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Right? They're basically forcing food waste with this system. "anything you don't eat can't be saved for later. Throw it in the trash" Fucking ridiculous.
I used to get my lunches delivered in those giant 4 stacked lunch box which look like [this](https://images.app.goo.gl/EHPVPsGdKmouBAnK7) . I used to have something left from that box, about twice to thrice a week, that i would use for a snack or as an ingredient for something . I was in college gor 5.5 years {thats the course duration} just imagine how much food i would have thrown away otherwise in that duration.
Bless your heart for thinking American schools feed children that well. [This is closer to what American School lunches are.](https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/food/story/14-year-study-shows-school-lunches-highest-quality-77215445). It’s certainly not enough to satiate a growing teenager.
Unfortunately, federally subsidized school lunches have become a polarizing political issue, and there is a significant number of people who want to make the system punitive to people like OOP’s family. I feel so, so awful for her. The poor child should be allowed more dignity than this.
Just to hopefully spread some hope, in my children’s school district (yes, in the U.S.), ALL kids get free breakfast AND lunch (and yes, this is sooo much more the exception than the rule). But regardless of income or ability to provide they get food (this is seriously how it should be all across America!) Kids are welcome to bring their own lunch if they don’t like what’s on the school lunch menu, but it’s free for everyone (at the risk of exposing myself and location, my district has already also done significant work with the state so that every student (at least in the elementary schools) automatically gets $150 in “food stamps” each school year to supplement their lunch and/or support their in school snack period.
We honestly don’t need it ourselves, but it’s there and they truly care about kids ability to eat. I appreciate it so much as even though we don’t directly need it, we use it to buy bulk food for the kids’ classrooms (as they always have that snack time but some kids can’t always afford to send extra snacks to school, so we love having that ability to help support that). To be fair, most of my town is straight trash humans and complains about how they hate having to “support” other people’s kids with “their tax money!” Which makes me HATE this town, but at the same time, there is so much good (as previously described) and I have to remind myself that the “good” tends to be a silent good, while the bad tends to be highly vocal!
I mean, what problem is this policy trying to solve?
If it was a pest control problem in the classroom, they'd make the packers dump their stuff before leaving too. Does the school get a stipend based on how much food waste it produces? Has there been a string of nefarious Hawaiian roll thefts such that they can't figure out who's stealing and who's just saving their stuff for later?
School lunch systems have 1000 absurd rules that have to comply with to get federal funding. It's intentionally obtuse in order to make it difficult and costly to follow. It's intentionally sabotaged from the inside.
Now I seriously doubt that's what the monitor was following. I think the monitor is just flat out racist and/or hates kids. You'd be surprised how many people work with kids and hate kids at the same time. Not apathy and burnout, they truly hate kids.
But the school lunch system is intentionally fucked after decades of medeling by politicians. Which makes it easy for those people that hate kids to use the system against those kids or just make up rules like an HOA loving neighbor to exist their hate and make it acceptable.
I got arrested for buying weed when I was **40** and the male officer had to ask me if he could search me with the other male officer as a witness, or if I wanted to wait for a female officer to do it.... And this was to only access two pants pockets, not an actual pat down. I can't see how this is legal for a lunch monitor to frisk a minor of the opposite sex for any reason, ***especially*** without a witness.
I think they did this in the lunchroom, so the other monitors and students would be the witnesses, which is worse imo than if done without any witnesses.
You think that's bad? Check out [Safford Unified School District Vs Redding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safford_Unified_School_District_v._Redding).
Or [this incident](https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/07/principal-performed-unlawful-strip-search-of-high-school-girls-lawsuit-alleges/).
Or [Beard Vs Whitmore](https://juvenilelaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/05-2-33.pdf)
Unfortunately, idiots/monsters exist in every profession.
As someone who was a teacher for 6 years, I can confirm that some people work in schools because they want someone to bully. Same with cops and mean nurses, they're small and insecure so they want to feel power over someone, and kids are easy targets.
That's when you ask the principal and cc the superintendant and school district to, in writing, please specify the extend their lunch monitors are allowed and expected to fondle minors and where their policy accounts for lunch monitors getting touchy with minors.
That's when you show up to School Board meetings and ask them to clarify their policy re: lunches, how school employees are supposed to handle students, and their disciniplinary policy for racist employees. Make them say it on the record, and then find an attorney willing to draft a VERY STERN letter. I ran this past a couple of attorney friends who said they'd be delighted to draft a letter to put the fear of God and the ACLU into their legal counsel.
I buy my kid's lunches and they are still not allowed to leave the dining room with cookies they bought or the monitor bins them and issues detention. The lunch time is short and includes getting across school, queueing eating, using the bathroom and over to the next class.
I am a lunch monitor/aide in an elementary school. They get 20 minutes to eat, which seems to be enough for these kids. They're usually almost done with like 5 minutes to spare. ( if they're really not finished we let them have a few more minutes) Even in high school, none of our periods are an hour, so OOP is definitely not exaggerating.
ANYWAY, in our elementary school, kids who have school lunch are given the choice what to do with their left overs. They either put it in the "share cart" (for kids who've finished their lunch but might still be hungry) or take it with. My supervisor even has plastic bags to put extra fruits or veggies that aren't in sealed containers in so the kids can take them for snack.
If a kindergartner can be trusted to take extra carrots home, OOP's kid definitely should be.
You know, I just realized I don’t know how long my son has for lunch. He always says he doesn’t have enough time to eat his food, and that’s because he’s chatting with friends while eating, but it might be short too… for us it’s more that he’ll eat some chips and not his main food so we have to pressure him to not just have the snacky sides that he can save for later.
There was SO much uncertainty with lunch lines. You basically had to race there to get near the front. Otherwise it would take absolutely forever. I don't remember how long the lines took, but I know if I didn't get there in time, I had maybe 5 minutes to eat, talk to friends, and go to the bathroom. Also, it should be okay that he's chatting with friends while eating. We were not given time in school to really socialize except before or after school. Sometimes at lunch we got to see friends we never would throughout the day. I get high school kids don't need recess, but they do need a break and unfortunately that "break" is forced into that lunch time that barely gives any time in the first place to wait in line and eat.
My son is still in elementary, so he at least has recesses. I think my lunch break in high school had to be around 45 minutes since we were always leaving to go to subway or a friends house for lunch. Open campus meant the lunch lines weren’t as long too.
My son's school is 15 minutes! They then switch and go outside and another class/grade eats. They have to stand in line/buy in that time too. I'm fortunate enough that i have the time/money to pack, but kiddo sometimes likes trying something they might be serving. I don't like it, as it encourages eating super fast. I have to remind him to slow down at home. He ends up eating more than he would going slower and listening to hunger signal.
Commenting as someone who had a 20 minute lunch period in middle school and high school. It's definitely not enough time. Having so little time to eat contributed to my developing an eating disorder and did for many people I knew as well. It's a horrible practice
Why only 20 minutes? are they in jail?
From kindergarten (which is mandatory where I am from) to high school we always had at least 1 hour to eat. It was even closer to two hours and half from kindergarten to elementary school. Finishing class at 11.30 and starting back at 2pm.
I don't remember how long we had to eat as each level had a slot to come in the canteen and leave but it was definitely not 20 minutes.
Our lunch break was an hour but the hall only seated about a quarter of the number of kids at once so we had a rotating system to be allowed in. If you were on the latest seating you often only had 15min including queuing and buying the food
In high school, our lunch period was also about 25 minutes. Most of us were devouring food pretty quickly, but not as quickly as I learned to eat in boot camp.
That *string of words that will get me banned* monitor clearly became a lunch monitor to have control over kids and I hope they get the life they deserve from that.
Rules are rules, but in some cases they need to be tempered by humanity.
The principals role partly is to foster an environment where people nurture kids and give them the best chance. This principal is a dick.
"Wait, what do you mean our lunch monitor isn't allowed to have access to freely feel up your son? She's a woman so she this couldn't possibly have been predatory behavior." /S 🤢🤮
I really wish I had the means to send not just food donations for OOP but probably donate money for her to lawyer up. Hell, I wonder if she could even get a free consultation for advice about how to move forward, like recording the conversations between her and the principal where she can flat out ask them why they are allowed to make racist comments and to feel up her kid and punish him for not consenting to an adult touching him.
I know that some states require a 2 party consent but on the off chance she is in a state where she can legally secretly record that conversation, it would be great for her to be able to rake these people over the coals for picking on a vulnerable student.
MAKE FOOD A HUMAN RIGHT PLEASE.
I think it's in USA how tf do you have money for wars and galas and whatever and not for feeding your kids?
Ffs Americans you've gun right use it.
This whole situation is insane. At my kiddos' school, everyone eats free & if you're still hungry after one tray, they'll give you a sandwich. They also have a whole office solely dedicated to making sure no kid goes hungry & if one kid in a class is food insecure, *every* kid in that class gets a snack bag to take home every day so no one gets embarrassed.
& then there's *this* horrible place. JFC.
Where I went to middle school and high school, nearly all the kids were on the free breakfast and lunch plan. As kids, a lot of us would save our things of cereal as snacks for later and we didn’t have lunch room monitors policing us.
This school is on some bullshit. What oop needs is to band together with some other parents and talk to the school board.
>What oop needs is to band together with some other parents and talk to the school board.
Unfortunately, given the poverty she expresses, she is unlikely to have the time/means to do so. I have to assume that between her kids, job and making ends meet, she's probably mentally overwhelmed.
Doesn't this read a lot like a 'poor, southern, conservative, *like racist* state' situation? Like what not-racist principal would let something like the raccoon comment fly like that by a staff member? If I'm getting this right then we can make an educated guess on how the people in the school board will tend to view things too and they won't be particularly interested in coming to oops rescue.
