EAG: GARDENDALE, Ala. – Jon Bivens doesn’t appreciate Gardendale Elementary School officials “branding” his son in the lunch line.
“They herd these kids like cattle,” he told AL.com.
Last week, Bivens’ son came home with a large stamp across his arm with a happy face, and a message underneath.
“I thought it was a good job stamp,” the father said. But when he looked closer, he realized the stamp was actually for him. It read: “I need lunch money.”
The 8-year-old boy’s lunch account still had a positive balance – $1.38 – but officials contend they wanted to alert the family that it was running low. Bivens told the news site his son typically brings lunch from home, but uses the lunch account for treats and he didn’t plan on depositing more money with only days left in school. read more
Branded? Hardly. It’s a stamp. It’ll wash off. Get over yourself.
I can see what they were trying to do; giving the kid a note to take home to tell the parents about his account balance is pretty hit-or-miss. Kids lose the notes, forget to take them home, etc. Kids do that.
I wouldn’t say this is the best solution, but I can see it working. The person at the lunch line checkout sees that an account is low, stamps the kid, problem solved. No extra steps, no extra people, no paperwork to file, nothing to get lost in the system. It’s simple, quick, and effective. No one has to write any emails, you don’t have worry about the kid forgetting or losing the note.
The only real problem with it is that we’ve become a nation of giant blubbering vaginas, hypersensitive to even the slightest perceived – nay IMAGINARY – injury.
That wouldn’t show up on black skin.
Oh, never mind…
I think it’s a fine idea. Parents have a lot of things on their plate, a friendly reminder before the kid is denied food due to a goof up works for me.
Everything was fine until the MOOSE stuck her nose into the school lunch program.
He can wash off the stamp, sweat it off during the day or the parent may not even see it anyway. Just give the kid whatever the balance is in stale food and cut him off.
A small thing, but it is yet another example of the educationists’ and govt’s belief that they own the kids and can do as they please with them.
Why don’t they just dress him up like a muzzie or some other “immigrant” so he can qualify for a FREE LUNCH?
Guess they are unaware of e-mail
Nowadays, parents assume the school’s lunch lady is required to be their accountant and personal dayplanner. This is what happens when parents refuse to take personal responsibility for the daily care of their brats. Guess what my parents’ cue was that I needed lunch money for school? I went home hungry a few times and whined about it but I made damn sure I remembered my money or lunch box the next day.
These “Officials” need a good horse whipping.
The only lunch money ‘account’ should be in the kids pockets. If it’s empty, so are the kids.
Skipping lunch ain’t gonna kill anyone.
My Mom used to pack my lunch for me in a “Rawhide” inspired lunch box, but back then parents were allowed to do that and even throw in a cookie or two…
Don’t have any kids myself but of the kids I know in the neighborhood, I would guess about half are home schooled and I can see a definite difference between them and the public schooled kids. The big difference is not so much the quality of the education but how much more responsible the home schooled kids are.
It isn’t a sharp line. At one end are the home schooled kids whose parents take a great deal of responsibility for their kids and at the other end are parents that using public schools as a tax payer funded baby sitting service.
Guy should cry “racism” and the school will give his brat free lunches for the rest of his life.
Claim his kid’s a cis-gendered heterop-normative heuristically-challenged mis-anthropic hominid-distressed socially-psycho-social minority.
With a trace of Cherokee, like Liz Warren.
izlamo delenda est …
Why not just send a note home with the kid, like they used to do when I was in school? Or pick up the damn telephone and call his parents. Or e-mail them, as was suggested above. They’re bound to have parental contact information on file or the kid wouldn’t be in school. Mind you, these are the same people who are supposed to be so concerned about bullying and shaming of students, yet they are willing to put a stamp on the kid’s arm that could possibly make him an object of ridicule among his better-financed peers.
Or better yet: Realize that unless the kid’s lunch money balance was zero or less, he didn’t NEED lunch money. Or a stamp. Or a tattoo. Or a microchip.
I don’t want to get started here.
😡
Because tats’ show up better on white folk, is that a form of white privilege?
Just trying to keep up…
Nope ladies. Stamping the kid is obnoxious. Whatever happened to hands off?
We are losing our sense of humor.
Actually, I want to know WTF is wrong with the parents.
My mother was the comptroller of the house, and she gave me $3.00 in lunch money each week. I got it the same day as my allowance. I was therefore never short of lunch money.