Don't these people realize that hungry children will have a negative effect on test scores?
The first doesn't bother me too much, as often as I forget to recharge my kids' lunch accounts.
You could just do what Boston does and feed all the kids, full stop. Turns out, among other things, that it saves a school district a crapton of busywork to not be tracking this stuff.
Oh hey, that's my wife's school district. What a shitstorm. Whoever made that call totally deserves it.
Not to be overly contrarian, but I feel like the folx who made that call don't actually deserve to be fired, or pilloried or made to appear on reality TV. Seems like there is an important life lesson at stake for the kids, along the lines of "sometimes people do really stupid shit at work, but they don't get fired, and you just have to deal." Plus, life isn't fair.
I thought all the poor people got Obamalunches now.
Seriously, their judgment call was to wait until the kids had their lunches and then take them away? Time for some hard lessons.
OK, maybe not fired but something godammit.
They should eat out of the garbage for a week. Wait, the food in there is perfectly good. Ok, boiling them in oil, then.
Ketchup is a vegetable. I don't know how that is relevant, but it had to be said.
|| I'm hyped up on Ambien, having waited too long between taking it and going to bed. The question for me, about to begin my spring semester in a weeks, is whether to use these hyped-up hours for work or play
||
Ok, boiling them in oil, then.
They could (and should) then receive emergency medical care at the hands of Lunchlady (and sometime school nurse) Doris.
UK commenters might be able to supply missing context, but this appears to be school administrators (college level) doing their part (town/gown relations division).
4! That's cool. We're assessing our local public school, and while lunch (from the good people at Sodexo) costs money, all of the kids get a free "breakfast" (in the form of a granola bar, basically, and then a free fruit/vegetable snack later in the day. (When we took our tour, it was blood oranges. The principal recounted a less successful day, when the snack was radishes.)
One of those commas should be a close parenthesis. Your choice.
"If you don't eat yer radishes, you can't have any blood oranges! How can you have any blood oranges if you don't eat your radishes?"
9- The excuse was that kids get lunch first, then take their tray to go pay, which is when they find out they have no money. But once a lunch is served the school can't give it to anyone else so they could only throw it out. Or, you know, let the kid eat the thing and worry about it later. Of course that would just encourage the parents to keep bring irresponsible. I hope the next day some kids gobbled it down in line and when they got to the cashier the school threatened to induce vomiting.
19.1-2 is a lovely example of a rule-based decisionmaking process gone wrong; you can't argue with the internal logic of any of the steps. And yet from an external perspective it's completely obvious that basic decency (or, at the very least, a concern for appearances, which will do service for basic decency in a pinch) should have kicked in.
16: Remember that if you want our UK correspondents to understand this you'll have to refer to the granola bars as "flapjacks" and the blood oranges as "Turkish galoshes."
If you're not going to feed everyone you could just have a rule that there's one grace period lunch day when you run out. Deduct the cost from the account recharge if it makes you feel better. A few kids may have parents who never recharge the lunch account again, so make an estimate and build that cost into your planning.
My elementary school used the Soviet system: pay cash in advance, receive voucher, stand in line, redeem voucher for food.
We had scrip at my middle school. You could buy weekly or monthly cards and they'd punch a hole in them for each day you claimed.
I would never eat school lunches as a kid. Gross. I was content to have a plain peanut butter sandwich. Daily. So I don't recall how people paid (but having accounts just doesn't sound familiar).
However, this has nothing to do with the post, which is fucking disgusting! Let's poor shame the poor people (or the people with parents who just didn't manage to pay in time). The the entire fuck? Ogged was right. Worst. People. Ever.
20 is exactly right. And some reports are saying that the day before, they let the kids have the lunches (so there was a free grace day.) So I'm willing to believe no one set out to be cruel, but the problem is, they managed to do so anyway.
And from what parents are saying, in this case, most of them didn't know the accounts were out of money.
Not feeding the kids is creul. The obvious solution is to give lunch to the kids who don't pay but to make them wear a t-shirt reading, "My parents are too poor to feed me but too rich for the government to do it for them."
Free t-shirts, now? What kind of incentives would that create?
My kid's account is always out of money because I always make them lunches so they almost never buy so I never fill the account, but once or twice a year they drop their lunch or for some other reason buy it. I have no idea until the end of the year I get a letter that I owe $3 or $6.
27: It's a mostly UMC district. The parents had no idea that the accounts were overdrawn (for reasons similar to SP), because they'd never been notified (allegedly a new software system is to blame.)
allegedly a new software system is to blame
Thanks, Obama.
It's a mostly UMC district.
That particular elementary is but the district isn't. 15 of of the elementary schools and three of the middle schools are Title I.