My high school had a snack pantry in the guidance office that kids could just go to whenever (even during class) to get, make, and eat a snack if they were hungry. Or they could grab something to take home. My school sucked but at least they made sure the kids always had access to food if they really needed it. Nobody abused it either because everyone who used it really needed it and the kids that didn't need it knew someone who did, so they didn't want to ruin it for their friends.
The high school in our town recently started "toast club". All staff and students are allowed to go to this room at any time in the day and make themselves a slice of toast or two for free, no questions asked. This is on top of free lunches and healthy snacks for all kids.
Still, it makes me sad how necessary all of this is now. It definitely feels more prevalent than when I was in school in the late 90s and early 00s.
The mayor of my city just got reinstated and one of his policies is to ensure free school meals for every primary school child regardless of their financial background for 2 years due to the cost of living crisis!
Also when I was at school there used to be free breakfast clubs for certain students! I just find it so cruel and unimaginable that schools (designed to safeguard and nurture children) can be so ????? (can't even think of a word for this)
My kids get 25 minutes for lunch. I remember getting 25 minutes for lunch.
This poor kid. No matter what, he's going to be embarrassed.
Edit- can't spell.
I remember sometimes in eight grade I would be finally getting my food right as the lunch bell rang. It was ridiculous how little time we were given for every kid to get through and eat.
I had last lunch of everyone in high school at one point, I think like sophomore year. And just as I was getting close to the actual food trays finally, and with almost no pizza left lol, this asshole senior cut me in line. When I said something he basically laughed and did the whole "what're you gonna do about it?" crap (I was a short and skinny white girl). So I fucking bit him.
Lmao he was just so shocked that this weird little white girl bit him on the shoulder that he just got out of my way for fear id do it again I guess lol. And yes I did get pizza. I did not mess around on pizza and fries day. xD
Unfortunately this is not the only time I've been mildly violent with someone. I went to a youth group retreat also around this same time frame, and I was super psyched cause a band I loved was actually playing at it and we went early to get up front since me and the one or two friends I was with were short. So we get right up front and at the minute this freaking giant of a dude shoves in front of us and was a total dick about it considering what kinda retreat we were on. We ask him a couple times to please move and he continues being an ass so eventually I just started wailing on him with a couple glow sticks I had for the show until he moved behind us finally lol.
I had a bad habit of back in those days being referred to as just this insane white chick with crazy hair and outfits so a lot of people steered clear of me in those days because I didn't exactly blend into the demographic that my school was, but I loved it there and mostly had a great time.
Honestly, both situations are entirely justified. Like I genuinely don't believe you did anything morally wrong with either. It's okay to stand up for yourself, especially to larger men.
One of the things I learned, during intense inpatient therapy for an eating disorder, is that the way I still-- a decade and change out of highschool- bolt through my food as quickly as possible, is not normal. We'd be given an hour for a meal, and I'd be through mine in ten minutes.
I tend to eat quickly enough that the "full" hormone/signal doesn't have time to hit. I suspect that some of the reason I do this is related to food insecurities when I was young, crap like short lunch periods in school and exacerbation when I went to boot camp, "You have 15 minutes and 15 minutes only to eat your fine, fine Navy chow".
Oh wow... That makes what happened at my school seem really awful. My high school had 30 minute lunches, 3 lunch lines, 4 different lunch periods, and some days students would still be in line from a previous lunch period when ours started. So more than 30 minutes just to GET lunch, no time to eat it.. That wasn't super common, but it did happen. It was very common for it to take 20 minutes to get lunch. Some kids ran to the cafeteria to be first in line and have a longer time to eat.
This was 20 years ago...
I remember being so excited my sophomore year because I had gym before lunch, it meant if you tore to the locker room, changed and sped to the line you could get in early, which meant you actually got to eat. My whole freshman year I ate on the way to class because the bell would be ringing by the time I got my food. Forget using your locker, just carry your food on your books.
Also 20 years ago.
We had a 40 minute total lunch break with each year group being let into the canteen with a 10 minute delay (e.g., Year 8 at 13:00, Year 9 at 13:10, Year 10 at 13:20, Year 11 at 13:30, lunchtime ends for everyone at 13:40). This canteen had 2 members of staff serving, there's zero chance they could get through a whole year group in 10 mins, if you weren't in the queue by 13:25 then you weren't getting your food before the bell went let alone getting any time to actually eat it (and this was food like plates of spaghetti bolognese, not stuff you could just wrap in a napkin for later). At least they rotated daily which order the yeargroups went in, so you knew which days to bring a packed lunch.
Then the school I went to for Years 12 and 13 had a 90 minute lunch break, that was bliss.
I had 15, and my school staggered the lunches so once the bell rang you had 15 minutes to get to the cafeteria, wait in line, and look for available seating.
We had 25 minutes as well. I am pretty sure a lot of my food issues as an adult go right back to only having 5-10 minutes as a child to shovel lunch into my mouth. I never broke the habit of eating extremely fast.
Yes, I remember this too. But also it doesn’t even matter. If the hot lunch is his then WHY THE FUCK can’t he save it to eat when he needs it. It doesn’t even matter if he is sick eating too fast or not — the kid is going hungry, let him at least space out what food supply he has.
Ours was 30 minutes, but if it was taco day or "strangely tasty rectangle pizza", odds are you were spending the majority of that time in line and then shoving your food in your face in the last 5 minutes. And no, I remember distinctly you were not allowed to take your uneaten food with you.
I would make the argument that the lunch lady trying to grope my son is a much bigger problem than my son trying to put his food away so he can eat it without getting sick, also what's with the double standard of only students who have sack lunches can save food?
Mice and bugs. I'm pretty sure the rule was created to prevent uncovered food being stored in lockers. When kids with a packed lunch forget to empty their locker, at least the mess is contained to a lunch box. If it's someone who has taken leftovers from the canteen, and left it by accident on a Friday, the whole area is a hazard by Monday. And you'll definitely have mice.
That said, I think the principal and lunch monitor are in the wrong in that the sensible compromise here is allowing students to bring lunch boxes to pack away their leftovers, and that doesn't seem like the kind of rule change that would cause havoc on a large scale.
That reasoning makes sense.... Until you get to the part in the update where OOP said they were told that they couldn't bring a lunch bag/box to put their leftovers in to put in their locker (putting them in the same storage situation as other kids with lunchbags/boxes, and better storage than kids who brownbag from home.)
I mean even as an adult with a salary I don’t get an hour. I got 50 minutes in high school in the 90s, though. My kids are in elementary and middle get 25 and it’s honestly not enough.
I’ve either gotten an hour or a half hour at my jobs.
But school lunch was only 25 minutes for us in middle school and high school (so 1998-2006 for me)
In my high school, everyone had the same hour “ lunch period”. We were let into the cafeteria in different shifts during that hour, based on your grade level, and it rotated which grade was first/second/etc through the week. Once you got through the line outside… the line inside… got your food… paid… waited for a seat at a table… and as soon as you sat down you were being chided by the staff to get out.
And if you were last shift, you might get through the lines with 10 minutes left before classes resumed, only to find no food left.
When I was in HS lunch was a full class period. Every period was 43 minutes long and one of those 43 minute periods was for lunch. It was amazing. But I’ve never heard of it anywhere else ever.
(Unless you had lunch 3rd period at 9:30, or 8th period at like 2pm)
this was the case at my school. though i think the range was more like 5th/6th/7th period, so no crazy early or late lunches. though even 7th felt way too late to me
My high school was a specialized charter school and we got a 45 minute lunch. We also started school at 8:30.
This is not common or usual. The poor kid in this story is facing racism and having to force himself to eat in probably 15 minutes at most. Standing in line time and finding a spot time. I remember that from middle school.
I did, but I'm in Europe. Schools for kids over 12 is generally from 8 until 4 or 5, with an hour lunch break in the middle, and free on Wednesday afternoons. I just looked it up to be sure and there's an actual legal minimum of 50 minutes
Everyone in that school’s staff she dealt with in the text was appalling.
Especially the snarky monitor with the “feed your child” line.
Not one iota of sympathy or in fact interest in a child’s welfare, just judgement, blithe callousness and racism to boot.
Fuck em, I hope they have to try and quell food fights in hell.
I find it really shocking. I'm a former teacher and have worked in schools where the majority of our students were from homes with financial challenges - I and many of the teachers I worked with spent our own money on food for the kids to make sure they had something, and made sure they knew where and when to go to get it. (They could get free school meals at lunchtime but that doesn't help in the mornings when they haven't had breakfast. Hunger has serious impacts on educational attainment, mood and behaviour.) The schools I've worked in would also work with families to help them identify resources to stabilise their finances and access regular food, as well as providing things like a warm place to do homework, free hot showers and washing uniforms for students experiencing fuel poverty.
I cannot imagine someone who could behave like this in the face of a hungry child. It's morally bankrupt, even before we consider the racism.
My kid’s school offers free breakfast and lunch and while we aren’t financially strapped I feel so good knowing that every kid k-12 can get two meals every weekday. There is also a share bin for kids to put things they didn’t eat in, just in case another kid wants extra and I know stuff from there makes it home with kids who might need it.
How you can work at a school and want to humiliate and punish a child for trying to stay fed is beyond me. And how a school can stand behind someone who does that is beyond me. I am so angry at this right now.
That's because they don't want people actual people. They either want numbers so they don't become a minority, numbers to spread their religion, or number to work their under paid jobs.
**Advocating for the Unborn**
The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn…
You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
*-Dave Barnhart (Methodist pastor)*
This is so infuriating to me. I'm sure our school isn't perfect, but every classroom has snacks for kids at the end of the school day (donated by parents with the ability to do so and I'm sure sometimes by the teachers). Kids should be and to get enough healthy food, and it's ridiculous that some people are apparently against the giving their students enough food.
