Paignton School Refuses Child Lunch over $1.75 Debt

What are your guys' thoughts on this? Personally, it really irritates me how they did that.

• Source: BBC News
• Published: 6/12/2013

 

Before I make my statement, I have to point out something. There is a major flaw in the title of this thread. $1.75 and £1.75 are entirely different. If you were going to use a dollar sign, the amount should roughly have been $2.33 rather than the former. Euros have roughly a tad bit more worth than USD.

This is absolutely horrid. How could you withhold a meal from an eleven year old child? Over £1.75 even!! Completely and utterly outrageous. I think whichever hair-brained idiotic fiend that deployed such an awful 'rule', as they called it, should not only be sacked but disallowed to continue working in any environment that contains children. And how are you going to be 'disappointed' that you were given full blame for the matter?! It was your own fault. You were fully to blame. You're telling me that, metaphorically speaking, my child is going to go hungry because I owe you a couple of dollars? If you're that greedy, you should be labeled a scrooge for the rest of your life and live in fear of constant agonizing mockery and hatred by your fellow peers. This is disgusting, putrid, and all around moronic. The nerve of people these days is just sickening!

 

It's not the child's fault that the money wasn't paid. Seriously, the reason why kids are fed in school is partly because if they don't eat they're hungry all day. Not including the fact they're still growing and need food to eat.

It's stupid that they refused to give the kid food because he didn't have the money. When I was in high school, I got my lunch once in a while on credit because I forgot my money and paid them the next day without problems. The school made a poor decision and it's biting them in the ass.

The principal sticking with the workers actually angered me for a bit, then my mom said that the principal always takes the school's side. I had a teacher scream at me and humiliate me for months along with forming a hate club under my name. She was a third grade teacher and did everything to make my life hell, the only reason she stopped was because my mom went in and threatened her a life of pure hell if she continued, that and she almost punched her. My mom went to the principal, superintendent, and god-knows where else and they took the teachers side despite several witnesses saying what the **** was going on in that classroom. It's sadly a part of life.

 

Are you kidding me? Well...yeah. I don't know if you guys have attended public school, but I have and debt is debt. Just like if you don't pay your senior fees, you can't graduate; if you don't pay for lunch, you don't eat. The school will not and can not feed you if you can't pay for it. It's not the school's obligation to feed the students. It's a very nice privelege. There is a school full of children there, should they let every child who's just $1/1 Euro in debt eat? No. That debt grows and it begins to cost the school. Like, Jesus, if you're family can't afford it, there are usually Free/Reduced lunch programs. I was on free lunch all of my life. It's not hard at all to get lunch for your children. They're blowing this up so it seems this kid is some sort of charity case or as if he was direly mistreated. There was no money in his account. He could not purchase a meal. I dunno, maybe I just got rougher upbringings than some people but people have such a sense of entitlement to priveleges that it bothers me. That's like me walking into McDonalds with no money, ordering a small fry, and then getting pissed off when they don't give it to me because it's JUST $1.00.

 

I worked as a Teaching Assistant last year at a school that had gone into this sort of thing with paying for lunches.
It's an automated system, which obviously has its problems and I can't say I take either side, a lot of misunderstandings, bad payment systems, and bad communication. Bit drastic to move school over it, and to be news worthy, but oh well.

 

It could be just me, but I think the administrators at schools are getting stupider and stupider every minute. Everytime a student is in trouble at school nowdays on the news, it's because of dumb things. On the news a few days ago, a child was facing a year in prison just because he wore a shirt that was related to the second amendment on the Bill of Rights.

This is just outrageous. Not feeding a child just because his parents owed something so minimal? Something around $2? Look, I know you could just bring food or something to school instead, but I think they're not thinking this through very smartly. Of course if this is also apparent within about 100 other students, then I can see why they are doing this. As of now though, it's not fair to not feed a single kid over such a small debt.

 

Actually, the debt would have been about 2.74 in dollars, according to google. £ = British pound stirling, not Euros. Not that it really matters, as the cost is still pretty minimal.

imo, the school should have been more lax regarding their kitchen policies in this situation. The kid's parents should have been informed, rather than the kid being turned away. The school has a responsibility over childrens' wellbeing and that should include feeding them. I'm not saying that school meals should be free for all, but I don't think that a child should ever be refused service.

 

Agreed. It'd be so easy for them to just give the kid his lunch and immediately phone the parents to notify them to pay the outstanding debt and to add money to the child's account.

I realize things are done differently school by school (and country by country, as this happened in England), but I was always on the free/reduced lunch plan. However, if you didn't have the money for lunch that day, you could go down to the main office and get a pass. I think it was like $2.75 for lunch? Can't recall exactly. Anyway, you'd have to pay off that debt by the end of the school year (though you'd be reminded of it several times before that). If you didn't, they'd withhold your report card, and if you were a senior, you couldn't graduate. It was lumped together with overdue book fees at the library. I thought that was a fine system. I really doubt a school is hurting so much for money that they can't extend such a courtesy. It's preferable to kids going without lunch, at least.

 

If this is an academy like the school I worked in, where the budget is basically all lumped to the school to be placed where they see fit and not by a governing body, means they've probably got money flow situations. It's when the school becomes more a business and less a place of education, where you are dependent on money, which is appalling for a free education system and shows the arrogance of management rule over educators rule.

 

I understand totally, my school had some hella budget issues... but £1.75? Ridiculous.

 

No food because the parents owned £1.75? Really? That is stupid, sadly this isn't the first time this has happened in the UK. My mum had to miss out on a meal because she missed a day's payment (Sure she was a teenager then but she skipped breakfast because she got travel sick on the bus to school) and my grandma got mad at the school and told them she would have paid them for the meal the day after, which is what should have happened here.