What sort of cruel vindictive cretin would come up with this policy? What purpose is served in humiliating a hungry child in oublic?

Most school districts I know here provide milk and a bologna or cheese sandwich if the child can't pay.

Start with...

http://legislature.idaho.gov/senate/membership.cfm

http://legislature.idaho.gov/house/membership.cfm

This is what's confusing to me: Let's assume they're telling the truth and the kids who don't have lunch money are issued a sandwich and carton of milk. Why in HELL don't they put the money collection desk before the area where the food is, so they can help these kids preserve the last shard of dignity they have left?

Can not say what I really want to say

When I saw this story, I said to myself, we have to be better as a people to deny children the basic right of food due to income. What does it cost to provide meals for all children, maybe 1-2 cents of property tax millage, if that. For those districts that fund their schools with property tax revenues, that amount isn't going to make a huge difference to owners, about $10-20/yr on a $100K appraised property. If that little amount makes that much of a difference, you really don't need to be owning property. Example, here in Charlotte that house I mentioned now cost $1,225/yr in tax to city and county. If it went up to $1,245 to ensure no such thing as reduced or full-price lunches, that would be no problem. I don't have kids in CMS but even as a renter, I still pay property taxes that are included in the rent payments.

Merica!

I don't understand how these policies can be in use today. I do not think humiliating a child is ever the answer. Even giving a child a baloney or cheese sandwich while the other students have a hot lunch is humiliation.

Luckily, my kids were never in this situation. I know there are subsidized meals for children of families with low incomes. We live in a school district (suburban) where I once asked my kids about this and they had no idea if any kids at their school would qualify for free school lunches (the innocence of youth).

When I was a kid, I remember paying, every Monday, to ride on the school bus. It cost 50¢ a week "whether you rode one day, or five days". There was an open cigar box on the dashboard. (When I told my kids that story their response was, "How old are you?" Believe it or not, it was the 70s.)

I remember bringing lunch money to school. I also remember that if you wanted an extra milk, (8 oz. carton) it cost a nickel. I also got in trouble in the lunchroom. They didn't have chocolate milk, so I brought a little plastic container with Nestlé's Quik, or the strawberry version. Of course other kids saw what I did and they started to bring their own. Some kids complained that they didn't have Nestlé's Quik at their house, so it was banned.

When I got into the seventh grade and junior high, the lunch ticket was $5 per week. I think this was before there was a national school lunch program, because that was a lot of money compared to the $1.70/meal quoted in this story. Anyway, I didn't like about 60% of the meals they served, so I stopped buying the school lunches, and went to the school concession stand in the back of the auditorium. Yep, I ate Hostess fruit pies, chips, ice cream sandwiches, and other crap for lunch, every single day. I also bought milk or orange drink in those little cartons from the 7th to 9th grades. I was a scrawny kid 95lbs. in the 7th grade up to 150 lbs. by 9th grade and childhood obesity was not a big deal back then.)

for like three or four days without a meal, just to show them what its like to go freaking hungry. Those who do it to kids, should get the same treatment they give to the kids, but longer..just so they know what it feels like to have your tummy screaming at you to eat food.

Hey,I been there..but I learned how to buy rice, and beans to get though the tough times when there was very little food to be put on my table.

as long as it was the regular lunch and not the A La Carte stuff. The school would put a charge on the kids account and then notify the parents if the account was in the negative. Try to get the parents to pay up later. They never would have done this. Of course now we don't have that problem at all because there is universal free lunch and breakfast in our city's public schools. It is a program the school district can participate in if they have a large enough population of students that receive free or reduced lunch already. I believe they are reimbursed by the feds for it. It saves the school the hassle of trying to get money out of people who might not have it. I think the regular lunch and breakfast programs ought to just be paid for with our tax dollars for all the kids anyhow. Just add the cost of feeding the kids to the price it costs to fund the school district for a year. It's not like feeding the kids in optional, so just add it to the tax payers' bill.