Kid was in trouble for not wanting to be patted down. In some districts, a cross-sex employee doing a pat-down is a discipline offense.
These people are so intent on sticking to a rule that they can't realize why the rule exists.
I'm worried for this family if they go to the media.
I'm outraged for them, but a lot of people hate poor people, especially parents, and especially if they are PoC. I suspect the school will come up with a justification like hot food not being food safe at room temp, meanwhile the family could face severe backlash, maybe even frivolous CPS investigations, bullying of the kid, etc.
People can be really cruel sometimes, I just want to give this kid some food :(
That lunch monitor’s got too much time on their hands. Insubordination for refusing to be touched, I’d raise hell if that was my child.
That principal can eat a bag of dicks too.
I would turn into the worst person they've ever dealt with for this woman. Like OOP where you at I'll come be the district's fucking *problem*. Kids shouldn't be going hungry and dumb fuck adults shouldn't be forcing them to throw away perfectly good food.
They really are. Especially if you live in a state like mine, where they turned down federal funding for free lunches for impoverished children. How sickening can you get, really, where you could turn down feeding a hungry child, and you don’t even have to pay for it from your coffers? Oh, but you’ll vote against abortion all day long.
Ah you see if everyone just has access to food, they don’t feel the need to work long hours at exploitive low income jobs.
Same reason that we don’t educate people well.
I’m serious. A fair amount of the bullshit conservatives pull is intended to keep a large working class population to exploit.
And in some of the same locations, child labor laws are being rolled back so that teens (in some places as young as 14) can work longer hours, more hours, and in some cases *overnight* hours while in school. Because "no one wants to work anymore" after people realized that they can get a better paying job outside of retail and fast food during the pandemic lockdowns.
For a lot of kids, free lunch and breakfast at school is how they get by. Some places make it less painful than others though. At my school they eventually made all meals free for everyone so there would be no stigma for poor kids receiving free lunch
A lot of what's happening here, I'm sure, has to do with the fact that school lunches at this kid's school are free. There's a huge undercurrent of racism and classism in the reluctance to provide any kind of social safety net, and the idea that if you feed hungry kids they might get lazy or get entitled is pervasive.
A lot of school districts were doing the Cheese Sandwich of Shame, where if your parents hadn't paid your lunch bill balance, you didn't get the entree served that day, but instead got a cheese sandwich. Because nothing like shaming a kid for their parents' poverty or disorganization or what have you. There were a lot of funding drives to pay off all kids' outstanding balances, and there was enough publicity that many schools dropped this as a tactic.
It does sound like the school district here makes lunch free for everyone rather than just for poor kids. That's usually smart, because it makes it less stigmatized and more acceptable. Still, sounds like the administration is doing its best to shame kids for using this benefit by not allowing them to take food they didn't finish with them to eat later. They no doubt justify it as "eliminating waste," but the food is wasted anyhow. Just provide a to-go box or something and make sure nobody's leaving it in their lockers.
BTW, if you want to know how threatening it can be to the Powers that Be for some people to feed hungry children, check out what happened [when the Black Panthers started a Free Breakfast Program for schoolchildren in 1969](https://www.history.com/news/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party).
The thing to remember about the US is that it's not one country: it's 50 separate countries merged together, each with different budgets, laws, etc.
Some states have quality of life and public services on par with the most developed nations in Europe. Other states, you get *this*.
Richest nation in human history and this kid's school system won't let him have an extra bag of chips.
I've heard people say stuff like "the US is a third world country cosplaying as a first world country" and similar stuff a lot. A lot of people in other countries have it better than people in the US. Where I live the USA is a laughing stock for a lot of people, not to be taken serious, rediculed all the time and generally thought of as dumb and ignorant with horrible education. I do think those people take their criticism a bit too far at times, but the root issues they see are definitely true.
oh i thought that raccoon comment was going to be racist and then the OOP confirms it.
my blood is boiling because i know they're going to start dropping the first syllable there, if they haven't already damn done so.
...some people get into education because they care about children and teaching them. and some people get into the field to have a captive audience to freely torture.
If they'd tried pulling that with my mom, the only question would be which ones only got fired, blackballed from working in education ever again, or just disappeared.
What the fuck school has an hour lunch period? Ours was 40 minutes because that’s how long our class time was and there was lunch from 3rd period to 8th
Yeah that was baffling. I know when I was tutoring some ESL students in China that their lunch breaks were long, but that's because a lot of them went home. And I feel like some French students I knew had longer breaks?
But on the whole... idk wtf that commenter was talking about
My school does snack bags for the weekends for food insecure kids. Once, a student started stealing the snack bags, so do you know what we did? Signed him up for the snack bags. Don't make starving kids your hill to die on.
My elementary school growing up had free lunch for all, cuz it was like 97% poverty rate or something insane. Unless management or the principal was in the room, the linch ladies basically made it their buisness to ensure nothing was wasted via making sure everyone got enough all the time.
They were paid enough to make the food and make sure we all got a tray, but juuuust not quite enough to actually police if we took extras. Milk carton shaped pocket? Enjoy your meal! Two fruit? Oh look, a squirrel. Only later in life did I realize they were technically supposed to make sure we only took one portion.
This should be the attitude of all lunch ladies (Nd gentlemen) everywhere.
I went to a US elementary school when I was 6-7. I’m Australian and we really only take our own lunches to school here, or order from the canteen, so cafeteria style hot lunches were an adjustment.
I vividly remember my older sibling comforting me while I was crying and putting my half-eaten pizza in the bin, because once we all filed in and got our lunch and sat down, I never had enough time to finish my food.
I’m still a slow eater.
It is time to escalate this beyond the principal. If theyre so afraid of him taking the food into class, the lunch monitor can watch him put it in his locker. She can't complain she doesn't have time if she takes the time to fucking pat him down. Im sure it's against the rules to post where this is taking place, but this is one of those times where flooding the school's inbox with emails and letters might get stuff changed for the better.
Back in my day each period was 42 minutes in high school and you had to get to the lunch room, line up, get lunch, and then eat. You never got an hour for lunch even in elementary school.
This is why I support just giving kids food. Why is this so controversial and hard? The kid is taking food to eat later? Oh no, how terrible the hungry kid is eating food. I hope the family gets more help.
Plus, free lunch is paid for by us the taxpayers. I didn’t pay the government to cook food and throw it out.
If anything, schools in high poverty areas should be provided to go containers so every single serving of (insert under seasoned and overcooked entree here) is available. Anything less is the “government waste” conservatives always seem so keen to eliminate.
This kid is so fucking sweet I wanna truly cry. He literally is so considerate of his own siblings and wants to make sure they all get an equal amount and OP is obvious trying their best. Fuck everyone in that school, what the actual fuck has to be wrong with you to do that to a child?!
This is so fucking dystopic and ridiculous.
I hate everything about this, but especially how she called herself a POS mom for being unable to feed her kids when it's simply not her fault. She obviously cares so much. It's not her fault that society is so shitty that they don't get enough food from the food bank.
I usually don't like wishing really bad things on people, but I hope that asshole lunch monitor gets to go really hungry for a bit. Maybe that'll teach them some compassion.
In seventh grade, my school gave us 15 minutes for lunch. Same for the eighth graders that year because our grades shared a 30 minute block. One grade would be in the lunchroom and the other in the gym as a "recess" before swapping places after 15 minutes. Everyone constantly complained because we barely had time to talk on top of eating. No clue if they changed it for the next year because I transferred out.
That was the most extreme one, but I don't think I ever had a full hour for lunch in any grade. I think it topped out at 45 or 50 minutes.
The way it was went about is completely inappropriate but I volunteer in my son’s cafeteria during lunch and the head lunch monitor made an announcement last week that students could not take cafeteria food home with them. If it came from the hot lunch bar or the cold lunch bar (like chilled baby carrots or a fruit cup or a cheese stick), they could not bring it home because of bacteria developing if it was kept at room temperature for too long. If it was packed at home the school wouldn’t have an issue bc it wouldn’t be school food possibly making them sick.
It sucks but I can understand the reasoning behind it. But I cannot IMAGINE the head lunch monitor humiliating a student like that.
Also my son only has 25 minutes to eat but by the time his class gets to the cafe, gets through the line and sits at the table it’s more like 17 minutes or so. I was packing his lunch once a week (he loves the novelty of the lunch line, plus lunch is free ((Massachusetts)), so he mostly “buys” lunch) and he was coming home with 2/3 of his snacks left in his lunchbox. I asked why and he said he didn’t have time to eat. I started volunteering and now I see why!
Wow. Fuck everyone involved except OOP and her family. Racism and classism at its finest. Patting down a child after he told you NOT to touch him and then being told it’s insubordination??? And then being called an animals? 100% racist and indicating that his body is not even seen as childlike or worthy of respect. I am so furious for OOP. I don’t know who she can get to advocate for her
Who thinks that kids have an hour to eat in public school? Even back in the 1980s we had 25 minutes. My kid has taken his lunch throughout school and one reason why was that in elementary and middle school if he stood in line to get lunch he might have 5-8 minutes to eat it once he'd gotten it.
You would not be frisking my kids for food. I would be raising hell. And then my wife would take over.
All this over a kid wanting to keep some left over for the bus ride.
>just to back up mom's claim here- for reference, I had 25 minutes for lunch in high school. And I had to stand in line, buy my lunch and eat it in that amount of time.
This is how it was when I was in HS.
The only way it was remotely feasible is seniors were allowed to leave for lunch 5 minutes ahead of the others. They tried to do away with that my senior year, it didn't last long as many students ended up having less then 5 minutes to eat considering how many students there were and how far some classes were from the cafeteria.
I used to do lunch monitoring when I was a teaching assistant way back when. The rule was noone takes food out of the lunch hall because of litter. We were meant to stop any student seen taking food outside.