I was past due on Rory's lunch account regularly. They sent reminder slips home in the kid's backpack, but seriously, have you seen my kid's backpack? Also, if I have trouble remembering to check the lunch balance, odds are also not great I will remember to check her backpack.
33: I dunno about everyone else's kids, but I'm pretty sure my daughter would actively conspire to be past due on her lunch money if it meant she could get a teacher to write on her forehead with a Sharpie. (If, hypothetically, she had lunch money as opposed to bringing her lunch in.)
I just write "expropriate the expeopriators" on the slip and send it back in.
We had scrip at my middle school. You could buy weekly or monthly cards and they'd punch a hole in them for each day you claimed.
That sounds like a sensible option. Do it monthly, then have a grace week (not just a day) if the card runs out, and allow only, say, two or three grace weeks per year in order to discourage those scofflaws who might cleverly think they can have a free week every month.
Or just feed all the kids for free. There's a concept. It's totes socialism, of course.
32: I'm surprised it's not UMC. There's a lot of nice houses on 15th East. I'm only a mile from that school, but I'm almost certain we'll be sending our daughter to the non-denomination private school in town.
That takes you out of the discussion, then, out of participation, and presumably partly explains why a lot of nice houses doesn't reflect on the makeup of the area's public schools.
Parts of the district are totally UMC, I just wouldn't call it mostly UMC. Visitors for the most part are seeing downtown and/or the university, which is up east and in a nice area. But a pretty big chunk of the city is west of the freeway and heavily Hispanic with a fair number of Tongans and various refugee groups.
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25: I would never eat school lunches as a kid. Gross. I was content to have a plain peanut butter sandwich. Daily.
Same here (except when I had a few years of bologna). I do not believe I ever bought a lunch in elementary school and maybe a couple of times in jr. high. And the oft-heard praises of a "hot lunch" always struck me as odd when I was a kid as other than the relatively infrequent lunch of soup or grilled cheese sandwiches we never had them at home.
Picking up on the North Carolina discussion from a few days ago, which I took to be generally about income inequality and its effects: the NC Moral Monday movement is migrating to other states.
a new movement for justice is following in the footsteps and in the spirit of those earlier civil rights activists. Steadily building broad grassroots coalitions of civil rights groups, labor, church leaders, students, teachers, environmentalists, retirees, and others, this movement is literally moving through southern states. It is gaining popular support by directly confronting the immorality of extremist governors, legislators, and corporate lobbyists who're denying health care to poor families, preventing both the elderly and students from voting, gutting state funding for public education, and generally legislating a permanent state of inequality and injustice for millions of people.
This promising progressive uprising began last year in North Carolina as the "Moral Monday" movement, named for its weekly peaceful protests at the state capitol. It has now spread to "Moral Monday Georgia" and "Truthful Tuesday" in South Carolina. To follow its progress and offer support, go to www.naacpnc.org.
40: Oh, I get it now. I thought you were talking about the boundaries for the Uintah school, not the city at large.
41: Parsimon, my baby isn't even born yet so it's all theoretical. But more importantly, anyone can participate. If you want to start talking about who can contribute to the conversation, there's only three people on this thread as far as I know who pay property taxes in Utah that contribute to education here. So maybe you can't participate in the conversation since you don't pay taxes here.
42: other than the relatively infrequent lunch of soup or grilled cheese sandwiches we never had them at home
Funnily, my chief memory of lunch during elementary school is of going home for lunch and having tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich. That must have been a rare experience -- and I'm pretty sure I had tuna sandwiches or PB&J a lot -- but the tomato soup and grilled cheese is what I remember. Did I walk home for lunch every day? Must not have; yet I don't remember school lunch during elementary school.
I'd tell you that the walk to and from school was half a mile, but that's probably not true. Probably it took me 10 minutes. Did we have an hour lunch? 40 minutes?
Wait: how long does it take you to walk half a mile when you're 4 feet tall?
40, 44: Yeah, I meant Uintah, too. In any case, the administration of the school has managed to piss off the East bench so this should get entertaining.
My house was about .6 of mile and I often went home for lunch but was usually riding my bike. If I walked, it was pretty much all to and from with just a very short time for lunch.
Hm. I'm going with half a mile, then, across a small stream (only about 2 feet wide, but hey, you're short) that had stepping stones and/or a plank bridge, and a dale, which translated to struggling against the wind, mostly.
Good times! This was in upstate New York, understand, so it was a blizzard all the time, practically. No wonder I remember tomato soup and grilled cheese.
We had to bring cash with us when I was in public school. (83-85). On Fridays only we could buy ice cream. I don't remember if drinks were extra.
I think it was $1.00.. I made my lunch, because I got to keep the lunch money as allowance if I did that. Milk was a quarter.
I got free lunch and breakfast pretty much the entire time I was in school, so I can't remember how the others handled it.
