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The Wyoming Valley West School District in Pennsylvania sent out hundreds of letters this week telling parents who had lunch debt to pay or their children could go into foster care.
The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, told parents that there have been "multiple letters sent home with your child" and that no payments had been made.
I agree that the parent should send money or a lunch with their kids but threatening foster care is extreme. I wonder if some of the kids qualify for reduced or free lunch but their parents don’t know about the program.
Not surprisingly, the local Children and Youth Foster Care System is very unhappy over being used (inappropriately and, as should be obvious, falsely - no child is going to be removed from a home over a negative lunch balance) as a means to threaten parents. As well they should be.
Quote:
Because the school division brought up foster care, the incident indirectly brought the Luzerne County Children and Youth Services into the controversy. Joanne Van Saun, who runs the local agency, told CNN on Saturday she feels her agency was weaponized to threaten families. "We exist to protect and preserve families. The only time a child is taken out is when they cannot be maintained safely in their home," she said. "Our agency has helped many children and families with paying rent and buying clothes. We know children do better when they're with their families."
Ok, I assume that the area’s CFS has nothing better to do, and abundant foster families to take in children with unpaid lunch fines? Yah. That makes sense.
All I have to say about this is that some parents have been trained to expect others to raise their children.
Back in the day, a peanut butter sandwich on white bread, for $.25 was considered lunch for white people, or anyone else.
When the state decided the feeding of children was not a parent responsibility your announcement of foster care is the next logical step
I think the opposite is true here. Parents ARE NOT meeting their responsibilities for meeting lunch costs. Some kids get free lunches, and they have to qualify via low income. Others get partially subsidized lunches, and of course, others pay the full nominal costs,
The school is left holding the bag.
I think withholding grades at semester’s end makes more sense for getting the fees paid. Schools take a lot of heat for giving peanut butter sandwiches to kids with unpaid lunch debts. But maybe that is a better solution.
Ok, I assume that the area’s CFS has nothing better to do, and abundant foster families to take in children with unpaid lunch fines?
Those who actually bothered to spend 60 seconds reading the linked article would see that child protective services is entirely uninvolved in this issue, except to pointedly note that this statement was made by the school district without their knowledge, and that they do not remove children from homes over unpaid meal balances.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948
When the state decided the feeding of children was not a parent responsibility your announcement of foster care is the next logical step
1) I see you haven't bothered to read the article either. That explains why you don't know what you're talking about.
2) The state providing a for-pay cafeteria is not the state deciding that feeding children is not the responsibility of parents.
3) However, the state obviously has a role in assuring that children do receive proper basic necessities (of which one is obviously food) from their parents. But that's not the issue here, as you'd know if you'd read the linked article instead of just using the subject for anti-government carping.
Standard school tactic of issuing threat to parents when all that's needed is a simple letter. Do the math and it's pretty obvious that other than a couple of cases, this isn't about deadbeat parents or parents not feeding their children. Most likely it's a case of no one monitoring the billing and doing a mass mail out. The average is less than 20 bucks per kid or about a couple of weeks of lunches. As noted by several people in the other thread on this, it's not uncommon for kids to use up the deposit and parents to not know until they get a bill from the school. Or the kid thinking, "I don't need lunch money since I'd rather have peanut butter than the awful lunch anyway." Kid logic.
"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch," the letter read. It also said failure to provide children with food could result in parents being sent to Dependency Court.
"If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care," the letter read.
The underlined is a reasonable statement. The next sentence takes it to the next level and mentions foster care. That they could have left out, IMO.
Our local schools provide a plain peanut butter sandwich for kids who can't pay. There are no threats.
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