I’m not big on suing schools but this would cross the line of parental rights.
No. It’s not just a matter of my kids. I have an interest in my local public school’s function whether my kid goes there or not–that’s our future society. Everyone has an interest in successful public schools. If school-provided lunches are a cost-effective way to make schools as a whole more successful, then feeding kids is part of the schools’ job, and all citizens (parents or not) should want to see all schools doing it passably well.
Both liberty and nutrition may be served. Public schools should make decent, healthy school lunches available. And they should also permit students to bring their own lunches from home.
That teacher could certainly have been awful, but as a teacher myself I often have parents get upset to find out that junior has been throwing away his milk carton or other part of their packed lunch. Then I get, “I’d really like you to make sure he drinks it every day! Why wasn’t I told he was just wasting it, when I make special trips to get that organic soy almond expensive Starbucks whatever milk!” So the teacher could well have been covering her buttockular region in case your mom happened to be one of THOSE moms.
Regarding the article, I don’t like the idea of a blanket policy. But I also know how painful it was to have the gross school lunch or else a brown paper sack with a sorry peanut butter foldover and small apple, which was all my mom could afford, while my friends all around me got home lunches containing oreos and other yummy junky delights or thermoses of hearty soup and fancy sandwiches cut into heart shapes. It was the only time of day I felt poor, and I was really jealous. ‘How can she be my best friend, and not give me one of her oreos??’ Everyone getting the same school lunch would alleviate that, like how some schools have kids wear uniforms partly so kids won’t feel bad for being too poor to buy brand name clothes.
One solution might be to require all children to sign up for daily school lunches, paying for them if they are financially able, and then allowing them to bring a bag lunch if they want. So they can eat their bag lunch but they are entitled to also pick up a school lunch, and they can eat the parts of it they like. If the school lunch is healthy it shouldn’t be problematic except for kids who would bring a huge lunch and also eat the school lunch. A kid who looked at tomorrow’s menu and thought he’d like the taco but nothing else could bring some fruit and a yogurt from home to supplement. Parents might lean on kids to eat school lunches more days than not because they are paying for them. If the school gets it together and really serves a healthy, tasty lunch, most kids will eat at least some of it. Yes, it would cost money, but it seems like the parents at this school are paying that already.
Sorry, but I really don’t like that. Food is a pretty big social thing in our family–my daughter’s bedtime stories often involve recipes, and she loves to cook in the kitchen beside us. My wife and I both make our lunches every day before we go to work. When my daughter is old enough, I definitely plan to bring her into the cooking fold and the lunchmaking fold. I could afford to buy her school lunches, and I won’t qualify for free/reduced lunch programs.
But asking me to pay for lunch twice (once for the lunch she won’t eat, and once for the one she brings from home) would be more than we could easily afford.
The more I think about this school’s program, the more I dislike it. If they’re a charter school, that might be different. But their website has a Chicago city school domain, which makes me suspect they’re not charter, which may mean that kids get sent there without any parent choice involved. And that’s just wrong.
Yet again, I do think there are some acceptable limits. For example, if a school banned students from bringing caffeinated beverages to school, I’d be completely fine with that. Banning sugary sodas is almost as uncontroversial. But then you get to things like Hi-C fruit punch packs, which are nearly as bad for you as a Sprite, but I’m not entirely comfortable banning those. So I’m not sure where to draw the line.
The only way I’d be able to support this would be if the school lunches were free* for all students, I would strongly object to paying extra fees at a public school for services my kids don’t need or want and that I have no desire for them to use.
*Free as in payed from taxpayer money and grants like everything else.
Are you serious?? Lord why don’t we all just cut our hair the same, make the same amount of money, live in the same kind of house and wear the same clothes. God forbid someone have something you don’t.
My six year old wears a uniform to school. While I don’t agree with it (at that age) it’s hardly the worst punishment in the world. She also had to wear a uniform to day care / kindergarten.
Uniforms aren’t the worst facist oppression you will ever see - I have never quite understood this whole “school uniforms are evil” meme that you have going on over there.
The school is a public school, but **if **it’s a magnet school or otherwise better than the average Chicago public school, it might be a difficult school to get your kids into. Parents may not want to have to transfer their kids to a lesser school, so they would be somewhat captive.
I’m talking about how I felt as a 6 year old. I agree there should not be a blanket policy at that school. I do think it is conceivable that there could be a school where it might make sense, just as there are public schools where uniforms might make sense because of specific problems.
It’s 5 meals out of 21 in a school week- or 180 out of 1,092 in a year. I imagine that is not going to destroy your family’s special food culture or your child’s appreciation of food and cooking.
Would you consider making some small accommodations for a program like this if it is shown to have a positive effect on public health? Do you feel the same about other public health measures, such as vaccination?
A well-designed lunch program that is integrated with a nutritional education program probably would have a positive effect on something that actually is a pretty big problem. And it is possible that having the kids learn about nutrition and then immediately chow down on Lunchables and Capri-Suns (or worse) may limit the effectiveness of nutrition education. Anyway, “putting it into practice” is an essential part of the learning process.
I’m not saying this is the kind of program being run here, and if this were to become widespread I’d want to see some experimental programs run, followed by research showing if banning outside lunches has a meaningful effect.
I’d also want to see room for student and parent involvement- it wouldn’t be at all hard to have a good feedback mechanism. And I do think it would be important to have a reasonable opt-out program.
