thing to refuse to serve them, but to set them up with a meal then snatch it away like that was pure theater and intended to humiliate. I think a couple of the parents need to have a chat with whoever made that decision...perhaps a bit more...