From Attleboro, MA (boldface mine):
Five cents of debt was enough for cafeteria employees at the Coehlo Middle School to instruct kids at least one day this week to dump out the food they would have normally eaten, CNN affiliate WJAR in Rhode Island reported.
About 25 children left the lunchroom with empty stomachs, said Whitson’s Culinary Group in a statement. The company runs the school’s cafeteria.
Parents were appalled. So was the principal. So was Whitson’s.
“I told them this is bullying; that’s neglect, child abuse,” said parent Jo-An Blanchard.
Principal Andrew Boles apologized and blamed the culinary company. “My expectation is that every child, every adult, every parent, every student, every teacher is respected in this building, and that didn’t happen yesterday because of Whitson’s,” he told WJAR.
Whitson’s apologized in a statement and said it was not company policy to deny meals to children. It added that the school district had no official policy on what to do in such situations.
“Employees had taken it upon themselves to institute this change; it was not condoned or approved,” said Whitson spokeswoman Holly Von Seggern. “We had absolutely no idea.”
Workers in the school’s cafeteria work on a contract basis, Boles said. He thinks the decision came from Whitson’s.
Of course, if we were a civilized nation, we would offer free lunch to any child who wanted it, no questions asked. But we do like shaming our poor….
I was appalled when I learned that kids without enough money at my son’s school were given a bagged lunch rather than the hot lunch.
A “nice guy ” Christian conservative man told me, upon hearing this story,”If you can’t feed then, then don’t breed them”.
How in hell does he make that compatible with the teachings of his Christ? It would seem completely antithetical to the sentiments expressed in the gospels.
@JG: Somehow you seem to have missed the observation that “the teachings of his Christ”, for the many, many “Conservative Christians” amount essentially to an inversion of everything in the Gospels. Well, and a great deal from the Old Testament as well, but there it is. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the “Conservative Christians” in this country would be immediately recognizable to the Moses who returned to find his people worshipping a Golden Calf. Nowadays, of course, it’s a Gold-Plated Statue of Republican Jesus kicking from His path one of the lazy, undeserving moochers who has the had lack of moral fiber enough to have allowed himself to become poor. “If they were properly moral, God would have made them rich.” I think that’s part of the Sermon on the Mount.
I think it’s unlikely that I’ve missed that observation, since I’ve written extensively on allied matters. My question was rhetorical.
Well, and a great deal from the Old Testament as well . . .
But not, for example, “Thou shalt not kill.”
So, wait. It’s not even that they weren’t given a meal – but that they were given a meal and then instructed to dump it? In addition to bullying and abusive, that’s sickeningly wasteful…
@Cathy: Yeah, that line of the article didn’t make any sense to me either.
Even Rush weighed in on this on his 30 second spot (on the early morning news, courtesy WSJ). He felt that the actions taken by the company (suspensions, firings?) were just another example of liberal hatred. What’s wrong with a kid going hungry? Tough shit if they didn’t have the money. I cannot believe the public airwaves tolerate that man.
No teacher I know would have ever let that occur: Where were they? Can crap like this happen in a vacuum?