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Cafeteria Worker Throws Out Student's Lunch Because He's 26 Cents Short

Efforts to get parents to pay meal account debts go too far

By Mack Gelber
Posted Jun 11th 2014 @ 6:50AM

A father is blasting his young son's school after a cafeteria worker at Kent, Washington's Mill Creek Middle School threw away the kid's lunch because he was 26 cents short.

"He gets up to the front and they say there's not enough in his account, so they take his food, and in front of him, throw it away," Jimmie Keys, the boy's father, told Komo News.

Keys's son told him this had happened twice in the past week, prompting his irate dad to confront school administrators. Lunches at the school cost 40 cents, and are paid for using a meal account system similar to a debit card. Parents are supposed to be alerted when meal funds are running low, but Keys said he was never notified.

"My first instinct was to get a huge jar of pennies, and get it ready," Keys said. "I was going to take it down to the school and throw it on 'em."

He didn't do that, but school district spokesperson Chris Loftis was quick to describe the incident as a terrible mistake. He also said that cafeteria workers, far from throwing out a child's food, are actually required to give students a free yogurt or cereal when they're short on funds.

"I just have to say sorry to this student, sorry to the parents," he said. "We made a mistake, we need to fix it, we're sorry."

Apparently, this is tied into the school's end-of-year effort to encourage parents to pay outstanding debts on meal accounts; the cafeteria worker, Loftis said, simply took the dictum too far. He added that in the future, parents will be given more time to add funds to their kids' meal accounts.

"We forgot the humanity of it," Loftis said. "We've learned from this. and the kindness of all of our workers is not going to be overwhelmed by the policies and procedures that we're required to follow."

Where you been,...Laguna's looking for you...

Thought I saw this story a few months back...

Ah, nope, that was a Utah school throwing out lunches for 40 students whose accounts had hit zero (parents claim they were never notified of balances getting low).

Hope the same thing happens - suspend or fire that worker.

A clumsy act by the cafeteria worker to be sure. Shoulda given the kid the meal accepting what funds they had and warned them that their account was now empty.

But to REALLY put this issue in context you' have to know how many parents attempt to merely blow off their kids' lunch debts and what this loss adds up to for the school district every year.

Birdwatcher

Birdie, You would find it hard to believe how many people had accidents and had let their insurance lapse for non payment then claimed they had never gotten a premium notice. We sent a premium notice 30 days prior to renewal, an expiration notice after the due date with no payment and finally a lapse notice. One may have gotten lost but not all three.

The ones walking Mike, think the families are used to getting free stuff?

When my account reaches ZERO it's Z-E-R-O. Plain and simple.

Your district needs to put new measures in place.

Been swamped at work,444. All my court continuances during last hunting season have caught up with me combined with a couple of new high profile cases.

They say the really great lawyers are able to stay out of court. The last few months I've been inside the trenches 3-4 days a week.

That right there is why you draw the big bucks, and I aint talking about pictures of deer, good to hear ya Bob, long time no read.

Gunner

I understand the budget dynamic,Mike. Humiliating a kid in front of his peers, for a matter better suited for mom and dad, could never get a pass from me.

Hope all is well your way,Mike. I hope to see you in October.

reminds me of a funny story. when my son was in about 2nd grade, we get a notice in the mail that he was like $8 overdue on his lunch account. we always made sure it was replenished regularly so we asked for a transcript. looked kind of like this

lunch
fruit rollup
fruit rollup
lunch
fruit rollup
fruit rollup
lunch
fruit rollup
fruit rollup


and on and on to the tune of about $6 worth of candy. he had been explicitly told not to buy anything but lunch. when he was confronted with it, he immediately went into lie mode until confronted with the hard evidence. at that point, you'd swear we just showed footage of him killing somebody cause he cracked like an egg and start blubbering so bad i almost started laughing. lesson learned though. no more fruit rollups showed up on his account.

Not just their school lunches. You'd be amazed at how many parents blow off feeding their kids at all. Living in the midwest, our current local unemployment rate is 3.6%, don't have a large illegal immigrant population in our district (meat processors and agri-businesses are elsewhere in the state), but our neighborhood runs a fundraiser every year to raise money for feeding kids who go hungry on weekends. A lot of kids... The school fills up backpacks and sends it home with the kids so they have food to eat on the weekends and holiday breaks. Or the number of kids who go in to school with no breakfast... how frigging difficult or expensive is it to buy and cook some oatmeal for a little kid so he doesn't go hungry!?

There's a lot of parents who need to be taken out to the woodshed and introduced to a 2x4.

I read the whole article on the KOMO TV news site. The school district notifies parents when the kid's lunch account is a dollar short but threw away the meal that would make the kid 26 cents short. The school mouthpiece didn't seem to see anything illogical about their policies but just felt bad about things. Mushy thinking by educators gives me no confidence they should be in charge of teaching kids anything.

We had a school principal here that made kids work off their lunch if they had no money. They had to wipe tables and help clean up.

A kid never had to go hungry or watch their lunch get tossed.

I feel for the kid, but what parent can't afford 40 cents? I'd LOVE to pay 40 cents for lunch.

Should have had some better family planning there....

I am getting more cold and hard headed the older I get, but I just hate .gov getting more money from me to feed, teach, house others kids...and then pay to teach em english.

No money, no food. Seems easy enough to me. Of course 92 million Americans who are not working probably disagree with me....

There are often ways to cover those shortages; having the kid (who often has little or nothing to do with being short) do some simple chores around the kitchen/cafeteria can be one of them. (I think our own son did that once this past year when his dad -me- forgot to check his lunch account for adequate funds.

And yes, I"d be a sucker and pay the bill for the kid....

Damn right, when I was a kid if you were short you got to stay after lunch and do the dishes.

I would always volunteer to work because I would keep the lunch money and get the meal for free for either serving or cleaning up. There are hundreds of ways to handle that situation other than humiliating the kid.

At my kids school we simply get a note home that says we need more money in the account, send a check and all is well.

No Soup fa' You!