Tired of deadbeat parents not paying for school lunches, the Chula Vista Elementary School District in California uses a highly effective tactic: no pizza or burgers for the kids - instead, they serve up the dreaded cheese sandwich of shame:
The cheese sandwich, they say, has become a badge of shame for the children, who get teased about it by their classmates. One student cried when her macaroni and cheese was replaced with a sandwich. A little girl hid in a restroom to avoid getting one. Many of the sandwiches end up untouched or tossed whole in the garbage. Sometimes kids pound them to pieces. [...]
Districts stress that the alternate meals are a last resort.
They send letters to parents. They hire collection agencies. Some place stickers on children's hands or put rubber bands on their wrists as reminders, said Peterson.
But alternate meals get the best results.
An effective alternate meal has to do two things: meet federal nutritional standards and flunk child taste tests. The cheese sandwich, typically served on untoasted whole wheat bread, apparently qualifies as one perfectly healthy stinker of a meal.
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.
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."
But that's cause I know poor kids here have to contend with watered down porridge. I suppose it's different everywhere.
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.
Man...
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
::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???
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They are being fed. The little brats are throwing throwing it away without eating it.
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rainman Says: Would a homeless person turn down a cheese sandwich?
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Yes. They can and do when all they want is alcohol or drugs or cigarettes.
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?
If you love your kids don't send them to school.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed. Isn't there a legal system out there? Feed the kids, sue the parents.
Read the article. The kids ARE being fed. They just don't like the menu and are throwing out their free lunch.
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.
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.
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?
Mountains from molehills.
Deadbeat is the keyword in this article, not poor. Poor have resources, deadbeats are just that.
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.