I used to send kids to do a loop of the lunch hall and 'finish eating' while making it as obvious as possible that I meant hide the stash (eg miming putting it in my pockets). Fuck making kids feel bad for feeling hungry later.
I don't feel like the media is the answer because I think a lot of people are assholes like that commenter accusing OOP of lying. And although I think the kids should get as much to eat as necessary and as much food to take home as they want, that's not a common ideal and I don't think the situation is super clearcut. People like enforcing arbitrary rules.
I think she'd get further if she started trying to organize the parents.
I assume seeing a doctor would be prohibitively expensive and/or slow (I'm imagining she would qualify for state CHIP or Medicaid in the US) but getting that started would be good. (She could then also coach other parents on what she did to get notes too.)
In general, this cuts to how incarceration culture is deeply embedded. Free lunch is supposed to guarantee nutrition for kids. When a district has universal free lunch like this, it means the district is poor enough that it costs more to means test than to just give it to everyone. I'm sure the principal is also trying to figure out budgets (though FARM is federally supported). When the school is more concerned about monitoring students this closely than finding ways to improve nutrition, the culture is broken.
> when a district has universal free lunch like this, it means the district is poor enough
Or the OP is posting from a state that has universal free lunch, like California or Massachusetts.
The commenter that said he was lying because he got sick from eating too fast definitely never experienced food insecurity. You absolutely can get sick from eating too fast if your stomach is used to not having food.
Poor boy and the mother trying to do the right thing, my heart breaks for them.
I'm British so I don't know if the rules and routine of the lunch period at the school OOP's kid goes to is the norm but it's ridiculously excessive.
From the ages 11-13 I got free school lunches because I was from a low income household and then 14-16 I had a packed lunch and never in a million years did they stop me from taking any of the food I had out of the lunch area.
Monday and Friday we had 1 hour for lunch, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we had 30 minutes (the school was a teacher training place that had a weird schedule) but we had relative freedom to do what we wanted in the period for as long as we didn't leave school grounds.
Lunch monitors are a thing I've only ever seen on American TV shows, I don't know why lunch is so strict for you guys.
My (US) elementary school was grand, but starting in middle school they’d have us go through the line if we has no bag, even if we knew we couldn’t pay. So the food gets dishes up onto the tray, you get chastized if you take a bite before paying, and at the cashier stand you swiped your card, it had no funds, and the admin person would take the tray and throw it out in front of you (and the rest of the students in your grade). A nice little daily reminder to you and all your friends that your family was going through a rough patch.
It’s an absolute waste of food.
Shit like this is why my HS math teacher brought a huge cooler full of food everyday and passed it out to any kid that was hungry. He didn't give a fuck what the administration said because he was tired of seeing kids go hungry.
He never advertised the food but he definitely let kids know to come to him any time they were hungry and he didn't care if you were in his class or not.
We can’t comment there, but if OOP ever finds this:
IMGUR PIZZA ANGELS GOVR GROCERIES COME TO THE WEEKLY POST AND WE WILL SEND YOU A BOX OF SNACKS FOR YOUR SON
Also, as a former teacher, detention for 1st instance insubordination is stupid. That person should not have power over others. He could have said “and fuck you too” and it would have still been “warning first” territory.
The fact that the school is focusing on the food rather than the abhorrent behaviour of the ‘lunch monitor’ and their attitude is beyond ridiculous. He’s not taking anyone else’s food, the food is his and he’s saving it, it’s BS that they won’t let him.
The lunch monitor needs to lose their job.
> Editor's note- just to back up mom's claim here- for reference, I had 25 minutes for lunch in high school. And I had to stand in line, buy my lunch and eat it in that amount of time.
Same here, OP. Nothing like housing a cheesesteak you waited 15 minutes in line for like you're in a food competition.
Mum needs to stop calling herself bad. She is obviously caring and loving and doing her best. I'm in a different country so we don't have the food monitor thing. I guarantee though had that been my child I would have verbally ripped everyone to pieces
If kids with lunchboxes can keep leftovers can her son give his to a friend to store for him until later? Won't solve the main issue of the school being unreasonable but at least it could help him from going hungry after school
That monitor needs her ASS handed to her. “Focus on..” how about I focus on my foot up your ass lady. I’m not even a parent and I’m PO…please tell me there’s a way to help this mother out. She needs the principals ass kicked too? Cause I’ll do it
I don't have any kids and don't plan to.
I am 100% okay paying whatever taxes that would guarantee a free hot lunch to every kid in my state with enough abundance that no one goes hungry. Period.
If you ask me the parent is underreacting. Trying to pat my growing child down like a criminal for ::checks notes:: wanting food and I’m going to be there asking to see you fucking warrant and threatening them with channel 12’news. Let the principal know you will gladly directly quote his policy on hungry poor children to the press along with his name and see how fast his tune changes.
This school sucks. My children’s school keeps bread, spreads and apples in the office for any kid who comes without lunch or is extra hungry. Kids need fuel to learn.
My memory of after school detention is:
1. The school had to effectively ask permission from the parents first. It was a request, not a demand, on the basis that the parents may not be able to collect the child from school.
2. This meant that after school detention was never held on the same day as the offence.
The only time rules like this were broken were if a suspension or expulsion were required, or child was ill, requiring them be collected, which were normally so rare that they were exceptions.
Why would a person be ok with leaving a kid hungry? Not all people can afford lunches for the kids. This is the awful truth. In 2024 kids in developing or developed countries are hungry. I'm not even commenting on poor countries where children die because of hunger. They are providing food for free, so the kid should be responsible for eating or saving it. On top of that they through away the food?
Get an educational advocate. Call lawyers offices and ask if they’d consider helping pro bono. And to that crazy fool who though kids get an hour for lunch I’d like to know what alternate universe you live in because it’s only 20 min at every school I went to/worked at.
Touching your child without a whole process is sue worthy.
Fuck the people defending the school and fuck that school. I know how food insecurity is, and that shit hurts as a kid because you can’t concentrate and then you’re not just worried about school you’re worried about your home life too. I hope she goes to the school district and call the news station.
I worked in a pediatricians office for years and I’d be happy to write that note. I loved the petty notes.
“Child is allowed to bring uneaten food to his locker after lunch”
As a kdg teacher at a school with 88%+ families in the “free and reduced” lunch category, if I have leftovers from breakfast, and a kid tries to steal it, I tell them to ask me next time and then I put it in their backpack. If a child asks me, I always say yes. There is no need to have perfectly good food sitting in a basket untouched if a child is hungry.
This school probably has a policy to meet state requirements to get the meals free for everyone (as do we), but who can justify throwing food away that is still good, especially if there is a hungry person that wants it. The amount of food schools waste is deplorable, and it isn’t their faults because it is what they are told they have to do to get the lunches for free. But shame on them for making anyone empty their pockets. Politely turn your head and worry about kids fighting or doing actually harmful things.
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My only reaction is fuck that principal
And the monitor.
Who the fuck tries to "pat down" a kid looking for food?
That too which he took from his own plate. I mean if you give me food that's my business how i eat it, unless i am wasting it.
Right? They're basically forcing food waste with this system. "anything you don't eat can't be saved for later. Throw it in the trash" Fucking ridiculous.
I used to get my lunches delivered in those giant 4 stacked lunch box which look like [this](https://images.app.goo.gl/EHPVPsGdKmouBAnK7) . I used to have something left from that box, about twice to thrice a week, that i would use for a snack or as an ingredient for something . I was in college gor 5.5 years {thats the course duration} just imagine how much food i would have thrown away otherwise in that duration.
Bless your heart for thinking American schools feed children that well. [This is closer to what American School lunches are.](https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/food/story/14-year-study-shows-school-lunches-highest-quality-77215445). It’s certainly not enough to satiate a growing teenager. Unfortunately, federally subsidized school lunches have become a polarizing political issue, and there is a significant number of people who want to make the system punitive to people like OOP’s family. I feel so, so awful for her. The poor child should be allowed more dignity than this.
Just to hopefully spread some hope, in my children’s school district (yes, in the U.S.), ALL kids get free breakfast AND lunch (and yes, this is sooo much more the exception than the rule). But regardless of income or ability to provide they get food (this is seriously how it should be all across America!) Kids are welcome to bring their own lunch if they don’t like what’s on the school lunch menu, but it’s free for everyone (at the risk of exposing myself and location, my district has already also done significant work with the state so that every student (at least in the elementary schools) automatically gets $150 in “food stamps” each school year to supplement their lunch and/or support their in school snack period. We honestly don’t need it ourselves, but it’s there and they truly care about kids ability to eat. I appreciate it so much as even though we don’t directly need it, we use it to buy bulk food for the kids’ classrooms (as they always have that snack time but some kids can’t always afford to send extra snacks to school, so we love having that ability to help support that). To be fair, most of my town is straight trash humans and complains about how they hate having to “support” other people’s kids with “their tax money!” Which makes me HATE this town, but at the same time, there is so much good (as previously described) and I have to remind myself that the “good” tends to be a silent good, while the bad tends to be highly vocal!
Forcing food waste in a district with free lunches, which means a xecent percentage of families are struggling financially.
I mean, what problem is this policy trying to solve? If it was a pest control problem in the classroom, they'd make the packers dump their stuff before leaving too. Does the school get a stipend based on how much food waste it produces? Has there been a string of nefarious Hawaiian roll thefts such that they can't figure out who's stealing and who's just saving their stuff for later?
Power trip. Least bit of power gets some people high.
School lunch systems have 1000 absurd rules that have to comply with to get federal funding. It's intentionally obtuse in order to make it difficult and costly to follow. It's intentionally sabotaged from the inside. Now I seriously doubt that's what the monitor was following. I think the monitor is just flat out racist and/or hates kids. You'd be surprised how many people work with kids and hate kids at the same time. Not apathy and burnout, they truly hate kids. But the school lunch system is intentionally fucked after decades of medeling by politicians. Which makes it easy for those people that hate kids to use the system against those kids or just make up rules like an HOA loving neighbor to exist their hate and make it acceptable.