I admit to being a little confused over how the lunch program works. When I went to school (graduated HS in 1994) lunch was not provided for free. I had to bring in $1.75 to get a tray full of food and a little carton of milk. For an extra .25 cents I could get another carton of milk. Chocolate even! So it seems weird to me that this school would opt to increase the operating expenses of the school in the form of forcing lunch upon the students.
It’s true that we tell kids in school all sorts of things from how to behave to what to wear. However, starting in sixth grade I noticed I had a little more autonomy than I did in elementary school. For example, I was free to select my own electives in 6th grade which was a new experience for me. Even though my school had a dress code we were not required to wear uniforms. So long as I didn’t violate that code I was free to wear what I wanted. At some point I think school’s can go overboard in what they mandate for students. Perhaps a lunch isn’t the most pernicious offering the school can come up with but it seems a little excessive to me.
I’d be okay with it if kids could choose to bring their own lunches. Other than that, probably not.
Then you imagined wrong. One day is too many to interfere with a parent’s guardianship responsibility and feeding preferences.
No. There is an infinite list of personal freedoms that can be removed using a government-knows-best yardstick.
The school is allowed to discipline your child, correct? The school is allowed to instill values and morals during the school day, no? The school is allowed to teach and educate your child, right? Sounds to me like from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, the school is acting as a parent.
I’m also reminded of what my kindergartener teacher said when Tommy refused to stop hitting people with the blocks and they got taken away, “Sometimes people who can’t act appropriately, ruin it for everyone else.”
Anyway, this is one school and it’s a 6 year old policy. Let the chicago-ites who send their kids there deal with it.
(I’m not a parent and I don’t know what I would do in this situation. I never brought a lunch in because there was never a school lunch that I thought was so gross and terrible. I dunno about my hypothetical kid.)
Sure, it does, in words. If I told you that for dinner tonight, I had a broccoli and rice casserole with aged cheddar, steamed carrots and tilapia baked on a bed of leeks, presuming that you like those ingredients, you might say it sounds tasty and balanced. But as it happens, my rice was undercooked when it went into the casserole, the leeks burned and made the tilapia taste all funky and I was out of butter so my carrots were dry.
What I’m saying is that there’s a long distance between description and execution, especially when you’re working with standard school lunch ingredients and cooking in large batches.
And honestly I don’t know what this is on these trays but it doesn’t look tasty it looks gloppy, lukewarm and at least two parts of it are prepackaged stuff.
It’s also worth noting, that when I was in school, we got the menu, it was ala carte. If there was a day when the entree was something we didn’t like or couldn’t eat, we could bring an alternative entree and buy the sides, or vice versa. I had then (and now) a strong aversion to tomato sauce, so I brought my lunch on days with pasta lunches. These kids don’t have that option, so on a day when the thing that they really dislike is the main dish what do they do? Go hungry. That’s unacceptable.
It’s also unacceptable that it seems that only medical reasons can get a child a waiver for homemade meals. I guess that means if you keep kosher or halal or if your family is ethically vegetarian or vegan, you’re SOL. The goal to “protect students from their own unhealthful food choices” is fine, but not when it runs counter to the religious and ethical sensibilities with which the families wish to raise their children.
Because inner city families are just overwhelmed with multiple options of places where they can send their kids for education. :rolleyes:
Sound something like,
Inner Stickler?
Given that one JotSCotUS thinks there’s nothing wrong with strip-searching a 13-year-old girl as part of a campaign to eradicate drug abuse in schools . . . because she might be hiding ibuprofen in her bra and/or panties. I’m kinda doubting that feeding preferences rise to the level of Constitutionally protected civil liberty*. :rolleyes:
*Granted, I am certain they can’t force Jewish students to eat pork . . . Muslim students on the other hand :dubious:.
(I can imagine the posts on Free Republic now "Not being able to force-feed Mooslims pork is just another nail in the forcing Americas to live under sherrya law coffin wharrgarbl, WHARRGARBL!)
CMC fnord!
And remember kids, if it’s not actually in the text*of the CotUS it’s just legislating from the bench by a judicially activist judge, penumbras and emanations need not apply.
*Infinite personal freedoms void where prohibited by Antonin Scalia’s judicial philosophy.
Oh my. A school is making decisions regarding my child. How dare they decide to do something like that!?!
One day of a school interfering with any of a parent’s responsibilities, like discipline, what they may or may not wear, and let alone what they eat during lunch, is a a day too many!
Get over it. Schools make all kinds of decisions regarding our kids. Yes, they are often arbitrary and excessive. This item barely makes a dent in comparison with the many silly decisions I seen made over the years and parents at the school had not batted one eyelash for six years until the Trib reporter “investigated” it and this one small school’s story was linked to by Drudge and it became a focus.
:rolleyes:
Good idea. Let’s have a moment of mandatory prayer thanking our Lord for our civil liberties, followed by a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Regards,
Shodan
Funny you should mention that,
From the cite about the 8-1 strip search case linked to in my post above.
I guess the Constitutional right to not be forced to recite the Pledge isn’t as important as the right to . . . hmm just where is the right to bring lunch to school in the CotUS?
CMC fnord!
Everybody knows this story is bogus, right? The school district has denied that any such policy exists and says the principal was misquoted.
You are making the common mistake of thinking that whatever is not mandatory is forbidden.
The burden of proof is on the school to show that they have the power to compel students to do something, generally in support of their educational mission. Assisting their caterer in imposing a monopoly is not really in support of any kind of educational mission.
IOW, whenever the state (or its agents) impose a rule, they have to show cause. As I said earlier, that some minority of parents don’t pack their kids a healthy lunch is not reason enough to prevent all parents from packing their kids a lunch.
Regards,
Shodan