Lunches seized from kids in debt at Salt Lake City elementary

Every child shoul receive the same education experience irregardless of the parents ability to pay debts. Anything other only solidifies that prejudice is acceptable in society. To take away a lunch in a social environment for being poor is showing children that being poor casts you a pariah and you will be treated as poor in every aspect of your life. Every child should be fed the same lunch or no lunch at all. Poor children do not get crappier books because they have no money not should they get crappier food.

reply to post by marbles87


I agree of course, and at least the poor don't get worse books within the same school, but from school to school, poor kids get worse everything. The beauty is that schools are funded by property taxes, so if I own a house on the golf course and several duplexes in the ghetto, my kids are gonna have a well funded school because there are plenty of big fish sharing the cost and they don't all have kids. Then I lobby for lower property taxes in the neighboring city where my rental properties are and I save the money while the people who exist only to pay me suffer. If we were the least bit serious about education we'd centralize funding, standards, and purchasing so that we get enough for everyone at the best price. But by design we get just enough for those who are chosen at a tidy markup, and the rest pay whatever they can to get nothing at all.

I went to a poor, mostly Hispanic highschool ten miles down the road from a big golf course sign that says "playground of presidents". Our school was 50 years old and had 20 computers for over 2000 kids- their schools were 10-20 years old with multiple computer labs. Our books were falling apart and the school kept trying to charge people for damaging them, they had new ones plus classroom sets so they didn't have to carry them in every day. Our school was so underfunded and ignored that we were literally still participating in programs that no longer existed- when the California national guard's version of jrotc had zero funding and zero staffing at the state level, nobody ever filed papers to switch our school to a different program or even to close our chapter- so the drivers ed teacher just baby sat a bunch of kids in camouflage who weren't doing anything for 3 years. The neighboring rich school kept the same program in fact, and the first thing they did, I kid you not, was claim to be the local headquarters and requisition a bunch of our equipment out from under us.

The state has concluded that there is nothing in the poorer schools that would make them responsible for the high cancer rate among teachers there, but then they got caught using contaminated fill dirt when they finally rebuilt my former high school. They say all that's wrong is that the dirt can't be compacted, but my former school has held class in trailers in the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store for over a year now and the night watchman just walks around the construction fence and refuses to actually go onto the school grounds. (And for those who've never studied algebra in a trailer in the Mojave desert, you're missing an experience).

In Desert Hot Springs (the ghetto north of Palm Springs where they place parolees) they actually had the new high school built by an architect who exclusively designs prisons.

Meanwhile the white upper middle class schools have money to recruit athletes to transfer across district lines.

I could go on and on. It's almost as if the whole point of educating the poor is to get them used to being cheated.

reply to post by VoidHawk


I never agreed with home schooling before, but now I see it is quickly becoming the only way to protect your child and to ensure that your child gets a well rounded education.

Public schools, like everything that is government regulated, is more about control and money, than it is about serving the people or for the betterment of our society.

There was a time that people avoided anything that had to do with the government and depended solely on themselves, family, friends and community. I think that time has come again.

reply to post by NightSkyeB4Dawn


Why stop at home schooling? You could steal the good teachers from the schools as tutors for library sessions, thus making sure the kids get some socialization and education. Paying them 500 dollars a day would come out to the cost of lunch money if they ran 5 hour and a half sessions of 20 kids each. I guarantee 5% of a motivated teachers attention for 90 consecutive minutes with no government guidelines is better than what the average poor student gets out of a full school day that costs a hell of a lot more, being shuffled through 50 minute classes, half of them irrelevant with closer to 40 students to a room and a teacher who A. isn't free to teach, B. Is past caring.

Education is one of a few areas where the people could instantly put the government out of business and do a much better job, and it's about the most peaceful revolutionary act I can imagine. But I'm a realist, people gotta get to those jobs they hate, so their kids that they love are gonna have to just deal with whatever happens while they're gone.

reply to post by The Vagabond


I think it is getting easier for people to realize that those miserable jobs that are only extensions of government control and manipulation, are not worth the sacrifices they are making. Their children only believe they have to have the latest electronic gadget which cost more than a mortgage payment, because their parents are teaching them that their self worth is determined by how many items they can possess before they finish their brief journey to a land fill.

It took my brother-in-law losing his job from the banking industry for him and my sister to realize that they had more household dollars with him staying home and taking care of the house and children, then when he was bringing in a second income. They had to cut back on a lot of things, but it created more family time and activities which created a much more peaceful and happier environment for all. The other children in the neighborhood even migrated to their home because it was always a fun place to hang out.

People are waking up. They are learning it isn't always about money and things. I just wish more would wake up and wake up faster.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Most school districts are not run by parents. They are run by bureaucrats appointed by elected city and county officials. In turn these people implement state and federal laws in schools and have policies that reflect the various, enormous, and egregious failures of the school system they created with said legislation.

There is absolutely NO reason for me to be involved in the public school system out of some misguided sense of community that no one takes seriously anyway.

But I do take my kids' education seriously. I am willing to pay for it. I am willing to work hard to make sure their education is top notch-the best my blood, sweat, and tears can pay for. I absolutely refuse to send my kids to these indoctrination prison camps they call schools.

reply to post by projectvxn


I live in a small town with an elected school board. I can't say our school is much better (the real issue is relating to policies that amount to class warfare when you really look at it).

I guess i was speaking more from the standpoint of the ideal, not reality.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


I understand your point. I really do. But the state of public education is such that calling it education is a laughable notion to me and many others. Hell you should ask what highschool students think of the quality of their education. Most of them are just as disillusioned with it as I am.

Private education, charter schools, and homeschooling consistently outperform public schools by far. I fully intend to take advantage of that for my kids.

"The workers then took those lunches from the students and threw them away, he said, because once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another."

HUH?! am i missing somthing?

and also throwing away food for any reason is insane, doing for that reason is more insane.

The world definitely is going mad.