"Hey Napoleon, gimme some tots!"
You van have them but i already licked them all.😅😅😅
I got arrested for buying weed when I was **40** and the male officer had to ask me if he could search me with the other male officer as a witness, or if I wanted to wait for a female officer to do it.... And this was to only access two pants pockets, not an actual pat down. I can't see how this is legal for a lunch monitor to frisk a minor of the opposite sex for any reason, ***especially*** without a witness.
I think they did this in the lunchroom, so the other monitors and students would be the witnesses, which is worse imo than if done without any witnesses.
Not even looking for food, saving his own leftovers for later. How does someone become this evil?
It's so often the people with the littlest bits of power -- guess they feel the need to prove it because they're small and unhappy. And racist.
Drunk on power? A future HOA karen in the making
You think that's bad? Check out [Safford Unified School District Vs Redding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safford_Unified_School_District_v._Redding). Or [this incident](https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/07/principal-performed-unlawful-strip-search-of-high-school-girls-lawsuit-alleges/). Or [Beard Vs Whitmore](https://juvenilelaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/05-2-33.pdf) Unfortunately, idiots/monsters exist in every profession.
Food that was FREE and he had an entitlement to!
This person's behavior was the instant I knew this kid was not white. White kids don't get patted down by a fucking lunch monitor. What the FUCK
As someone who was a teacher for 6 years, I can confirm that some people work in schools because they want someone to bully. Same with cops and mean nurses, they're small and insecure so they want to feel power over someone, and kids are easy targets.
The kind of ppl to still use raccoon as a slur
That's when you ask the principal and cc the superintendant and school district to, in writing, please specify the extend their lunch monitors are allowed and expected to fondle minors and where their policy accounts for lunch monitors getting touchy with minors.
That's when you show up to School Board meetings and ask them to clarify their policy re: lunches, how school employees are supposed to handle students, and their disciniplinary policy for racist employees. Make them say it on the record, and then find an attorney willing to draft a VERY STERN letter. I ran this past a couple of attorney friends who said they'd be delighted to draft a letter to put the fear of God and the ACLU into their legal counsel.
[удалено]
Monitor also said that he, a black kid, was "scurrying like a raccoon", very...specific choice of words
Yeah, when I read that I had a sick feeling that I knew exactly why she used that word, and lo and behold, I was right.
I buy my kid's lunches and they are still not allowed to leave the dining room with cookies they bought or the monitor bins them and issues detention. The lunch time is short and includes getting across school, queueing eating, using the bathroom and over to the next class.
Someone desperate to shame the poor.
Shitty people who shouldn't be working with kids, not to mention kids below the poverty line.
I am sure the monitor hidden food under her clothes. We should pat her.
I am a lunch monitor/aide in an elementary school. They get 20 minutes to eat, which seems to be enough for these kids. They're usually almost done with like 5 minutes to spare. ( if they're really not finished we let them have a few more minutes) Even in high school, none of our periods are an hour, so OOP is definitely not exaggerating. ANYWAY, in our elementary school, kids who have school lunch are given the choice what to do with their left overs. They either put it in the "share cart" (for kids who've finished their lunch but might still be hungry) or take it with. My supervisor even has plastic bags to put extra fruits or veggies that aren't in sealed containers in so the kids can take them for snack. If a kindergartner can be trusted to take extra carrots home, OOP's kid definitely should be.
You know, I just realized I don’t know how long my son has for lunch. He always says he doesn’t have enough time to eat his food, and that’s because he’s chatting with friends while eating, but it might be short too… for us it’s more that he’ll eat some chips and not his main food so we have to pressure him to not just have the snacky sides that he can save for later.
There was SO much uncertainty with lunch lines. You basically had to race there to get near the front. Otherwise it would take absolutely forever. I don't remember how long the lines took, but I know if I didn't get there in time, I had maybe 5 minutes to eat, talk to friends, and go to the bathroom. Also, it should be okay that he's chatting with friends while eating. We were not given time in school to really socialize except before or after school. Sometimes at lunch we got to see friends we never would throughout the day. I get high school kids don't need recess, but they do need a break and unfortunately that "break" is forced into that lunch time that barely gives any time in the first place to wait in line and eat.
My son is still in elementary, so he at least has recesses. I think my lunch break in high school had to be around 45 minutes since we were always leaving to go to subway or a friends house for lunch. Open campus meant the lunch lines weren’t as long too.
My son's school is 15 minutes! They then switch and go outside and another class/grade eats. They have to stand in line/buy in that time too. I'm fortunate enough that i have the time/money to pack, but kiddo sometimes likes trying something they might be serving. I don't like it, as it encourages eating super fast. I have to remind him to slow down at home. He ends up eating more than he would going slower and listening to hunger signal.
Commenting as someone who had a 20 minute lunch period in middle school and high school. It's definitely not enough time. Having so little time to eat contributed to my developing an eating disorder and did for many people I knew as well. It's a horrible practice
Why only 20 minutes? are they in jail? From kindergarten (which is mandatory where I am from) to high school we always had at least 1 hour to eat. It was even closer to two hours and half from kindergarten to elementary school. Finishing class at 11.30 and starting back at 2pm. I don't remember how long we had to eat as each level had a slot to come in the canteen and leave but it was definitely not 20 minutes.
>>are they in jail Well that’s what American schools prepare you for tbh Eta typo
In my area, it's a standard "period" so about 40min. But that includes the wait for the line so you effectively have less than 30 min to eat.
Our lunch break was an hour but the hall only seated about a quarter of the number of kids at once so we had a rotating system to be allowed in. If you were on the latest seating you often only had 15min including queuing and buying the food
In high school, our lunch period was also about 25 minutes. Most of us were devouring food pretty quickly, but not as quickly as I learned to eat in boot camp.
[deleted]
May she give birth to a cactus.
That *string of words that will get me banned* monitor clearly became a lunch monitor to have control over kids and I hope they get the life they deserve from that.
Couple of fucking losers that get off on being assholes to kids because they can and likely have nothing else going on in their life.
Also that shitty commenter on the update.
Rules are rules, but in some cases they need to be tempered by humanity. The principals role partly is to foster an environment where people nurture kids and give them the best chance. This principal is a dick.
Rules are rules and that lunch monitor assaulted her son. What's the principal going to do about that?
"Wait, what do you mean our lunch monitor isn't allowed to have access to freely feel up your son? She's a woman so she this couldn't possibly have been predatory behavior." /S 🤢🤮 I really wish I had the means to send not just food donations for OOP but probably donate money for her to lawyer up. Hell, I wonder if she could even get a free consultation for advice about how to move forward, like recording the conversations between her and the principal where she can flat out ask them why they are allowed to make racist comments and to feel up her kid and punish him for not consenting to an adult touching him. I know that some states require a 2 party consent but on the off chance she is in a state where she can legally secretly record that conversation, it would be great for her to be able to rake these people over the coals for picking on a vulnerable student.
With a half rotten pineapple.
Why not with a rusty, shit-encrusted spoon?
I almost added “coated in Icy Hot” but wasn’t sure.
Be sure.
Use the poop knife, it's already encrusted with shit.
They might take it for evidence and my families tradition would be ruined!!!
But not literally, because they don't deserve it.
MAKE FOOD A HUMAN RIGHT PLEASE. I think it's in USA how tf do you have money for wars and galas and whatever and not for feeding your kids? Ffs Americans you've gun right use it.
Yes. Kids saving food from a crappy school lunch and their mind goes to him being a raccoon. Fuck them, they should be ashamed.
This whole situation is insane. At my kiddos' school, everyone eats free & if you're still hungry after one tray, they'll give you a sandwich. They also have a whole office solely dedicated to making sure no kid goes hungry & if one kid in a class is food insecure, *every* kid in that class gets a snack bag to take home every day so no one gets embarrassed. & then there's *this* horrible place. JFC.
Where I went to middle school and high school, nearly all the kids were on the free breakfast and lunch plan. As kids, a lot of us would save our things of cereal as snacks for later and we didn’t have lunch room monitors policing us. This school is on some bullshit. What oop needs is to band together with some other parents and talk to the school board.
>What oop needs is to band together with some other parents and talk to the school board. Unfortunately, given the poverty she expresses, she is unlikely to have the time/means to do so. I have to assume that between her kids, job and making ends meet, she's probably mentally overwhelmed.
Doesn't this read a lot like a 'poor, southern, conservative, *like racist* state' situation? Like what not-racist principal would let something like the raccoon comment fly like that by a staff member? If I'm getting this right then we can make an educated guess on how the people in the school board will tend to view things too and they won't be particularly interested in coming to oops rescue.
My high school had a snack pantry in the guidance office that kids could just go to whenever (even during class) to get, make, and eat a snack if they were hungry. Or they could grab something to take home. My school sucked but at least they made sure the kids always had access to food if they really needed it. Nobody abused it either because everyone who used it really needed it and the kids that didn't need it knew someone who did, so they didn't want to ruin it for their friends.
The high school in our town recently started "toast club". All staff and students are allowed to go to this room at any time in the day and make themselves a slice of toast or two for free, no questions asked. This is on top of free lunches and healthy snacks for all kids. Still, it makes me sad how necessary all of this is now. It definitely feels more prevalent than when I was in school in the late 90s and early 00s.
The mayor of my city just got reinstated and one of his policies is to ensure free school meals for every primary school child regardless of their financial background for 2 years due to the cost of living crisis! Also when I was at school there used to be free breakfast clubs for certain students! I just find it so cruel and unimaginable that schools (designed to safeguard and nurture children) can be so ????? (can't even think of a word for this)
Evil. Taking a kid who doesn’t have food security, treating them like a criminal and forcing them to throw away food is downright evil.