But I affirmatively liked most of the food they made. Very salty, as I recall. I particularly liked the sausage roll-type thing and the awful pizza. Also enjoyed the once monthly chocolate milk instead of plain.
I can't participate because my girls' school has gone to free breakfast and lunch for all. (Nia would get it anyway because she's in foster care.) I know the food is not the world's finest, but it makes my life so much easier that I don't have to pack for three kids. And they're okay with that once they realized I wouldn't pack lunchables anyway.
50: Was there a different menu for the paying students? I hope not!
I'm surprised you noticed the saltiness at a young age; I wouldn't have, and didn't. But sure: awful pizza and tater tots were hits. This was in high school, though (80s).
Has the school lunch menu improved in recent decades? What are the kids being fed?
My kids usually take packed lunches. One never ever uses the canteen. Out of the other two schools, I don't know one's policy because I've never looked, but the other say that if a boy doesn't have enough money on his finger (biometric system) that can have his food and they'll note down how much is owed.
15 - I'll ask C if he knows any goss.
44.2, 51: If my remark about participation is causing a problem, I'll explain that paying property taxes that contribute to education in your area doesn't mean you have skin in the game. You only have skin the game if you have a kid in the public school system. Your property tax money doesn't mean squat. I pay property taxes in two states; I don't have kids; I have no voice in how the local school systems there address their matters, and wouldn't try to.
If you pay property taxes and put your kid in private school (deciding this before s/he's even born), you're looking at the situation faced by the local public school system from on high, and it's difficult to believe that you'd have any idea what its circumstances are.
OKAY. That was my rant. I understand that one can be sensitive and informed and helpful toward one's local public school system even though one takes one's kid(s) out of it from the get-go. It's possible. But tax money isn't viable speech. Sorry.
Calming down a bit, I notice that LizSpigot wasn't actually making any policy statements anywhere about how school lunches should work. So I have been quite out of line.
52: Menu was the same. I'm guessing about the saltiness, though.
In high school I scraped together enough pocket money to get fries from the concession rather than regular lunch, sometimes. Ah, youth. Nothing for lunch but fries and fry-sauce? No problem... because I'll eat a whole chicken's worth of leftovers at 10pm.
The word is that the menus have significantly worsened.
Parsimon, Cala has talked about some fucked-up shit going on in that school district and now here's another story. Gswift's wife seens to have complaints too. If the Spigots have decided that their best bet seems to be avoidance, they probably have their reasons. I think parents and taxpayers should have some say. I certainly care about our high school even though my oldest is in first grade and I'm grateful for the retiree neighbors who volunteer at their school and get involved in policy decisions. I don't like the idea that opting out for one child, even a hypothetical child, means opting out of any voice in the system ever. We looked at Waldorf because I think it would have been good for the first child we were matched with, but while it would fit Mara's temperament, she feels a need to be around other non-white students and is thriving where she is.
I couldn't even consider Waldorf. Intellectually, I know that it has nothing at all to do with the salad, but I can't hear the name without thinking of putting mayonnaise on an apple.
I have no idea what we're going to do for the Calabat. We'll probably start with the public schools, but if there are problems we certainly will consider private options. Most of my friends have started off their kids in the public schools but they've switched to the public charter by middle school.
I might wind up putting kids into public school. My leaning towards private school right now is solely based around wanting my kids to grow up with non-white kids and non-mormons. I don't ever want my daughter to be influenced by the teachings of the Mormon church that say that she should be subservient to men. Fuck that noise.
Conversely, I'm concerned that the private school might teach her to become too entitled. My bosses' kid goes to that school has argued with him about what kind of BMW he will get for for his 16th birthday and I would really dislike my kid if she ever said anything like that.
The school does a lot of things like participate in feeding the homeless, but people tell me that it doesn't change the attitudes of the kids. Hopefully we can also combat entitlement by choosing to funnel any extra money into investments instead of expensive cars and fancy houses.
Re school lunches, I would be in favor of the system in Thorn's school of giving everyone free school lunches, but if the food is anything like it was at my school I'd probably pack healthy lunches for the kids if they were willing to eat them.
Waldorf schools differ tremendously from place to place, I think. Some are quite good.
Thorn: I understand. Situations are different in different places.
I think our school does well enough with the feeding and actually think being able to rely on just about everyone being there frees them up to make slightly better food, though not what I'd want to eat day after day. They've gotten a new grant about fitness and nutrition that involves sending the kiddos home with pedometers a few times a year. I'm not sure yet if any money goes toward the cafeteria.
A friend of mine who is an atheist (and presumably raised that way) was sent by his mother to an Episcopal school in Salt Lake, because the public schools were too Mormon. All of the extracurricular-type activities were organized around the church. The Episcopal school didn't proselytize and was very tolerant.
