Students pay with pennies for lunch, and get detention

Students pay with pennies for lunch, and get detention

weeklyscheiss.blogspot.com

Over on the Education Wonks (one of the best education blogs on the internet, by the way) there is a post about the students who tried to pay for their $2.00 school lunches with pennies, and got detention for it. The principal and superintendent apparently considered it disrespectful to pay with pennies, and stated that it held up the lunch line and showed no consideration to the aides who took the money at the register.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Pennies are legal tender, for them to say its just disrespectful is just nonsense.

weeklyscheiss.blogspot.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I think it depends on the situation. If it involves a couple of kids who are being obnoxious and obviously doing it just to be annoying and disrespectful, then it's inappropriate. Order must be kept in a school and if a situation of this type is allowed to occur it's only a short time before other kids think it's OK to disrespect the lunch ladies and teachers.

On the other hand, if it's a case of a kid politely offering a bunch of pennies, there should be no punishment. Perhaps they could be told to roll them in the future though.

My 2 cents.

If you read the article they say that TWENTY NINE students did it, and it started out as a prank, then ended up as a protest to the length of the lunch period.

So this isn't about people not accepting pennies, or thinking that they aren't legal tender. This is about students trying to disrupt things.

Originally posted by BlueTriangle
My 2 cents.

You are now put into ATS detention. Using pennies on the ATS board is disrespectful to posters and staff. You are being disruptive and must have your clean record destroyed for being poor. Poor people have no place in public arenas.

Thank you, have a nice day.



Seriously. Money is money. If they didn't throw it in the worker's face, then they did no wrong. The future police state is being taught to the children. I watched it happen more than a decade ago in my high school, each year they took a little more and made things a little stricter, when there was no prior problems or issues. Clean, safe school.

Year before I was there, seniors could leave campus for lunch, freshman year, no leaving campus, sophomore year, snack machines locked up during lunch, junior year, a yellow line was painted around the outside of the cafeteria that you couldn't go beyond, prior to that, you could go and get extra help from a teacher in their classroom, senior year, drink machines were locked up. Also, there was increased police presence on campus each year, again, this was a school without violence issues at the time nor in the past. They even suspended people for dying their hair. Down with freedom and individualism ... that is what public schools teach our children, now add to that being poor, as well as other things if you keep up with the news stories.



Students also have the right to peaceful protest. They did shorten the lunch times too, thanks for reminding me. If every kid wanted to pay with pennies, that is the right of the individual. Trying to get to the lunch room, buy, sit, eat, clean up, and get back to class in 20 minutes with 800 kids per lunch is not something that works very well. In fact, I rarely ate lunch at school because of that very reason. I had a class far away, so the lines were long by the time I got there, to where I would have not had time to finish it. That happened to me enough to where I just didn't eat anymore.

I guess you all forget what it was like being in school, some of us have better long term memories.

[edit on 3/13/08 by FreeThinkerIdealist]

reply to post by BlueTriangle


Yep agreed, there have been times where I have really needed to scrape the barrel to pay for stuff, and penny's is money too!

My method usually involves having whatever change I have in separate pockets, say I know I got £1 in silver in one pocket, £2.50 in copper in the other and the rest in my back pocket ~ I walk into the shop jingling like I don't know what. When it's my turn to pay I'd say something like "you're gonna hate me!" (cheeky grin always helps ) and make the whole deal as painless as possible... quite often they are actually glad for the change - everyone pays with notes.

Oh yhea, if there is a Q I let people in saying 'I'm gonna be difficult, you go first' that's only right.

We used to have pay with pennies days in high school. It was a good laugh. They had one lunch lady watching us count it out while the students without pennies got to move along. After that one time everyone who did it realized it wasn't fun and didn't do it again. Everyone won.

Also being discussed here:

www.abovepolitics.com...

Might've been the attitude.

If he did it with a disrespectful tone like "HERE" or even did it sarcastically to MAKE the person count the pennies (and did it spitefully.)

al this is is schools bullying there students out of money. in my school district they came out with manditory unifotms that had to be polo shirts in navy blue white or gray with tan slacks with belt loops snd belts with shirts tucked in / a pregnant sebior was staying with my neighbor and i helped her buy her uniforms. she qas 5 months along at christmas time snd looked like she was due but the school made her wear their uniform tan maternity slacks weren't part of dress code and she was kicked out till i bought her some mens 40 by 30 tan slacks

Could be an example of civil disobedience critical of a perceived right to convenience. Kids are smart: a lot of them figure out how to grow up into decent human beings.

This is not Breaking Alt News, and an existing thread on this topic can be found here:

www.abovepolitics.com...

Please add comments and opinions there.

Closed.