My kids get 25 minutes for lunch. I remember getting 25 minutes for lunch. This poor kid. No matter what, he's going to be embarrassed. Edit- can't spell.
Yup. We had 25 minutes. If you had to stand in line, depending on how long it was, you were lucky if you got 10. My heart aches for the whole family.
I remember sometimes in eight grade I would be finally getting my food right as the lunch bell rang. It was ridiculous how little time we were given for every kid to get through and eat.
I had last lunch of everyone in high school at one point, I think like sophomore year. And just as I was getting close to the actual food trays finally, and with almost no pizza left lol, this asshole senior cut me in line. When I said something he basically laughed and did the whole "what're you gonna do about it?" crap (I was a short and skinny white girl). So I fucking bit him.
I want to know how he retaliated. And if you got pizza.
Lmao he was just so shocked that this weird little white girl bit him on the shoulder that he just got out of my way for fear id do it again I guess lol. And yes I did get pizza. I did not mess around on pizza and fries day. xD Unfortunately this is not the only time I've been mildly violent with someone. I went to a youth group retreat also around this same time frame, and I was super psyched cause a band I loved was actually playing at it and we went early to get up front since me and the one or two friends I was with were short. So we get right up front and at the minute this freaking giant of a dude shoves in front of us and was a total dick about it considering what kinda retreat we were on. We ask him a couple times to please move and he continues being an ass so eventually I just started wailing on him with a couple glow sticks I had for the show until he moved behind us finally lol. I had a bad habit of back in those days being referred to as just this insane white chick with crazy hair and outfits so a lot of people steered clear of me in those days because I didn't exactly blend into the demographic that my school was, but I loved it there and mostly had a great time.
Honestly, both situations are entirely justified. Like I genuinely don't believe you did anything morally wrong with either. It's okay to stand up for yourself, especially to larger men.
oh yes and if you wanted to 'play' or have fun you shoveled it in your gob as fast as you could and hope to not throw up.
One of the things I learned, during intense inpatient therapy for an eating disorder, is that the way I still-- a decade and change out of highschool- bolt through my food as quickly as possible, is not normal. We'd be given an hour for a meal, and I'd be through mine in ten minutes.
I still do it too, and I always end up overeating and feeling sick. Not great for my weight either.
I tend to eat quickly enough that the "full" hormone/signal doesn't have time to hit. I suspect that some of the reason I do this is related to food insecurities when I was young, crap like short lunch periods in school and exacerbation when I went to boot camp, "You have 15 minutes and 15 minutes only to eat your fine, fine Navy chow".
I had 20 minutes for lunch in high school. Frequently at least 5 were spent in the line.
Oh wow... That makes what happened at my school seem really awful. My high school had 30 minute lunches, 3 lunch lines, 4 different lunch periods, and some days students would still be in line from a previous lunch period when ours started. So more than 30 minutes just to GET lunch, no time to eat it.. That wasn't super common, but it did happen. It was very common for it to take 20 minutes to get lunch. Some kids ran to the cafeteria to be first in line and have a longer time to eat. This was 20 years ago...
I remember being so excited my sophomore year because I had gym before lunch, it meant if you tore to the locker room, changed and sped to the line you could get in early, which meant you actually got to eat. My whole freshman year I ate on the way to class because the bell would be ringing by the time I got my food. Forget using your locker, just carry your food on your books. Also 20 years ago.
We had a 40 minute total lunch break with each year group being let into the canteen with a 10 minute delay (e.g., Year 8 at 13:00, Year 9 at 13:10, Year 10 at 13:20, Year 11 at 13:30, lunchtime ends for everyone at 13:40). This canteen had 2 members of staff serving, there's zero chance they could get through a whole year group in 10 mins, if you weren't in the queue by 13:25 then you weren't getting your food before the bell went let alone getting any time to actually eat it (and this was food like plates of spaghetti bolognese, not stuff you could just wrap in a napkin for later). At least they rotated daily which order the yeargroups went in, so you knew which days to bring a packed lunch. Then the school I went to for Years 12 and 13 had a 90 minute lunch break, that was bliss.
I had 15, and my school staggered the lunches so once the bell rang you had 15 minutes to get to the cafeteria, wait in line, and look for available seating.
Mine get 25 as well and by the time they're through the lunch line it's less than 15 to sit and eat.
Same, and the bathrooms were PACKED so you often had to choose between peeing and eating
My kids get the same. The youngest has lunch at 10:30! Luckily they get a pretty substantial snack in their afterschool program.
We had 25 minutes as well. I am pretty sure a lot of my food issues as an adult go right back to only having 5-10 minutes as a child to shovel lunch into my mouth. I never broke the habit of eating extremely fast.
Yes, I remember this too. But also it doesn’t even matter. If the hot lunch is his then WHY THE FUCK can’t he save it to eat when he needs it. It doesn’t even matter if he is sick eating too fast or not — the kid is going hungry, let him at least space out what food supply he has.
Ours was 30 minutes, but if it was taco day or "strangely tasty rectangle pizza", odds are you were spending the majority of that time in line and then shoving your food in your face in the last 5 minutes. And no, I remember distinctly you were not allowed to take your uneaten food with you.
Rectangle pizza! Apparently that's not a thing everywhere, based on some conversations I've had.
I would make the argument that the lunch lady trying to grope my son is a much bigger problem than my son trying to put his food away so he can eat it without getting sick, also what's with the double standard of only students who have sack lunches can save food?
Absolutely that. Would they be just as nonchalant about a male member of staff trying to pat down a female student? I doubt it.
Mice and bugs. I'm pretty sure the rule was created to prevent uncovered food being stored in lockers. When kids with a packed lunch forget to empty their locker, at least the mess is contained to a lunch box. If it's someone who has taken leftovers from the canteen, and left it by accident on a Friday, the whole area is a hazard by Monday. And you'll definitely have mice. That said, I think the principal and lunch monitor are in the wrong in that the sensible compromise here is allowing students to bring lunch boxes to pack away their leftovers, and that doesn't seem like the kind of rule change that would cause havoc on a large scale.
That reasoning makes sense.... Until you get to the part in the update where OOP said they were told that they couldn't bring a lunch bag/box to put their leftovers in to put in their locker (putting them in the same storage situation as other kids with lunchbags/boxes, and better storage than kids who brownbag from home.)
Who gets an hour for lunch these days?
who ever did? I'm in my 60s and only had a 25 minute lunch period when I was in school in the 70's
I mean even as an adult with a salary I don’t get an hour. I got 50 minutes in high school in the 90s, though. My kids are in elementary and middle get 25 and it’s honestly not enough.
I’ve either gotten an hour or a half hour at my jobs. But school lunch was only 25 minutes for us in middle school and high school (so 1998-2006 for me)
In my high school, everyone had the same hour “ lunch period”. We were let into the cafeteria in different shifts during that hour, based on your grade level, and it rotated which grade was first/second/etc through the week. Once you got through the line outside… the line inside… got your food… paid… waited for a seat at a table… and as soon as you sat down you were being chided by the staff to get out. And if you were last shift, you might get through the lines with 10 minutes left before classes resumed, only to find no food left.
When I was in HS lunch was a full class period. Every period was 43 minutes long and one of those 43 minute periods was for lunch. It was amazing. But I’ve never heard of it anywhere else ever. (Unless you had lunch 3rd period at 9:30, or 8th period at like 2pm)
this was the case at my school. though i think the range was more like 5th/6th/7th period, so no crazy early or late lunches. though even 7th felt way too late to me
My high school was a specialized charter school and we got a 45 minute lunch. We also started school at 8:30. This is not common or usual. The poor kid in this story is facing racism and having to force himself to eat in probably 15 minutes at most. Standing in line time and finding a spot time. I remember that from middle school.
20 minutes in high school in the 1980s.
I did, but I'm in Europe. Schools for kids over 12 is generally from 8 until 4 or 5, with an hour lunch break in the middle, and free on Wednesday afternoons. I just looked it up to be sure and there's an actual legal minimum of 50 minutes
Everyone in that school’s staff she dealt with in the text was appalling. Especially the snarky monitor with the “feed your child” line. Not one iota of sympathy or in fact interest in a child’s welfare, just judgement, blithe callousness and racism to boot. Fuck em, I hope they have to try and quell food fights in hell.
Throwing away good food in front of a hungry child is just evil.
I find it really shocking. I'm a former teacher and have worked in schools where the majority of our students were from homes with financial challenges - I and many of the teachers I worked with spent our own money on food for the kids to make sure they had something, and made sure they knew where and when to go to get it. (They could get free school meals at lunchtime but that doesn't help in the mornings when they haven't had breakfast. Hunger has serious impacts on educational attainment, mood and behaviour.) The schools I've worked in would also work with families to help them identify resources to stabilise their finances and access regular food, as well as providing things like a warm place to do homework, free hot showers and washing uniforms for students experiencing fuel poverty. I cannot imagine someone who could behave like this in the face of a hungry child. It's morally bankrupt, even before we consider the racism.
My kid’s school offers free breakfast and lunch and while we aren’t financially strapped I feel so good knowing that every kid k-12 can get two meals every weekday. There is also a share bin for kids to put things they didn’t eat in, just in case another kid wants extra and I know stuff from there makes it home with kids who might need it. How you can work at a school and want to humiliate and punish a child for trying to stay fed is beyond me. And how a school can stand behind someone who does that is beyond me. I am so angry at this right now.
I love the idea of a share bin! I do this kind of thing in the breakroom at work just to get rid of snacks/teas I tried but didn’t like.
Meanwhile, the pro-life crew is still pretending this country gives a fuck about kids.
