A Boring Dystopia

My wife runs a school kitchen, a big school, 2k+ high schoolers and almost 20 staff. Her pay is actually terrible, but the job has good medical insurance and I'm self employed with no benefits so she's been sticking with it. Collecting debt is part of her job. They never withhold a basic meal (no extras if they have unpaid debt) but that meal gets added to their debt.

They don't threaten anything legal like in this story, but they will not give you your diploma or transfer your credits if you haven't paid your debt in full. We're in Ohio.

Not wanting to feed children doesn’t seem very pro-life.

Lunch debt? The fuck outta here with that dystopian nightmare shit

Christ empowered his followers to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and tend to the sick. For some reason American Christians have decided that these explicit dictates should he ignored, much like the reminder that it is not their role to judge, so that they can instead focus on bigotry.

State doesn't pay for kid's lunch. If parent can't afford kid's lunch, state takes child and places them in a foster home. State pays foster home many many times the cost of lunch to take kid.

Tell me what the goal of this system is so I can call someone else a conspiracy theorist for a change.

Kids go to public school during lunchtime. Public school feeds the children lunch (something with real nutritional value that we would all want our kids eating). Kids do not pay for this. That's it. There should be no further discussion here. If you disagree with this I want to put my thumb into your eye socket in the worst way. It's so fucked up this is even a topic of discussion.

"You might be giving your kids a terrible childhood, so we're going to ensure they have a terrible life starting in our first-class foster care system"

Punishing the poor for the crime of poverty.

How typically conservative.

Do the schools actually have the authority to do that or is it like all those other empty threats I use to get? It's insane, but not surprising that the schools would threaten that. The sort of family who has to skip on paying lunch debts also doesn't have means to talk to a lawyer.

edit:

Luzerne County's manager and child welfare agency director have written the superintendent, insisting the district stop making what they call false claims.

Yup, empty threats made to impoverish families.

Kids having lunch debt is the most American thing I've ever seen.

Starve your kid or lose them. That's quite a choice for a poor parent to make.

My late father grew up in an orphanage because my grandfather was too poor to care for 5 kids and a sick wife. My grandparents were able to take the kids home on Sundays though, so it wasn't a situation where they yielded full custody. I'm not saying an orphanage was ideal, but it's a shame that these days there is not the same kind of middle ground where kids can be cared for but still stay connected to their family. I guess that is too much of a social safety net for conservatives to tolerate.

Who made this warning?

I need a name

Because that has nothing to do with debt, putting kids in foster care wound only cost the state even more money

That is only about unbridled power and control

Absolutely delusional

So it's too expensive to provide school lunch, but not too expensive to completely take over the care of the children entirely. More and more, I understand what people mean when they say the cruelty is the point. This makes zero goddamned sense.

How the fuck is that supposed to fix anything? It's easily cheaper for the state to pay for their lunch.

My school held my diploma for 6 months because of $20 worth of lunch debt that turned out to be a computer error.

That was 12 years ago.

Schools using food as a weapon against students is nothing new.

Yet another reason why I hate every goddamn billionaire with the fire if a thousand suns.

Just a reminder that the same people who are against free school lunches for children are the ones who stand in front of abortion clinics screaming about how abortion is murder.

But why oh why aren't people having kids?!