Welcome to tale #17,431 of bassackwardness on the part of a school district:
I was talking to a friend of mine on Friday afternoon when she got a call on the other line. She looked at the caller ID and said “Hang on, this is Cindy’s school.” Cindy is my friend’s daughter, she’s in the sixth grade.
When my friend came back on the line, she said “You won’t believe what that was about. Can I call you back in a half-hour or so?” I said sure, and when my friend called me back, the story she told knocked me on my butt.
Cindy was suspended for two days.
Cindy’s infraction: she bought french fries and some milk for a friend who had forgotten her lunch money.
This violates a rule (that my friend was only vaguely aware of) which prohibits students from supplying food to their friends, regardless of the circumstances. In order to “battle childhood obesity” ( :rolleyes: ) the school has decided that children may only eat what their parents provide or what the parents provide money to buy.
So if a kid walks out of the house and forgets his or her lunch or lunch money, or mom or dad forget to give the kid money, they’re supposed to call home (because so many kids have stay at home parents these days who can run right to the schoolhouse with the forgotten items) or starve.
By ensuring that her friend had something in her stomach to carry her through the afternoon, Cindy missed school today, will miss school tomorrow and will have to take zeroes on all classwork, homework assignments and tests that she misses. Her forgetful friend was similarly punished for accepting the milk and fries, and will also be receiving zero scores.
My only response to this is a very simple, if not particularly eloquent WTF?
In the schools where I taught, if a student forgot their lunch or their lunch money, the office would give them a lunch voucher and send a letter home to the parents (by mail) for reimbursement. Students regularly made loans to one another, or bought things for one another, and more well-to-do students (or those with jobs) would often just buy things for their friends.
Going back further, when I was in high school, in the 70s, we had a “lunch club” at the table where I sat. The first week of every month, a group of seven or eight of us had what was essentially a potluck lunch every day, with each of us bringing enough of a single item to share with everyone else. Since there was always something extra, we’d gladly share with whomever asked, especially some of the kids who we knew to be from the very poor rural area outside of our town. For at least one week each month, some of those kids had a decent meal every afternoon, perhaps the only ones they got.
What message are we sending when kids are penalized – academically, at that – for helping their friends, or accepting help from friends? Who is served by leaving kids to go hungry if they don’t have someone at home who can come to their aid if something is forgotten? If this is really about battling obesity, don’t they realize that a kid who doesn’t eat at lunchtime is more likely to go home and binge, and probably on junk food if they’re a latchkey kid, as so many are?
This just makes no sense.