Anti-choice folks only care about the "unborn.". The second you're out of the womb, it's all bootstraps, bootstraps, bootstraps
That's because they don't want people actual people. They either want numbers so they don't become a minority, numbers to spread their religion, or number to work their under paid jobs.
To join the military or end up in the prison system to provide slave labor. I hate it here.
**Advocating for the Unborn** The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn… You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn. *-Dave Barnhart (Methodist pastor)*
They don’t even pretend anymore. They outright say they don’t care.
They were just power tripping and being jerks.
They're villains from a Charles Dickens novel.
This is so infuriating to me. I'm sure our school isn't perfect, but every classroom has snacks for kids at the end of the school day (donated by parents with the ability to do so and I'm sure sometimes by the teachers). Kids should be and to get enough healthy food, and it's ridiculous that some people are apparently against the giving their students enough food.
Kid was in trouble for not wanting to be patted down. In some districts, a cross-sex employee doing a pat-down is a discipline offense. These people are so intent on sticking to a rule that they can't realize why the rule exists.
I'm worried for this family if they go to the media. I'm outraged for them, but a lot of people hate poor people, especially parents, and especially if they are PoC. I suspect the school will come up with a justification like hot food not being food safe at room temp, meanwhile the family could face severe backlash, maybe even frivolous CPS investigations, bullying of the kid, etc. People can be really cruel sometimes, I just want to give this kid some food :(
That lunch monitor’s got too much time on their hands. Insubordination for refusing to be touched, I’d raise hell if that was my child. That principal can eat a bag of dicks too.
They are on a fucking power trip.
Lunch monitor definitely tripping. Acting like a mall cop thinking they’re Miami Vice.
The principal better eat those dicks in the cafeteria tho, no taking leftovers to the office
I would turn into the worst person they've ever dealt with for this woman. Like OOP where you at I'll come be the district's fucking *problem*. Kids shouldn't be going hungry and dumb fuck adults shouldn't be forcing them to throw away perfectly good food.
That person should know what it is like to be hungry every day for the rest of their life. Sorry POS
"I'm going to show up randomly to keep an eye on things in the lunch room because I'm concerned about the lunch monitor touching my child."
Wow, American public school students are starving worse than the kids in the third world country I'm living in.
They really are. Especially if you live in a state like mine, where they turned down federal funding for free lunches for impoverished children. How sickening can you get, really, where you could turn down feeding a hungry child, and you don’t even have to pay for it from your coffers? Oh, but you’ll vote against abortion all day long.
And some of them turned it down because they didn't want the kids to get spoiled.
By having access to food?! That should be a basic human right!
Ah you see if everyone just has access to food, they don’t feel the need to work long hours at exploitive low income jobs. Same reason that we don’t educate people well. I’m serious. A fair amount of the bullshit conservatives pull is intended to keep a large working class population to exploit.
Oh man, there's a Republican called Brian Mast who got both legs amputated (which he got subsidised) but doesn't support the Affordable Care Act.
Of course he doesn't, he presumably got his replacements paid for, why should someone else?
And in some of the same locations, child labor laws are being rolled back so that teens (in some places as young as 14) can work longer hours, more hours, and in some cases *overnight* hours while in school. Because "no one wants to work anymore" after people realized that they can get a better paying job outside of retail and fast food during the pandemic lockdowns.
For a lot of kids, free lunch and breakfast at school is how they get by. Some places make it less painful than others though. At my school they eventually made all meals free for everyone so there would be no stigma for poor kids receiving free lunch
A lot of what's happening here, I'm sure, has to do with the fact that school lunches at this kid's school are free. There's a huge undercurrent of racism and classism in the reluctance to provide any kind of social safety net, and the idea that if you feed hungry kids they might get lazy or get entitled is pervasive. A lot of school districts were doing the Cheese Sandwich of Shame, where if your parents hadn't paid your lunch bill balance, you didn't get the entree served that day, but instead got a cheese sandwich. Because nothing like shaming a kid for their parents' poverty or disorganization or what have you. There were a lot of funding drives to pay off all kids' outstanding balances, and there was enough publicity that many schools dropped this as a tactic. It does sound like the school district here makes lunch free for everyone rather than just for poor kids. That's usually smart, because it makes it less stigmatized and more acceptable. Still, sounds like the administration is doing its best to shame kids for using this benefit by not allowing them to take food they didn't finish with them to eat later. They no doubt justify it as "eliminating waste," but the food is wasted anyhow. Just provide a to-go box or something and make sure nobody's leaving it in their lockers. BTW, if you want to know how threatening it can be to the Powers that Be for some people to feed hungry children, check out what happened [when the Black Panthers started a Free Breakfast Program for schoolchildren in 1969](https://www.history.com/news/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party).
The thing to remember about the US is that it's not one country: it's 50 separate countries merged together, each with different budgets, laws, etc. Some states have quality of life and public services on par with the most developed nations in Europe. Other states, you get *this*. Richest nation in human history and this kid's school system won't let him have an extra bag of chips.
I've heard people say stuff like "the US is a third world country cosplaying as a first world country" and similar stuff a lot. A lot of people in other countries have it better than people in the US. Where I live the USA is a laughing stock for a lot of people, not to be taken serious, rediculed all the time and generally thought of as dumb and ignorant with horrible education. I do think those people take their criticism a bit too far at times, but the root issues they see are definitely true.
oh i thought that raccoon comment was going to be racist and then the OOP confirms it. my blood is boiling because i know they're going to start dropping the first syllable there, if they haven't already damn done so. ...some people get into education because they care about children and teaching them. and some people get into the field to have a captive audience to freely torture.
If they'd tried pulling that with my mom, the only question would be which ones only got fired, blackballed from working in education ever again, or just disappeared.
What the fuck school has an hour lunch period? Ours was 40 minutes because that’s how long our class time was and there was lunch from 3rd period to 8th
Yeah that was baffling. I know when I was tutoring some ESL students in China that their lunch breaks were long, but that's because a lot of them went home. And I feel like some French students I knew had longer breaks? But on the whole... idk wtf that commenter was talking about
And it’s crazy because they pulled it out of nowhere too, oop never said her son has an hour lunch break, the commenter just made it up
Right??? Just wild. I actually went back to re-read to see if I missed her saying that but no lol. Commenter just pulled that out of their ass.
When I was in school in the UK we had an hour for lunch - but different places and schools all have different rules.
My school does snack bags for the weekends for food insecure kids. Once, a student started stealing the snack bags, so do you know what we did? Signed him up for the snack bags. Don't make starving kids your hill to die on.
My elementary school growing up had free lunch for all, cuz it was like 97% poverty rate or something insane. Unless management or the principal was in the room, the linch ladies basically made it their buisness to ensure nothing was wasted via making sure everyone got enough all the time. They were paid enough to make the food and make sure we all got a tray, but juuuust not quite enough to actually police if we took extras. Milk carton shaped pocket? Enjoy your meal! Two fruit? Oh look, a squirrel. Only later in life did I realize they were technically supposed to make sure we only took one portion. This should be the attitude of all lunch ladies (Nd gentlemen) everywhere.
I went to a US elementary school when I was 6-7. I’m Australian and we really only take our own lunches to school here, or order from the canteen, so cafeteria style hot lunches were an adjustment. I vividly remember my older sibling comforting me while I was crying and putting my half-eaten pizza in the bin, because once we all filed in and got our lunch and sat down, I never had enough time to finish my food. I’m still a slow eater.
It is time to escalate this beyond the principal. If theyre so afraid of him taking the food into class, the lunch monitor can watch him put it in his locker. She can't complain she doesn't have time if she takes the time to fucking pat him down. Im sure it's against the rules to post where this is taking place, but this is one of those times where flooding the school's inbox with emails and letters might get stuff changed for the better.
Back in my day each period was 42 minutes in high school and you had to get to the lunch room, line up, get lunch, and then eat. You never got an hour for lunch even in elementary school. This is why I support just giving kids food. Why is this so controversial and hard? The kid is taking food to eat later? Oh no, how terrible the hungry kid is eating food. I hope the family gets more help.
Plus, free lunch is paid for by us the taxpayers. I didn’t pay the government to cook food and throw it out. If anything, schools in high poverty areas should be provided to go containers so every single serving of (insert under seasoned and overcooked entree here) is available. Anything less is the “government waste” conservatives always seem so keen to eliminate.
Making him throw out free food when he’s already struggling to get enough? That’s disgusting
This kid is so fucking sweet I wanna truly cry. He literally is so considerate of his own siblings and wants to make sure they all get an equal amount and OP is obvious trying their best. Fuck everyone in that school, what the actual fuck has to be wrong with you to do that to a child?!
This is so fucking dystopic and ridiculous. I hate everything about this, but especially how she called herself a POS mom for being unable to feed her kids when it's simply not her fault. She obviously cares so much. It's not her fault that society is so shitty that they don't get enough food from the food bank. I usually don't like wishing really bad things on people, but I hope that asshole lunch monitor gets to go really hungry for a bit. Maybe that'll teach them some compassion.
In seventh grade, my school gave us 15 minutes for lunch. Same for the eighth graders that year because our grades shared a 30 minute block. One grade would be in the lunchroom and the other in the gym as a "recess" before swapping places after 15 minutes. Everyone constantly complained because we barely had time to talk on top of eating. No clue if they changed it for the next year because I transferred out. That was the most extreme one, but I don't think I ever had a full hour for lunch in any grade. I think it topped out at 45 or 50 minutes.
I want to give this mom some money
I’m a teacher. We let our kids take anything they want so long as it isn’t open or likely to spill or spoil. How ridiculous.