He's a few years older than I am, so this would have been in the late 80's, maybe early 90's.
Hopefully we can also combat entitlement by choosing to funnel any extra money into investments instead of expensive cars and fancy houses.
???
I think she just means combat entitlement in her offspring by not leading a flashy, money-centric lifestyle.
63: It's probably the same school. I said it was non-denominational, but it was founded by the Episcopalian Church and converted into an independent school.
67: He said that the chaplain was a great guy.
66: In Trollope that leads to depths of entitlement in the third generation, when they inherit your investments.
My mother took Home Economics in college, which meant that she learned scientific institutional cooking. That meant that I had macaroni and cheese twice a week for 12 years, and macaroni, tomato and hamburger twice a week too. I liked it fine and am not a fussy eater even now.
macaroni, tomato and hamburger
Back then, you had to help your own hamburger.
70:
John:
Howdy! There's a fine book about the history and ideology of home economics, Perfection Salad.
Like Mahler much? I've been able to listen to formerly obscure recordings, such as Klemperer's magisterial 7th, super slow temp, pulled by EMI for poor sales 50 years ago but revelatory, all on youtube. Changes my life.
It's so hard to get good hamburger help these days.
Parsimon, Cala has talked about some fucked-up shit going on in that school district and now here's another story. Gswift's wife seens to have complaints too.
Cala's up in the northern wilds and in a different district. Salt Lake is generally a reasonably run district and can pick and choose its teachers because they pay significantly more than the other districts.
My leaning towards private school right now is solely based around wanting my kids to grow up with non-white kids and non-mormons. I don't ever want my daughter to be influenced by the teachings of the Mormon church that say that she should be subservient to men.
Then send her to the public schools. That fear is outdated by decades. Highland is largely drawing off of the white east side but the west side Title I middle schools full of brown non mormon kids, Northwest and Glendale, feed into West and East high. West is also an IB high school.
Salt Lake is generally a reasonably run district and can pick and choose its teachers because they pay significantly more than the other districts.
Hm, interesting. That's quite different from NM, where Albuquerque pays significantly less than the other (mostly rural) districts in the state, because of how the state funding formula works.
A big part of it is almost certainly that the city itself is more liberal than the surrounding suburbs and there's much higher union participation in the Salt Lake district. My wife previously taught in one of the other big districts in the valley and union participation was under 50 percent. In Salt Lake it's well north of 90 percent and she's making about 10K more a year there.
Yeah, that must be a big factor. NM public schools are all heavily unionized, AFAIK, but the unions are pretty hobbled by state-level restrictions. There also aren't many primarily suburban districts. Rio Rancho is the only one I know of offhand, since the vast majority of the Albuquerque metropolitan area is within the ABQ city limits. The result is that there isn't really an urban/suburban divide between districts; it's basically all APS. All of the other districts are either much smaller cities or small-town/rural. My mom teaches in one of the rural districts, which pays quite a bit more than APS.
I'll explain that paying property taxes that contribute to education in your area doesn't mean you have skin in the game. You only have skin the game if you have a kid in the public school system.
This is just ridiculous. It is entirely possible to care about and take a position regarding public education without having a child currently in a public school. Since when is sacrifice of a firstborn the price of admission to public discourse?
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_13480.html#1657717
74: The Elementary School she'd be is Emerson. I've been in there during school hours and it wasn't all blond kids. But my tolerance for any Mormon influence is really really low. I know it's gotten a lot better, but I still have reservations. I grew up as an atheist in a district that was 80% Catholic and it was pretty unpleasant. I'm sure that when the time comes I'll tour the school and ask a lot of pointed questions.
81: Anecdotally, my the faculty at my wife's school (Glendale Middle) is noticeably much less Mormon than when she was teaching in Canyons district. There's loads of non Mormons in the pd and city govt and the city itself is minority Mormon by population. My kids are at a high school that almost certainly has more Mormons than anything in the city district and it hasn't been an issue at all.
Since when is sacrifice of a firstborn the price of admission to public discourse?
I wouldn't consider sending your kid to public school* akin to sacrificing your firstborn, but your mileage may vary.
*unless the local public schools truly are too dreadful for words
We've been around the block on this many times: the fullest participation possible is essential to well-functioning public schools. I don't like my own lecturing tone either, but I consider this an obvious fact. The more parents opt out, the worse the institution is likely to become for the remainder. So! I'll shut up about it now.
83: By your logic, I am not sure why you think you are entitled to an opinion on where parents send their children to school since you don't even have kids, much less a kid in public school.
Disagreeing with someone's (as yet hypothetical) school choice is one thing. Presuming you are in a positionto declare who gets a voice in a policy discussion based on how much you judge that choice is obnoxious. I consider this an obvious fact.