One would think that after the appalled responses that Cranston received some months ago, the rest of the school districts would learn: Stop singling out kids for what they can’t control. The Warwick School Department recently rolled out a new rule stating that any student with a lunch account that has yet to be paid will not get a normal lunch. The rule was enacted Monday, May 6 and announced on Sunday, May 5. As if school isn’t tough enough, the school administration decided that the best way to handle this is to give sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwiches, thereby singling out students for debt that the parents should pay.
School lunch programs have failed our students all over the country. In Warwick, they offer school lunch programs that make lunch reduced or free depending on the income of the family. What happens when the earners make a few dollars over the threshold? You have families that struggle with the important things: rent, medical bills, food at home, struggling to make sure that their child is fed at school. In other scenarios, paperwork isn’t filled out or life gets busy (as it does), and parents fail to check on accounts. All circumstances that a child couldn’t possibly control.
Collectively, the school district has tens of thousands of dollars in school lunch debt. Pile that on top of a couple million in budgetary deficits and you’ve got yourself a pickle. How do you, therefore, handle such a debt? Well, there have been some generous people that have offered to pay off accounts. Even local establishments have offered to pony up the money in order to save children from their parents monetary downfalls.
In this case, the sins of the father, the parents really, fall onto the son. Despite children not having their own income to pay, Warwick has gone the way of tyrannical Cranston and decided to target the innocent.