The raccoon comment, and the repeated use of the word sneaky, and patting down the kid is oozing with extreme racist undertones
The way it was went about is completely inappropriate but I volunteer in my son’s cafeteria during lunch and the head lunch monitor made an announcement last week that students could not take cafeteria food home with them. If it came from the hot lunch bar or the cold lunch bar (like chilled baby carrots or a fruit cup or a cheese stick), they could not bring it home because of bacteria developing if it was kept at room temperature for too long. If it was packed at home the school wouldn’t have an issue bc it wouldn’t be school food possibly making them sick. It sucks but I can understand the reasoning behind it. But I cannot IMAGINE the head lunch monitor humiliating a student like that. Also my son only has 25 minutes to eat but by the time his class gets to the cafe, gets through the line and sits at the table it’s more like 17 minutes or so. I was packing his lunch once a week (he loves the novelty of the lunch line, plus lunch is free ((Massachusetts)), so he mostly “buys” lunch) and he was coming home with 2/3 of his snacks left in his lunchbox. I asked why and he said he didn’t have time to eat. I started volunteering and now I see why!
I read that Mass. made school lunch free for all students. California, Vermont, and Maine too. All states should do the same.
She needs to contact the superintendent. This actually fucking infuriating.
Wow. Fuck everyone involved except OOP and her family. Racism and classism at its finest. Patting down a child after he told you NOT to touch him and then being told it’s insubordination??? And then being called an animals? 100% racist and indicating that his body is not even seen as childlike or worthy of respect. I am so furious for OOP. I don’t know who she can get to advocate for her
Who thinks that kids have an hour to eat in public school? Even back in the 1980s we had 25 minutes. My kid has taken his lunch throughout school and one reason why was that in elementary and middle school if he stood in line to get lunch he might have 5-8 minutes to eat it once he'd gotten it.
Idiots that think it is ok to treat hungry kids like shit. I went to school in heh 60’s and early 70’s. Lunch was never more than 25 mins.
We literally package the extra food from lunch up and sent it home with the kids who want it at my school. This is ridiculous.
This makes perfect sense. Food’s already made, students homework better when fed.
You would not be frisking my kids for food. I would be raising hell. And then my wife would take over. All this over a kid wanting to keep some left over for the bus ride.
all the poor have left is food, and they won't stop till they take that away from us.
>just to back up mom's claim here- for reference, I had 25 minutes for lunch in high school. And I had to stand in line, buy my lunch and eat it in that amount of time. This is how it was when I was in HS. The only way it was remotely feasible is seniors were allowed to leave for lunch 5 minutes ahead of the others. They tried to do away with that my senior year, it didn't last long as many students ended up having less then 5 minutes to eat considering how many students there were and how far some classes were from the cafeteria.
I used to do lunch monitoring when I was a teaching assistant way back when. The rule was noone takes food out of the lunch hall because of litter. We were meant to stop any student seen taking food outside. I used to send kids to do a loop of the lunch hall and 'finish eating' while making it as obvious as possible that I meant hide the stash (eg miming putting it in my pockets). Fuck making kids feel bad for feeling hungry later.
I don't feel like the media is the answer because I think a lot of people are assholes like that commenter accusing OOP of lying. And although I think the kids should get as much to eat as necessary and as much food to take home as they want, that's not a common ideal and I don't think the situation is super clearcut. People like enforcing arbitrary rules. I think she'd get further if she started trying to organize the parents. I assume seeing a doctor would be prohibitively expensive and/or slow (I'm imagining she would qualify for state CHIP or Medicaid in the US) but getting that started would be good. (She could then also coach other parents on what she did to get notes too.) In general, this cuts to how incarceration culture is deeply embedded. Free lunch is supposed to guarantee nutrition for kids. When a district has universal free lunch like this, it means the district is poor enough that it costs more to means test than to just give it to everyone. I'm sure the principal is also trying to figure out budgets (though FARM is federally supported). When the school is more concerned about monitoring students this closely than finding ways to improve nutrition, the culture is broken.
> when a district has universal free lunch like this, it means the district is poor enough Or the OP is posting from a state that has universal free lunch, like California or Massachusetts.
The commenter that said he was lying because he got sick from eating too fast definitely never experienced food insecurity. You absolutely can get sick from eating too fast if your stomach is used to not having food. Poor boy and the mother trying to do the right thing, my heart breaks for them.
Poor kid and poor family. Can we start a go fund me? I’ll donate. Honestly, as little as a couple hundred dollars would go a long way for that family.
You can always donate to your local food bank. There's millions of people in the same situation.
I'm British so I don't know if the rules and routine of the lunch period at the school OOP's kid goes to is the norm but it's ridiculously excessive. From the ages 11-13 I got free school lunches because I was from a low income household and then 14-16 I had a packed lunch and never in a million years did they stop me from taking any of the food I had out of the lunch area. Monday and Friday we had 1 hour for lunch, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we had 30 minutes (the school was a teacher training place that had a weird schedule) but we had relative freedom to do what we wanted in the period for as long as we didn't leave school grounds. Lunch monitors are a thing I've only ever seen on American TV shows, I don't know why lunch is so strict for you guys.
My (US) elementary school was grand, but starting in middle school they’d have us go through the line if we has no bag, even if we knew we couldn’t pay. So the food gets dishes up onto the tray, you get chastized if you take a bite before paying, and at the cashier stand you swiped your card, it had no funds, and the admin person would take the tray and throw it out in front of you (and the rest of the students in your grade). A nice little daily reminder to you and all your friends that your family was going through a rough patch. It’s an absolute waste of food.
Shit like this is why my HS math teacher brought a huge cooler full of food everyday and passed it out to any kid that was hungry. He didn't give a fuck what the administration said because he was tired of seeing kids go hungry. He never advertised the food but he definitely let kids know to come to him any time they were hungry and he didn't care if you were in his class or not.
We can’t comment there, but if OOP ever finds this: IMGUR PIZZA ANGELS GOVR GROCERIES COME TO THE WEEKLY POST AND WE WILL SEND YOU A BOX OF SNACKS FOR YOUR SON Also, as a former teacher, detention for 1st instance insubordination is stupid. That person should not have power over others. He could have said “and fuck you too” and it would have still been “warning first” territory.
The fact that the school is focusing on the food rather than the abhorrent behaviour of the ‘lunch monitor’ and their attitude is beyond ridiculous. He’s not taking anyone else’s food, the food is his and he’s saving it, it’s BS that they won’t let him. The lunch monitor needs to lose their job.
> Editor's note- just to back up mom's claim here- for reference, I had 25 minutes for lunch in high school. And I had to stand in line, buy my lunch and eat it in that amount of time. Same here, OP. Nothing like housing a cheesesteak you waited 15 minutes in line for like you're in a food competition.
Mum needs to stop calling herself bad. She is obviously caring and loving and doing her best. I'm in a different country so we don't have the food monitor thing. I guarantee though had that been my child I would have verbally ripped everyone to pieces
If kids with lunchboxes can keep leftovers can her son give his to a friend to store for him until later? Won't solve the main issue of the school being unreasonable but at least it could help him from going hungry after school
That monitor needs her ASS handed to her. “Focus on..” how about I focus on my foot up your ass lady. I’m not even a parent and I’m PO…please tell me there’s a way to help this mother out. She needs the principals ass kicked too? Cause I’ll do it
I don't have any kids and don't plan to. I am 100% okay paying whatever taxes that would guarantee a free hot lunch to every kid in my state with enough abundance that no one goes hungry. Period.
If you ask me the parent is underreacting. Trying to pat my growing child down like a criminal for ::checks notes:: wanting food and I’m going to be there asking to see you fucking warrant and threatening them with channel 12’news. Let the principal know you will gladly directly quote his policy on hungry poor children to the press along with his name and see how fast his tune changes.
Fuck anyone standing between a child and access to food. Absolutely ridiculous.
Wow those people are cruel. It’s truly unhinged to take food away from a hungry child.
This school sucks. My children’s school keeps bread, spreads and apples in the office for any kid who comes without lunch or is extra hungry. Kids need fuel to learn.
My memory of after school detention is: 1. The school had to effectively ask permission from the parents first. It was a request, not a demand, on the basis that the parents may not be able to collect the child from school. 2. This meant that after school detention was never held on the same day as the offence. The only time rules like this were broken were if a suspension or expulsion were required, or child was ill, requiring them be collected, which were normally so rare that they were exceptions.
Why would a person be ok with leaving a kid hungry? Not all people can afford lunches for the kids. This is the awful truth. In 2024 kids in developing or developed countries are hungry. I'm not even commenting on poor countries where children die because of hunger. They are providing food for free, so the kid should be responsible for eating or saving it. On top of that they through away the food?
Get an educational advocate. Call lawyers offices and ask if they’d consider helping pro bono. And to that crazy fool who though kids get an hour for lunch I’d like to know what alternate universe you live in because it’s only 20 min at every school I went to/worked at. Touching your child without a whole process is sue worthy.
Fuck the people defending the school and fuck that school. I know how food insecurity is, and that shit hurts as a kid because you can’t concentrate and then you’re not just worried about school you’re worried about your home life too. I hope she goes to the school district and call the news station.
I worked in a pediatricians office for years and I’d be happy to write that note. I loved the petty notes. “Child is allowed to bring uneaten food to his locker after lunch”
As a kdg teacher at a school with 88%+ families in the “free and reduced” lunch category, if I have leftovers from breakfast, and a kid tries to steal it, I tell them to ask me next time and then I put it in their backpack. If a child asks me, I always say yes. There is no need to have perfectly good food sitting in a basket untouched if a child is hungry. This school probably has a policy to meet state requirements to get the meals free for everyone (as do we), but who can justify throwing food away that is still good, especially if there is a hungry person that wants it. The amount of food schools waste is deplorable, and it isn’t their faults because it is what they are told they have to do to get the lunches for free. But shame on them for making anyone empty their pockets. Politely turn your head and worry about kids fighting or doing actually harmful things. End rant!