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In reply to the discussion: Texas school tosses 6th grader’s breakfast in trash after he can’t pay 30 cents [View all]MineralMan
(146,395 posts)part time at the cafeteria as a cashier and the rest of the day as a junior high office secretary. Lunch was 50 cents. This was before there was anything like free lunch programs, 1959-63. My mom kept a pile of fifty-cent pieces stacked up on the cash register. If a kid came through and was short of his lunch money, she'd drop one of those into the cash register and that was that.
It was simple. She believed that no kid should have to skip lunch for not having 50 cents. She didn't have to use a lot of those coins, but everyone knew that she was good for a lunch if you didn't have your lunch money. The coins were stacked up where everyone could see them as they came through the lunch line, and the word got out. Nobody ever took advantage of her, but kids without lunch money knew they could still get lunch.
She's 89 years old now, and that's how she is. That's how she has always been.