Edmonds School District’s latest cost-recovery measure: It’s a doozy!

School lunch. Is ketchup still considered a vegetable?

I grew up in Mountlake Terrace, WA, which is part of Edmonds School District. Please don’t blame my grammatical errors on my English teachers. I learned so much from the vast majority of my teachers, and it wasn’t just reading and writing. They shared many valuable life lessons with me, too. I will be grateful to them for the rest of my life. (Mrs. Schaefer and Mr. Schliemann, I’m talking to you.) As I grew older, though, I learned that the administrators of any district were not my friends, and nobody else’s, either.

Edmonds School District is getting tuff on lunchtime scofflaws.  Does your child owe on his or her lunch account? Dish up the lunch, but throw it away in front of them when the cashier discovers they’re in arrears. Bear in mind that (according to the article below,) some of these kids may qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch, and their parents evidently haven’t filled out the paperwork yet.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/378561_coldlunch11.html?source=mypi

EDMONDS — Students in the Edmonds School District are learning a tough new lesson this year: If you’re hungry for a hot meal, don’t forget your lunch money.

Students who arrive at the end of the lunch line with hot food and a carton of milk on their trays but with lunch accounts that are $10 or more behind may have that tray taken away and replaced with a cold cheese sandwich and, up until Thursday, no drink.

The new policy is designed to recover $207,763 in unpaid lunch fees from last year.

The district has asked cashiers to check every student account to make sure they have money for the food they have picked up in line. If they don’t, the cashier is supposed to throw away the food on confiscated trays, because of food safety concerns, Sara Conroy, interim director of food service, told The Herald newspaper of Everett.

When school started last week, 2,750 Edmonds students owed $10 or more. After five days, $45,269 has been repaid from 961 students, according to the district.

“We can’t continue — day after day after day after day — to pay for these lunches and to provide a child with a lunch without getting payment,” Conroy said. “You couldn’t just go to McDonald’s without any money and expect service. We can only do it for so long and we can’t do it any longer. It sounds ugly when you say the food has been discarded, but what can we do?”

Ms. Conroy, does McDonald’s provide classrooms on the taxpayer dime? I’m a bit confused. Maybe you can help. After all, I went to Mountlake Terrace Elementary, Junior High and High School, and God knows Edmonds School District was not the paragon of higher learning in those days I’m sure it is now. McDonald’s provides a for-profit service. YOU DON’T. By taking a lunch away from even ONE student who may qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch, you’ve just let all of us know that your almighty dollar is more important than some kid who may not get anything hot to eat (hell, anything to eat at all,) for the rest of the day. A cheese sandwich is not going to cut it, either.

If you have a problem with parents that aren’t paying, take it up with them. Don’t require your cashiers to take food away from a child. If you want to mandate this policy, sweetheart, implement it yourself. Those cashiers know which of those kids are really hungry, and that’s why they’re defying you. I would do it, too. Are you wondering why some of those kids’ parents haven’t gotten around to filling out your paperwork yet? It’s September 11th. School started the 2nd, right? Does it occur to you that perhaps any parent in the home is either working or too impaired themselves to make sure the paperwork gets done?

Think I’m blowing sunshine up your ass? Mountlake Terrace was a low-rent neighborhood when I was in school. There were lots of kids whose parents were barely making it. I live with someone who would have starved without the free or reduced lunch program when he was in school. I realize that things may have changed a bit in the however many years it’s been since I graduated, but I also know that families are pinched right now like they’ve never been pinched before. It must make you feel powerful to hear that they’re tossing a hot school lunch in the trash all over the district, multiple times a day. Let those kids eat a cold cheese sandwich!

Perhaps your days would be better spent helping that kid fill out the missing paperwork if they qualify. Every last kid. If they don’t, go after the parents.

In the meantime, I’d be curious to know what the salaries are of every administrator in Edmonds School District, how much of a raise they got last year, and how much of a raise they’re getting this year. I’m thinking that couple of hundred thousand dollar shortfall would be quick work.

-S

p.s. I’ll bet the food banks in the areas served by Edmonds School District were none too happy to hear that large amounts of food is being thrown in the trash daily, too.