"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Sunday, July 21, 2019

PA School District Threatens to Remove Parents' Children for Not Paying for Lunch

The chairman of the School Board is Joseph Mazur.  The Board's phone number is 570-288-6551. 

From CNN:

(CNN)The Wyoming Valley West School District in Pennsylvania sent out hundreds of letters this week telling parents who had lunch debt to pay or their children could go into foster care. 
The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, told parents that there have been "multiple letters sent home with your child" and that no payments had been made. 
"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch," the letter read. It also said failure to provide children with food could result in parents being sent to Dependency Court. 
"If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care," the letter read. 
CNN has reached out to Wyoming Valley West School District, but has not heard back.

6 comments:

  1. Personally, I totally agree with this. It is about time parents took the accountability to insure their kids are fed. Sending a kid to school with money and no food is child abuse. This is what happens when we implement programs that errode parental responsibilty. It is the parents job to feed their kids and when they don't they should be held accountable. Obviously handing out stuff isn't working now is it.

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    1. Our school cafeteria chief watches out for kids, but, worried about summer meals, a library volunteer funded a program a couple of years go to provide lunch bags in the summer. That program has grown, with healthful lunch bags available around town. It is organized by town librarians and funded by the local church.

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    2. Anonymous5:03 PM

      Hi Kendra! Do you believe that separating poor children from their parents in order to teach the parents a lesson about fiscal responsibility will actually make their lives better? If so, then I do hope you never choose to breed because you have no right bringing life into this world. Shame on you for using children as pawns in your right-wing holy war.

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  2. I wrote a letter to the NY Times telling what my father did eons ago. As president of the schoolboard he heard about kid bringing a raw potato to school for lunch. He organized volunteers to build a cafeteria and the board hired a woman famous for her church meals to cook in the cafeteria. Everybody ate there, some paying and some not paying. This continued for years. When another school was built, kids were bused to the cafeteria for meals.

    My dad was a conservative who believed that kids matter.

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  3. Isn't there a "Free" lunch program for disadvantaged children? If you're telling me these are parents who are able to pay but choose not to, then maybe more force is needed, but certainly not threatening to take the kids away from the parents--and how can that be even legal?

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  4. According to NPR, donors who have tried to pay the whole school cafeteria bill have been rebuffed.
    https://tinyurl.com/yyx3fztn

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