ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a milk carton might not seem like much of a meal — but that’s what’s on the menu for students in New Mexico‘s largest school district without their lunch money.
Faced with mounting unpaid lunch charges in the economic downturn, Albuquerque Public Schools last month instituted a “cheese sandwich policy,” serving the alternative meals to children whose parents are supposed to be able to pay for some or all of their regular meals but fail to pick up the tab.
Such policies have become a necessity for schools seeking to keep budgets in the black while ensuring children don’t go hungry. School districts including those in Chula Vista, Calif.; Hillsborough County, Fla.; and Lynnwood, Wash.; have also taken to serving cheese sandwiches to children with delinquent lunch accounts.
Womanist Musings does a good job of outlining some of the socio-economic critique to such a policy:
“If a parent is laid off because the company that they work for is going bankrupt how are they irresponsible?”
Second grader Danessa Vigil said she had to eat cheese sandwiches because her mother couldn’t afford to give her lunch money while her application for free lunch was being processed.
Now, “every time I eat it, it makes me feel like I want to throw up,” the 7-year-old said.
all i could think of was: ewww…while i was reading this.
The School Nutrition Association recently surveyed nutrition directors from 38 states and found more than half of school districts have seen an increase in the number of students charging meals, while 79 percent saw an increase in the number of free lunches served over the last year.
In Albuquerque, unpaid lunch charges hovered around $55,000 in 2006. That jumped to $130,000 at the end of the 2007-08 school year. It was $140,000 through the first five months of this school year.
Charges were on pace to reach $300,000 by the end of the year. Mary Swift, director of Albuquerque’s food and nutrition services, said her department had no way to absorb that debt as it had in the past.
“We can’t use any federal lunch program money to pay what they call bad debt. It has to come out of the general budget and of course that takes it from some other department,” Swift said.
1. this is not nutritious. simply not. american cheese (with that faint smell of plastic wrapper still clinging to it) slapped between to slices of white bread. who told them this was nutritous? why dont poor kids deserve a nutritious meal?
2. right now i am eating koshary. which is the cheap everybody’s meal here in cairo. macaroni, rice and spaghetti noodles with hot sauce and garlic sauce and cooked beans and chopped fresh vegetables ontop. really cheap. really easy to make. delicious. good for the body. seriously they couldnt serve rice and beans and veggies? seriously? cold cheese sandwiches?
3. why does the school systems decide to humiliate poor children through food? what about the social and emotional harm done to the kids? why use food as a form of stigma?
4. why do the school system insist on giving these kids a meal that consists of white bread and dairy products (considering that alot of them are kids of color and probably lactose sensitive and intolerant)?
5. when you serve kids food like this (and yes i know that hot school lunches are atrocious-i am a public school graduate-but seriously there are degrees of disgusting in the world) what is the likelihood of them learning well in school?