Yet another reason why I hate every goddamn billionaire with the fire if a thousand suns.
Just the fact that billionaires even exist shows that our system is fucked.
*firey passion of a thousand suns
Edit: white hot intensity of a thousand suns (forgot the exact quote)
*fiery suns of a thousand passions
*sunny passions of a dozen fires
So it’s too expensive to provide school lunch, but not too expensive to completely take over the care of the children entirely. More and more, I understand what people mean when they say the cruelty is the point. This makes zero goddamned sense.
Orphan grinder…
I want to add something because I want to add a glimmer of positivity. I mean, this is all anecdotal but I’m housing one of my daughter’s friends right now.
I’m still learning her history because I have absolutely zero guardianship over her and I don’t pry because she’s been through so much and she shares when she’s ready. Her mother passed about two years ago and her dad is in the wind. Her grandma has guardianship but treated her as a burden.
I play nice with Grandma so my new daughter stays by me. I’m not sure if CPS was ever called on either her mother or grandmother or if it was just because mother passed but ‘daughter’ has weekly therapy and a social worker who got her into a very decent state university.
She’s about to go visit for a tour and I’m so worried but also excited because she has a full ride from the state for a two or four year depending on what she wants. I’ve looked into the school and it’s pretty great. It’s going to be hard for my ex and I to pull off the same for our daughter.
The state of affairs are abysmal these last few decades but there are still good people trying to do good things. The Man isn’t out to get you if you’re lucky enough to get the right government employee. Or maybe you just have to suffer enough.
I know the young lady I’m talking about deserves this chance and I’m ecstatic that she has the opportunity. It makes me feel a little guilty that I’m going to miss her, but in a good way.
I wish every kid and every parent didn’t have to worry so much about getting into trouble because they’re already struggling. The horrors I’m learning this child has gone through shouldn’t be the bar by which we set as deserving of a higher education.
I have barely anything to offer but even just feeding her and teaching her to cook and do laundry and taxes and set up a bank account makes me some sort of goddess in her eyes and I’d love to take credit but it’s just too tragic to me that a child considers this little bit I have to offer as some sort of gift. What I have to offer as a ‘gift’ is not. It’s what any child should be entitled to. I’m happy that she finally feels comfortable enough to add things she wants to the grocery list without worrying too much that she’s putting me out in some way.
It may not seem like much to you, but to her it’s making a world of difference. I’m reminded of a quote I got from an otherwise kind of silly movie:
“Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children.”
It’s a slightly changed version of a quote from William Thackeray, apparently. Whatever the case, I think it applies here. The gods and goddesses of this child’s life let her down, and you may not think much of yourself or what you do, but you’ve chosen to be a good goddess, and that’s a wonderful thing. You’ve blessed not only the child you’ve taken in, but your own, as well, by showing her how to treat others the right way.
My school held my diploma for 6 months because of $20 worth of lunch debt that turned out to be a computer error.
That was 12 years ago.
Schools using food as a weapon against students is nothing new.
Kids having lunch debt is the most American thing I’ve ever seen.
Just a reminder that the same people who are against free school lunches for children are the ones who stand in front of abortion clinics screaming about how abortion is murder.
There’s no contradiction for these people. All fetuses have a right to life and children should suffer if they don’t have enough money. Shoulda worked harder at the bootstraps factory if they didn’t want to eat shit their entire lives.
They max out at a 4 on Kohlberg’s morality scale, ie the laws are immutable and nothing can change them. The law says that everyone should live and our system is perfect because it’s our system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg’s_stages_of_moral_development
Sprinkle some smug self-satisifaction on top of this and it’s a real good portrait of the Christian right. Religion is a narotic for these folks who spend their days judging others. They believe in the correct God™ and His prosperity gospel. Anyone who is poor or those who “sin” deserve their lot in life. And how are kids to learn self-reliance when they’re coddled with free food? We’re so weak to let our kids live in such decadent times! What’s next, they won’t have to pay for healthcare after they made the bad decision to get hurt or sick?
They ask how we can be so wasteful as a society while they clutch their imitation pearl necklace. Meanwhile the public’s share of wealth shrinks and everyone is left to fight for the scraps. When the situation is so dire, it’s easy to fight with each other than to question big business, Wall Street or the financial sector.
