School lunches are great until you cannot get one. Not only is it humiliating to have it taken away, but it is a waste of food, and completely wrong because the lunch ladies do not tell you when you are getting low on money.
If some of you are unfamiliar with the lunch accounts in high schools, you cannot go in the hole at all. It is believed that you should have enough responsibility by now to remember money, and if you don’t, you must suffer the consequences of not eating. To me, that is a bit harsh. The problem at hand is that the lunch ladies do not tell you when you only have $1.65 left, for example. Thus, you cannot get a full lunch, and probably would only have enough to get a bag of chips for $.85. To me, that doesn’t seem nutritious compared to 2 servings of fruits and vegetables. Because the world is advancing technologically quickly, it would be a good idea to have an email and phone system in place. That way you or your parent/guardian would automatically get a message saying when you have less than $5.00 in your account and you need money as soon as possible. Although they have a system where you can deposit money electronically, not everyone has computer access at home. It is not right to deny someone food one day simply because they don’t have the capability of checking their balance.
I am in Cougar Advisory Council at school, which is a group of students from every grade and multiple extracurricular activities. We meet with our principal and discuss things we feel need to be fixed as students. Lunches came up in discussion one day, and our principal stated that the lunch ladies are supposed to tell you when you’re low, but it is possible they forget. Our principal said that if she ever hears or sees a student’s lunch taken away while she is supervising the lunchroom, she pays for it out of her personal lunch account.
Once you touch the food, plate, utensils, etc. no one else can eat it, for sanitary and health code reasons. It is very wasteful to throw food away that could go into someone’s hungry stomach. I do not see much harm in letting a student go in the hole $2.00. Sure, a friend can pay for you, but it costs more to get two lunches at the same time. Often, you don’t know anyone in the line that could pay for you. If the government wants us to eat healthier, I don’t think denying someone fruits or a vegetable is helping very much.
While babysitting a few days ago, I noticed a news bulletin from the elementary school the kids I babysit go to. As I was skimming through the pages, I noticed that it said you could go $10.00 in the hole. In middle school I believe you can go $1.00-$2.00 in the hole, and after that they give you a cheese or sun-butter sandwich. If the school district will not allow high school students to go in the hole because they believe they have enough responsibility, at least give them a cheese sandwich that probably costs little to nothing to make.
This is a big topic at my school, but was recently on our local news and has been discussed more since changes to lunches. (569)
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