So in the day and age when almost anything can be considered "racist" the Guardian news outlet published a story that I immediately was apprehensive of, mostly because it was written by the Guardian.
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This story had the headline of "'Lunch shaming': New Jersey students with $75 debt barred from dances and trips." Of course since there was a hint of political controversy and an opportunity to use the words "People of Color" political activist groups that spout nonsense such as "The Other 98%," "Occupy Democrats," "The Hill," and "The Young Turks" jumped all over this.
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While the original article by The Guardian didn't specifically mention race, later articles by even less reputable news sources simply ran with that notion even though there is zero evidence to indicate that this is the case. Notice something about the two pictures (neither of which were actually taken in the school in question)?
So the story is that the school lunch program at a New Jersey school started to ban students from certain optional school programs such as buying a yearbook, attending prom, going on school trips, etc. All of these things cost money out-of-pocket on behalf of the student. The reasoning being this is that if the student's family can afford to shell out $100 for an overnight trip to Six Flags, then they can afford to pay $2 for lunch. This in my mind, seems completely reasonable.
If the family is truly poor, and can provide proof that they are in fact eligible for government benefits such as food stamps and EBT (are those the same thing? I honestly don't know) they would be able to receive free lunch or extremely reduced price lunch (as low as 40 cents) anyway.
But these families are not the ones in question: The families that are simply not paying for lunch for the most part, actually do have the money, they just realized that they can get away with not paying for it and the school system has responded in the only way that they can.
This particular school district that The Guardian is attacking isn't even in a poor district. It is Cherry Hill district and the median (not average) income is well above the national median income.
The school has declined offers from local business people that want to pay off the entire debt stating something along the lines of "simply paying off the debt doesn't address the real problem here."
Let's also keep in mind that the "lunch debt threshold" that disqualifies students from extracurricular activities is at $75 / student. In order for a poor student to reach that level of debt they would have to have not paid for lunches for nearly a full school year. There is some suspicion that the students in question are actually not paying for lunch despite the fact that parents have been giving them the money to do so.
from the absolute trash FB page with millions of followers called The Other 98%
I don't know much about The Guardian but i know enough about the other "news organizations" on this list to realize that if they are talking about it, it is probably being misrepresented and at least for me, i almost immediately feel compelled to not believe it.
Upon looking further into this (what i consider to be) #fakenews I have come to the conclusion that I agree with the school system. There aint no such thing as a free lunch, as they say and seeing as how the school already has programs in place to provide free or reduced cost lunch to any student who actually is in a poor economic situation, it appears to me that the abusers of this generosity are precisely that: Abusers.
There is zero indication in any of the data provided that this even affects minorities and the fact that they jump to that conclusion is just shameful, not to mention, racist.
Drop it! You did a great article!
Thanks, appreciate it.
I absolutely agree with you here. There maybe some abuse coming from somewhere, and yep, there really is no such thing as free, and that includes lunch. I wonder how this will develop.
i know the statement is cliche, but this is a nothing-burger and in the absence of any real news, and the fact there are so many news outlets now, the media will cling-and-spin almost anything that is even remotely interesting. It's just a shame that if they told the truth, the story wouldn't be interesting... the reaction would "well of course someone who claims to not be able to afford lunch but can afford to go on field trips needs to be looked closer at."
I couldn't agree more. It actually feels weird that a media outlet is covering this. I don't think it's even news worthy - let the school and parents figure it out. 🤨
Oh boy, looking to open a can of worms here aren't you? I am not going to take the time to read through the other comments, but I am curious if anyone else actually commented that works in a public school system. I think a lot of states are dealing with similar issues whether it is related to race or not. Here are the things I can tell you having first hand experience with this subject (whether you asked or not :) ). So in Michigan School districts have three or four different budgets. There is the general fund that is like the main budget for the district and then athletics have their own sometimes and food services have their own. A short time ago they passed a law that states unpaid balances in the food services line will be taken from the general fund. With declining enrollment and the government robbing our budgets for pork projects, this is a huge deal. The issue is many of these students would qualify for free or reduced lunch but their parents are too proud to fill out the paper work. The districts are put in a tough position because they genuinely don't want to punish the kids for something that the parents aren't doing, but the money has to come from somewhere and continuing to hemorrhage money because people won't pay is not being very responsible with the tax dollars that have been entrusted to them. We actually started writing grants to get funds specifically for those deficits. We will tell a family look you owe $100 for your kids balance. If you pay $50 we will cover the other $50. It gets hard when you have families that literally owe thousands of dollars. People ask (how can you let it get that bad) but again, what are we supposed to do, not feed the kid? Only give them the basic lunch or a cold sandwich? Then you will accuse us of shaming them... It's kind of a no win and once again public schools become the "bad guy". Sorry for the long comment :)
I like long comments. My problem with the articles and the people who were writing them was that they tried to make it about racism when there was no evidence of any of that... they just assumed (or perhaps just lied about) it because that gets people all worked up.
I don't think that any school kid should not get fed but if a situation arises where a family is not paying for the lunches claiming they don't have money, but somehow manages to have money for all the elective fun stuff, is there not at least a chance that there is some sort of intentional abuse that is going on?
It reminds me of a friend that owed me a couple of thousand dollars, and for years didn't pay me back.. always claiming that he had no money but he didn't realize i was FB friends with his wife and I actually saw the posts and pics of the elaborate vacations they were going on.
For me the main thing that really caught my eye was the media being blatantly dishonest (big surprise) and people who don't even read the articles just take the headline and run with it.
Yeah, like I said, it is really hard. Many of those people do get government assistance which they spend on frivolous things. Like I said though, if they would just fill out the papers their kid could get free lunch every day. The problem is they have to list the income of everyone living in the house, so that live in girlfriend/boyfriend, their kids grandparents and the seven other people living in the house need to be recorded to. We actually have a mass calling system for things like snow days and stuff like that. They wanted me to set it up to start calling parents when they have a lunch balance and I dug my heels in and said no. I told them if you want to guarantee the parent never answers another call from the school again, go ahead and do it, but I don't want to facilitate that.