Eh, not just America sadly. Half the world seems brainwashed into thinking that feeding children is controversial. The BBC did an article the other day about 500,000 extra kids getting them, and it got 9000 comments, split equally between “fair enough” and “but what about my tax money? 😢”
They should give the Libertarian nutcases a large enclave, and all the people who moan about their taxes being spent on other people should be forced to go and live there.
Oh, there’s a pothole on your road? Hope one of the residents can afford to have it fixed. You were burgled? Can you afford to pay the police company to look into it? No streetlights, sorry. That’s a waste. You carry a torch and light your own way. Pensions? Didn’t you save enough?
Stop worrying about the tax bills of billionaires, for fucks sake. They can get by with less.
But why oh why aren’t people having kids?!
I highly doubt that image represents the food US kids get in school. It’s too healthy and good looking (not saying it looks good, just better than it actually would be).
My thoughts exactly. TWO vegetables?
This looks like prison food or something. Way better than school lunch
This is a little different but it sticks out.
My baby brother was born in 91 and when he eventually got into kindergarten one of his teachers flagged him for his speech impediment. He’d pronounce his P’s as B’s.
He was 5 and talked a mile a minute before he was two. He just couldn’t quite get the hang of that one part.
My parents weren’t worried. We were all helping him. My other brother and I were 6 years older than him and we we’re latchkey kids by the time I was 10.
My parents worked second/third jobs and second/third shifts rotating to make everything work for us. We barely saw them both at the same time.
I remember my Ma, and even Pops, being pissed as fuck and our chores and cleaning day was ramped up for a month or two, and all us kids had individual therapy sessions where they grilled us with questions we didn’t understand because the school call CPS on them because they wouldn’t (read: couldn’t) make after school speech therapy work with their schedules and they knew he’d learn on his own eventually anyway. They just made my parents lives that much more stressful in that time.
This was over 30 years ago now and I have my own kids, and bonus kids even! I have my own stories I could tell but this is the absolute worst because I saw how much it stressed out my overworked parents. My brother is a functioning member of society who got over his slight speech impediment within the year, with our help but mostly letting him develop on his own time.
Meanwhile, us kids just considered it a matter of course that we wrap up plates and Tupperware after each meal. One plate for Gertie our nextdoor neighbor and whatever was left went to Jorge’s family two doors down. We also learned how to mow the lawn only so the Grandma and Grandpa Hass, our other next door neighbors wouldn’t have to anymore. They weren’t actual family but they were to us. Jorge’s family got all my and my brothers’ hand-me-down clothes for his younger siblings, too. We didn’t quite understand why at the time. It’s just what you do. But yeah, make a struggling family’s life that much harder with your performative concern.
My wife runs a school kitchen, a big school, 2k+ high schoolers and almost 20 staff. Her pay is actually terrible, but the job has good medical insurance and I’m self employed with no benefits so she’s been sticking with it. Collecting debt is part of her job. They never withhold a basic meal (no extras if they have unpaid debt) but that meal gets added to their debt.
They don’t threaten anything legal like in this story, but they will not give you your diploma or transfer your credits if you haven’t paid your debt in full. We’re in Ohio.
Not wanting to feed children doesn’t seem very pro-life.
“The Wyoming Valley West School District Board of Directors sincerely apologises for the tone of the letter that was sent regarding lunch debt. It wasn’t the intention of the district to harm or inconvenience any of the families of our school district,” the school said in an “apology letter” on its website.
The fuck it wasn’t
The fact that they refused to accept the donations before the public backlash says everything. I guess people don’t like it when you mess with their orphan-crushing machine?
Earlier this week Bernie Sanders called for an end to “school lunch debt”. The senator, and one of the Democrat candidates for president, tweeted that it “should not exist in the wealthiest country in the history of the world” and pledged to “provide year-round, free universal school meals” if he won the White House.
LOL, imagine thinking Democrats would nominate someone standing on a “let’s feed poor people’s kids” platform. Was never going to happen.
I got kicked off free lunch when my mom married a rich guy. I didn’t eat lunch, or breakfast from 6-11th grade. I’d start to feel sick during the last couple hours of class.
It’s not something any child should experience. It was not something I had power over, other than digging quarters out machines to get like a Vitamin Water or something.
That’s a statement in itself really. Just another one for the history books
The state wants to own your kids, that way you’re out of the way and they have slaves for life
Isn’t this several years old, or is it happening again?
Or, has it not stopped happening?
The original story i heard the school backed down for 2 reasons. 1 a local millionaire offered to pay the miss $26k and 2 the press was causing a lot of negative attention.
Good
